Faster lifecycle testing
Developers instantly jumped to various credit stages and reran validation in parallel.
Enterprise Profile
About LaSer UK
LaSer UK is a provider of consumer and partner finance programs, operating in the UK and Republic of Ireland. LaSer UK provides the leading retail finance, credit cards, affinity loans and loyalty programs for over 4 million customers and business partners across multiple sectors – including retail, household, insurance, entertainment and leisure.
Business Needs
Mission-critical date logic required comprehensive testing
LaSer UK provides a web-based cloud credit management system utilized on POS devices throughout their customer and partner locations. Their current system was undergoing an update. In this iteration, the system added new functionality to manage the entire credit life cycle with a streamlined new interface. This new system is a web-based, distributed software application hosted in their data center running on a mixed infrastructure.
When a customer signs up for a credit card, line of credit, or other financial products, this Credit Management system allows the business to manage various functionality in the credit life cycle such as:
- Credit agreements
- Accrued Interest
- Financial calculations
- Risk Assessment
- Interest Rates
- Billing
- Credit Reporting
- Payment Management
Regulatory & Compliance Requirement
The environment is contained within Active Directory and the application leverages webservers, database servers, and custom code. The high volume of date logic paired with Active Directory blocking manual testing made the LaSer UK team look for a complete solution to enable time travel while not compromising their Active Directory security policies.
The Challenge
Clock changes met Active Directory & operational roadblocks
Active Directory (like Kerberos and other domain security authentication protocols) has a security restriction where a time change of 5 minutes or more kicks servers off the domain, thus blocking time travel. The team encountered:
- Active Directory domain authentication failure upon clock changes of 5+ minutes
- Inability to validate complex interest calculations and payment terms against release schedules
- Complex distributed cloud POS architecture with interconnected database dependencies
- Risk of production defects in financial reporting and customer statements
LaSer UK’s dynamic architecture model paired with an Active Directory sensitive environment was initially thought of as a roadblock. But with TimeShiftX, the LaSer UK development team was able to apply time travel easily without worrying about system reliability or adding further complexities.
The TimeShiftX Solution
Virtual time simulation without altering host operating clocks
The LaSer UK development team was working to meet their upcoming “Go Live” release date and needed a time shifting software solution that was quick to deploy and easy to use. After a brief trial, the team decided TimeShiftX was the best solution given its ease of integration, intuitive use, and Active Directory compatibility.
In this project, their upgraded credit management system included new functionality to manage the entire credit life cycle. This increased the business cases anchored in date logic as items such as interest rates, billings, financial calculations had to dynamically adjust to new terms. TimeShiftX allowed the LaSer UK team to time travel within their environment and run thorough date simulations to validate code. This new time shift testing capacity increased system reliability as every business rule was fully validated and tested.
Key Solution Capabilities:
Documented Benefits
What changed for development, QA, and operational timelines
Key benefits realized by LaSer UK included:
- Enabled time travel across the entire web-based, distributed cloud application with plug-and-play ease
- Maintained Active Directory security per company policies while dateshifting to any point in time
- Synchronized time shifting for the entire server pool from a single click
- Empowered developers to instantly jump to various stages of credit lifecycles, isolate defects, and rerun validation
- Executed complex simulations for all major, minor, and edge cases, ensuring a confident Go-Live
TimeShiftX utilizes “virtual times” that time travel only the user software application space while maintaining root system reliability. This allowed LaSer UK’s system to have their distributed components synced while preserving their data center architecture, meeting their aggressive release schedule with complete test coverage.
Documented Outcomes
Measured value delivered to LaSer UK
Security context retained
Maintained full Active Directory compliance and datacenter architecture.
Edge-case coverage
All major, minor, and edge cases tested dynamically prior to the Go-Live date.