La Redoute is a company with 180 years of history. It is mainly known for its traditional catalog that were part of many families' living rooms. But in 2014, it was close to bankruptcy, initiating an ambitious transformation plan to survive. In 2018, La Redoute reborn from ashes back to profitability, with new business models, and offering a pure player user experience on the web. That transformation was powered by daily deliveries of the digital platform supported by more than 6500 automated tests. But then, the rapid shift of the ecosystem to smartphones and mobile applications pushed the organization to pivot to an app-first strategy. That move challenged the existing foundations, raising questions on where to start, how to accelerate, and what to reuse? This talk presents the experience of pivoting and maintaining a continuous testing strategy from web to an app-first model, sharing our learnings and actionable takeaways. Continuous Testing Meetup CTM: Continuous Testing Meetup is a community for testers & developers, and anyone who is interested in testing, to share their ideas and learn from peers. Join us if you are interested in Continuous Testing, Selenium, WebDriver, Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, Testing & Automation, and any other related tools and techniques. We bring people together to discuss not only technical topics but also soft skills that are required to succeed in today's testing industry.

1. qeunit.com

2. 2
One speaker but normally two 
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Nadia Tennich
Digital Quality Manager, La Redoute
Antoine Craske
Director of Architecture & Technology
Transformation, La Redoute

3. Who am I La Redoute
Director of Technology Transformation
Director of Architecture & Technology
Senior Director of Engineering
Senior Engineering Manager
Previous positions of Program Manager, Project Manager, Software Engineer
Entrepreneurship
Co-founder, atale.io
Co-founder, Cerberus Testing
Co-founder, Test Automation Camp
Communities
QE Unit, founder & organizer of the Quality Engineering community
TICE.Leiria, Meetup founder & organizer
Ministry of Testing Leiria, Meetup founder & organizer
Apache Kafka User Group Portugal, Meetup founder & organizer
Archilocus, architecture community co-founder & co-organizer
Research
AI in software engineering pipeline, process mining, value-stream
Test automation open standards
Antoine CRASKE
#digital
#architecture
#transformation
#qualityengineering
#qe
#testautomation
@acraske_
Linkedin/acraske
https://qeunit.com

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LA REDOUTE?
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La Redoute?
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La Redoute Key Figures
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HOW IT ALL STARTED
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Starting retail with Mainframe & co
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Priorities
• Deploy model
• Market share
• speed
France is the core International as start-ups

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First, Web Platform Rationalization
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Plus, a distributed back-office
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Becoming ever more distributed
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WHAT ABOUT QUALITY?
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15. UX, omnichannel, personalization, …

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From “Digital” to “Phygital”
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2015-2018
New application
launch in 2015
Experimentations
Chatbot, IoT, voice, …
2020
La Reboucle C2C
In-store applications,
support
2018-2020
100% responsive
51% GL
ownership
50 stores
“Web-first” “Mobile-first” “App(s)-first”

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Streamlining the quality organization
Feature teams with embedded QA engineers
1st-line quality ownership
Quality Orchestration
Quality Enablement
End-to-end quality culture

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SomeTesting numbers
Web (not-app) non-regression automated tests
• 5500+ tests on 8 countries
• Execution in 50 minutes
• Investment in Test Design, Reliability & Performance
Key numbers
• 96% daily release periods
• 160-190 deployments per year
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MOBILE APPLICATION QUALITY
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20. Stakes of the Mobile Application
0
2
4
6
8
10
App
Mainsite
Mobile
Conversion rate
🎯 2 000 000+ active owners FR
Turnover from 8% to 25+% in 3y
A conversion rate at 8+%

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Mobile Quality Infrastructure Evolution
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2015
• 2 Smartphones
• 10 non-regression
automated tests on
Android
• Execution time > 3H

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Mobile Quality Infrastructure Evolution
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2015
• 2 Smartphones
• 10 non-regression
automated tests on
Android
• Execution time > 3H
2017
• 10 Smartphones
• 200 automated tests
• Exécution time : 2h30

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Mobile Quality Infrastructure Evolution
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2015
• 2 Smartphones
• 10 non-regression
automated tests on
Android
• Execution time > 3H
2017
• 10 Smartphones
• 200 automated tests
• Exécution time : 2h30
2020
• Application farm
with 26 devices
• 442 automated tests
• Execution time
• 65 min. iOS
• 55 min. Android

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Mobile Quality Infrastructure Evolution
QUALITY AT SPEED @ LA REDOUTE
2015
• 2 Smartphones
• 10 non-regression
automated tests on
Android
• Execution time > 3H
2017
• 10 Smartphones
• 200 automated tests
• Exécution time : 2h30
2020
• Application farm
with 26 devices
• 442 automated tests
• Execution time
• 65 min. iOS
• 55 min. Android
2022
• Application farm
with 50+ devices
• 1500+ automated
tests
• Execution time
under 50 min

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Key questions in 2020
 How to accelerate on mobile application?
 Deliver expected business features (Quality)
 Deliver changes faster (Speed)
 Stakes
 Enable organizational scalability for business & engineering
 Balance stability with structuring changes (i.e. personalization)
 Constraints
 A daily release train & delivery to production (linked to core web platform)
 An SLA of 2 hours to respect for giving the GO/NOGO
 An application that was not native at that time
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LET’S START SOMEWHERE
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Iteration #1 : Cloud farm
 BrowerStack POC
 242 executions
 10 parallel execution
 Exécution in 2h30
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Pros & Cons
✓ Low management with SaaS
✓ Access to new devices & OS easily
✓ Automated upgrade and versioning update
! Execution time
! High execution costs becoming a constraint
! Not able to give GO/NOGO on time

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Iteration #2 : Own farm
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Iteration #2 : Own farm
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A ventilated locker
 Smartphones support
 14 iPhones + MAC
 12 Samsung + PC
 2 hubs (Android and iOS) with 15 ports

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Software solution
 Cerberus Testing
• Test automation platform 100% open-source since 2013, from La Redoute
• Fast feedback loops between test repository, execution, reporting
• Used for web, mobile, API, database & desktop testing
• Native connectivity with internal or external farm, selenium, appium
 IoS connectivity
• XCode /Serveur Web Driver Agent WDA
 Android connectivity
• SDK with platform-tools
• Android Debug
• UiAutomator
HTTPS://CERBERUS-TESTING.COM, AVAILABLE ON GITHUB

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Software solution

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RESULTS & IMPROVEMENTS
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Internal farm execution result
• + 40% faster for android
• + 20% for iOS
Apps Farm
start
390 executions
iOS and
Android
120 min SLA

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 Test design & maintenance
• Libraries reviews
• Dataset
 New MAC
 ..
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Continuous improvements
120 min SLA

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But it’s not enough
How to handle multiple operating systems versions?
Can we get new versions on time?
Should we buy 2000 devices?
What if the farm is down?
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Iteration #3 : Hybrid farm
37
Internal farm Public farm

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Iteration #3 : Hybrid farm
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Internal farm Public farm
• Core non-regression
• Core Analytics
• Majority of devices by our users
• Access to many different OS/devices
• Good value for money for x devices
• Continuity plan is the main farm is down

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End-to-end process
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Daily train
Daily train Daily train Daily train Daily train
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Store
push

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End-to-end process
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Daily train
Daily train Daily train Daily train Daily train
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Monitoring
campaign 250+
Mobile App Monitoring with Analytics, personalization, tags, …
Store
push

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End-to-end process
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Daily train
Daily train Daily train Daily train Daily train
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Load-test
Load-test
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Web campaign
5500+
App campaign
Internal 1300
App campaign
Cloud 200
Security (IAST, DAST,…)
Monitoring
campaign 250+
Mobile App Monitoring with Analytics, personalization, tags, …
Store
push

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PERSPECTIVES
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Accelerate application cycle-time
Decouple application & website (started)
Migrate mobile application 100% native (>80%)
Daily store-ready application (done)
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Improve transversality
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Continuous load-test to reduce freeze periods
Self-healing deployment with statistical algorithm
Security testing on the entire lifecycle

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Takeaways
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Hybrid approach for app-first
Set ambitions and remove limiting factors
Keep the big picture and the end in mind

45. Q&A
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