RSMUS.comOver the past few months, we have been tasked with the opportunity to work with Latha to establish a structured RSAT team to build out accelerators for the first sprint of RSAT development. While recruiting and managing resources, we were also in charge of building both the CCM Grower, Trade Promotion Management, and Dairy accelerators. Working in these two roles has allowed us to develop a holistic view of what it takes to manage a team and build a successful RSAT product.
What is RSAT?
For those who don’t know, RSAT or the Regression Suite Automation Tool was designed to be used to reduce the time consultants need to spend on manually testing a module. Instead, RSAT allows clients to perform acceptance testing based on a client’s own data sets and values. RSM has started to build out a variety of accelerators that include: ProShip, CCM Grower, Trade Promotion Management, Core Finance, and many more. These accelerators are not only industry-specific but can be used across multiple industries and clients with little modification.
The RSAT Experience
While we both only had a small exposure to RSAT, Latha and her team were able to really promote how beneficial this tool would be for our clients as well as for us to better learn the system. Our typical day starts off launching the environments and reviewing accelerator statuses during our RSAT stand-up with our El Salvador team. Their team has helped guide us through common barriers we and the rest of our resources have come in contact with the day prior. These calls allow us to stay focused on our timeline and help each other better collaborate as a team even though we are spread out throughout North America. Since there are so many functionalities to RSAT we are constantly learning new tricks of the trade and how to better use this tool to advise our clients.
RSAT has also exposed us and many others at RSM to the power of Life Cycle Services. With Life Cycle Services, a consultant can take a recording stored in an LCS library, edit it inside D365, and then sync the new version over to Azure DevOps. For consultants out in the field, that means no more going into DevOps and manually editing the recording steps in DevOps!
What’s next?
Coming from training and rolling off one of our first projects, we were able to give an extremely fresh perspective of what a client’s first impression of RSAT may be, while also realizing how helpful it could be for them. It is truly amazing to see how much time and cost this tool can save our clients and we are really excited to be a part of the journey. After just six months of working with this tool, we have learned so much and can feel the transformation RSAT has had on our development here at RSM. From helping to build out the Release Validation Plan (RVP) and creating RSAT recordings to finally testing fully built-out suites for clients, we have really experienced the full RSAT lifecycle.
By: Patrick Ng & William Sumner
D365 Consulting Associates
