Optimizing for Growth with QA Automation
At a glance
CLIENT
Leading Industrial Automation Company (US)
INDUSTRY
- Industrial Automation (chemicals, O&G, power, water, food & beverage, pharma, etc.)
A leading U.S. industrial-automation provider faced mounting pressure to accelerate product delivery while maintaining the highest levels of reliability for mission-critical systems. Their software powers complex manufacturing environments where downtime can result in significant financial loss and safety risks. To remain competitive, the organization needed to modernize its quality assurance approach and remove bottlenecks that slowed down release cycles.
LeanCoded reframed quality assurance as a true growth lever rather than a back-office function. Our team conducted a rapid yet comprehensive assessment across 16 QA domains, uncovering gaps and opportunities that had previously gone unnoticed. We replaced a deprecated toolset with a scalable automation stack, introduced modern engineering practices, and delivered a phased roadmap that directly tied improvements to business outcomes. The result was not only cost reduction and higher productivity but also a substantial decrease in time-to-market. Most importantly, the engagement laid down a durable foundation for continuous growth, enabling the client to innovate faster and bring resilient solutions to an increasingly demanding market.
Challenge
The client’s software powers critical manufacturing processes where downtime and defects are costly. Releases were slowed by limited automation coverage, inconsistent practices across teams, and a looming tool-chain risk: Microsoft Coded UI was being retired. Leadership needed a clear path to higher automation maturity—one that would increase delivery speed, control costs, and sustain quality at scale.
At the same time, the organization wanted to benchmark its QA operating model against industry best practices. The brief to LeanCoded: audit 16 QA domains, identify gaps and quick wins, recommend a future-proof tool stack, and produce a practical roadmap that ties process improvements directly to growth outcomes.
Objectives
- Establish a baseline of QA maturity across 16 domains (process, tooling, people, data, governance).
- De-risk the Coded UI end-of-life by selecting and proving a replacement stack.
- Define a phased roadmap that links automation to business results (cost, velocity, quality).
- Enable teams (training, standards, operating model) to scale automation across web & desktop.
Rapid Discovery & Alignment (Week 1)
Maturity Assessment across 16 QA Areas
Tooling Strategy & Proofs-of-Concept
Operating Model, Standards & Governance
Roadmap to Value (3 Phases)
Implementation Highlights (3-Week Assessment Window)
- 16-area analysis across System Integration & Automation Infrastructure teams.
- Built the QA Maturity Matrix and gap-to-target map with prioritized recommendations.
- Delivered PoCs for Selenium WebDriver, TestComplete, and Ranorex; ran side-by-side stability and speed trials.
- Produced the Tooling Evaluation Matrix and TCO summary; recommended Selenium WebDriver (primary) + WinAppDriver (desktop) for long-term maintainability and skills availability.
- Authored a Governance Pack (standards, patterns, CI/CD gates) and a 90-day rollout plan aligned to the client’s release calendar.
Results
- Clarity & Alignment: organization-wide view of QA maturity; agreed target state and priorities.
- De-risked Tooling: Coded UI retirement addressed with a proven hybrid stack that fits existing engineering practices.
- Faster Feedback: standardized pipelines and smoke gates reduce lead-time to detect issues and shrink rework.
- Maintainability: layered framework and standards lower upkeep costs and enable contribution at scale.
- Cross-Surface Coverage: unified approach across web and desktop reduces context switching and duplicate effort.