Interview with the CUI Programme's Test lead Lucy Markham – CUI Blog

This week I wanted to show the CUI programme from a new perspective, so I interviewed Lucy Markham who is the Test Lead for the CUI Clinical Application and Patient Safety (CAPS) team and has been part of the CUI Programme for over two years.

Unless you work on IT projects, the role of a ‘test lead’ won’t be immediately obvious to you! Lucy’s job on the CUI Programme is to lead the team that creates the test plans whose purpose is to ensure that the software works the way it is designed to. This ensures that the software produced by the programme maintains a high quality bar.

The programme creates the CUI Control Toolkit  various demonstrators and sample applications -- Lucy’s team performs a quality control function on all of this software in order to ensure that it is a good example of our CUI design guidance. The testing also involves, for example, checking that software works on all supported browsers and operating systems.

Lucy, what have been the biggest challenges in the way we do things since you started on the project?

“The biggest challenges are the changes in technology, moving from more traditional web controls to using new Microsoft products such as Silverlight. This particular product is visually very rich, very good for creating interactive applications with a sophisticated user interface and supports features such as animation. However, an important consideration for us when adopting these new technologies has been to make sure that the old controls are not made obsolete -- so we ensure that the new software can be integrated with the older technologies. “

Where does your team fit into the process?

“Once the guidance is complete, feature teams are set up for each software feature. The team is made up of CAPS team members from development, test, design and the program manager. It’s the program manager’s job to lead the creation of the functional spec, while the designer creates wireframes, which specify the layout and behaviour of the feature in detail. Wireframes are useful for giving our clinical panel a visual of what it is we’re developing. They're also important for the development and test teams, as they are the specification of how the finished product should look and behave.”

“The test team's work begins in earnest once development begins, since the earlier problems can be found, the easier it is to fix them. Once development is complete, this is the busiest time for test -- the team will concentrate on finding bugs and running all their tests before the software can be considered ready for release. “

What do you like about your job?

"I like working on something that could really make a difference to people, something that you can see has the potential to help anyone of us in the future. I also enjoy working within a close knit team which is reflected in the collaborative ways that we work. A particularly good example of this was the graphing control, because it’s very complex and needed designers, developers and testers. “

I really enjoyed talking to Lucy and learning more about how our team works together.

Next week I will be writing about examples of CUI guidance that NHS healthcare staff might already be using. As usual I would like to encourage any doctors, nurses and pharmacists reading this, to sign up here (http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/events) you’ll need to search on CUI CAPS to locate the many user testing events we’re running throughout April and May.