— New Zealand Qualifications Authority

How NZQA passes exams every year with flying colours

Organisation

New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA)

Industry

Public Sector

Solutions

Performance Testing
Test Analysis

Test Management

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About

Every year, the results publication day becomes a major challenge for both students and NZQA due to the avalanche of internet traffic that floods the organization’s website within minutes. Given NZQA’s complex systems and multiple dependencies, the organisation has to make changes to the system on the fly, especially during the unique exam cycle, to avoid a situation where students are unable to view their exam results promptly.

Additionally, the significant push towards digitisation and digital transformation has increased the need for NZQA to manage these changes efficiently to prevent disruptions during the crucial results day.

Solution

To ensure the smooth publication of exam results on its website, NZQA partnered with Assurity to deliver a range of services, including performance testing across all systems with a focus on results publication day, workload modelling, and capability uplift to support regular release cycles. Additionally, Assurity helped manage NZQA’s data flows, exceptions, and partner ecosystem effectively, with targeted exploratory testing and ‘Just in Time’ test sessions where stakeholders logged in as users to assess the expected user experience ahead of go-live. Finally, Assurity developed and implemented a dashboarding system that replaces previous disparate reports and spreadsheets to track performance effectively.

“The sheer duration of the engagement NZQA has maintained with Assurity is a demonstration of the consistent and dependable value delivered. “

Shane Gaskin, CIO

New Zealand Qualifications Authority

Results

The team from Assurity provided stability and peace of mind by maintaining operations with zero impact, while also developing innovative approaches to comprehensive testing and accelerating the process of evaluating complex intertwined systems. The team demonstrated a proven ability to identify and resolve issues before they have real-world impacts and provided real-time, immediate insights on how exams, results, and other essential metrics are tracking on public screens.

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