The Challenge: Testing at National Scale

HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) was transitioning from fragmented, paper-based legacy systems to the Common Platform—a unified cloud-based case management system. With over 1.8 million cases and 2.3 million hearings handled, the platform is the backbone of the UK’s criminal justice system.

The challenge wasn't just finding bugs; it was the technical debt and slow release cycles (40% automation) that hindered the speed of justice. For a system where failure can delay court proceedings and impact citizen rights, "good enough" testing was not an option.

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The Vision: Embedded Quality and Resilience

ScrumConnect’s mission was to transform QA from a "final gate" into a continuous, automated foundation. We aimed to:

1. Increase Automation: Move away from manual bottlenecks.
2. Enable Rapid Releases: Shift from infrequent, risky deployments to a "continuous delivery" mindset.
3. Embed Security & Accessibility: Ensure the platform met the highest GDS (Government Digital Service) and security standards as a default, not an afterthought.

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The ScrumConnect Approach: The "Shift Left" Strategy

1. Integrating QA into the "One-Team" Model

We didn't treat QA as a separate department. Instead, we embedded QA engineers directly into multidisciplinary product teams. By "shifting left," testing began during the design phase, identifying potential logic flaws before a single line of code was written.

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2. Radical Automation & Technical Debt Refactoring

To tackle stability issues, we:

• Increased automation coverage from 40% to over 85%.

• Replaced ageing legacy code with modern, containerised updates.

• Integrated automated regression suites into the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring every commit was verified in real-time.

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3. Resilience & Performance Testing

Public services face unpredictable demand. We implemented load simulation and fault preparation to ensure the platform remained resilient under pressure. This included stress-testing the system against peak user volumes to prevent the downtime that often plagues large-scale government migrations.

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4. Evidence-Led Assurance

Working within the DORA metrics framework (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, MTTR, and Change Failure Rate), we provided HMCTS with transparent, data-driven evidence of quality. This gave stakeholders the confidence to move to more frequent release cycles.

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The Results: A More Stable Path to Justice

• 85%+ Automation Rate: Dramatically reduced the manual effort required for regression testing.
• Faster Fixes: By moving to containerised updates and smaller, more regular releases, we reduced the "cost of change" and allowed the team to react instantly to user needs.‍
• Robust Security: Secured all entry and exit points through advanced threat modelling and continuous security testing.‍
• GDS Compliance: Successfully met the rigorous accessibility and usability standards required for UK public sector services.

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"In high-stakes public sector delivery, quality assurance is not a final step but the foundation. Our approach ensures that leaders have the confidence to innovate, and citizens are protected from the costly impact of system failure."— Scrumconnect QA Leadership

Key Methodologies Used:

• Shift Left Testing: Early intervention in the SDLC.
• Automated Regression Suites: Using tools like Playwright/Cypress and integration into GitLab CI/CD.‍
• Performance Engineering: Load testing via Azure-based scaling.‍
• Accessibility (WCAG 2.2): Ensuring the platform works for everyone, including those with assistive technologies.

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