Transforming an Oil Trading Platform

Members of the ClearRoute team had the chance to work alongside one of the world’s leading integrated oil and gas companies, with operations across the globe. They operate in the complete end-to-end oil & gas lifecycle from exploration & extraction to delivery to consumers. Their trading function, is one of the most profitable in the industry, and deal with not only the buying & selling of oil & gas but also the logistics of transportation and delivery.

There was a department-wide push to improve engineering and digital delivery capabilities, and under the guidance of a new CTO wanted to undertake a number of re-platforming initiatives. It was well known, that their current preferred supplier did not have the modern engineering resources and leadership to accelerate the new changes so they invited the ClearRoute team to undertake a review and make recommendations engagement on one of their core trading platforms.

Working with key members of the leadership and development teams, it was quickly identified that poor engineering and development practices where causing severe delays. The heavy reliance on manual testing and poorly developed test automation frameworks where causing long regression test cycles, and low release frequency and predictability. This in turn was impacting business and IT relations, with end users reluctant to help drive software improvement and rarely engaged with the development teams.

The ClearRoute team focused on implementing a ‘Test First’ Process, and rework the ‘Continous Testing’ approach, introducing effective test automation and CI/CD strategy. This approach revolutionised their Route To Live and allowed them to gradually increase their release frequency, and eliminate but all of their scripted manual test effort.