Quality engineering services

Engineer trust at speed.

End-to-end quality engineering for organisations that cannot afford to get change wrong.

Quality is an operating capability that determines how fast an organisation can change, how much that change costs, and whether customers ever notice. StepChange brings independent advisory, modern engineering and AI-enabled insight together in one accountable practice – across SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Workday, Salesforce and the bespoke systems you built yourself.

How we work Selected engagements

Operating history

Named QE services

SAP Partner

Enterprise platform accreditation

How we work

Four commitments you can hold us to

Independent quality engineering built around your priorities – not a standard service model applied regardless of context. Every engagement is shaped by the operating environment, the risk profile and the outcomes the organisation needs to demonstrate.

Customer-centric

We listen, then shape the approach

We immerse in the operating context first, then shape our approach around the priorities of the organisation and its customers – not around a predefined delivery model imposed from the outside.

Solution-focused

Independent, technology-agnostic advice

An independent perspective not tied to any vendor or tool – the right combination of methods, expertise and tooling for the problem at hand, assessed without vested interest in the answer.

Delivery-assured

Experienced leadership throughout

Experienced delivery leadership, robust governance, risk-based engineering and clear performance measures are maintained throughout – so the outcome is governed, and each gate decision is visible and documented.

Our approach

One continuous loop, from analysis to improvement

Seven stages, each instrumented, measured and improved – with technology and AI enablement woven through every one. The same framework applies to a two-week assurance review and a three-year managed service.

01 – Analysis

Understand what the change is trying to achieve, map business process risk, and agree the value hypothesis that will be measured.

02 – Design

Decide what good looks like before anything is built – design the test architecture, coverage model and entry and exit criteria for every stage.

03 – Preparation

Turn the design into a plan the whole programme can commit to, including test strategy, data provisioning, environment readiness and governance model.

04 – Execution

Run the work and hold a live signal on quality, with defect triage and continuous reporting to delivery and governance throughout.

05 – Release

Give the decision-maker evidence rather than opinion, with a go/no-go evidence pack and residual risk stated explicitly before the call is made.

06 – Maintenance

Stop quality decaying between releases by maintaining regression suites, monitoring production signals and supporting transition into business as usual.

07 – Improvement

Measure outcomes against the value hypothesis, retire coverage that no longer earns its cost, and re-tune scope to where risk has moved.

Selected engagements

Where the consequence was operational, not technical

Client identities are withheld by agreement. Each engagement is described in the terms the organisation measured it by – what was at risk, what we did, and what they were left holding afterwards.

Mining and resources

De-risking a major mining ERP transformation

SAP ECC to S/4HANA across a complex mining operation, extended mid-programme to absorb a second business. Quality assurance run as a strategic control covering data migration, payroll, interfaces, access controls and cutover. The approach was reused for the second business onboarding.

Local government

Assuring a critical local government ERP transformation

Three legacy systems consolidated into one cloud enterprise platform carrying finance, HR, payroll and more than 62,000 asset records across three registers. Quality managed as a programme-wide decision-making capability, producing a defensible go/no-go position the council retained for future change.

Mining technology

Assuring a digital mining platform mid-build

Analytics and SaaS platform integrated with spreadsheets, BI tooling and client operational systems. Test leadership embedded with product and business teams – validating analytics outputs, managing integration risk across SaaS components and producing release-readiness evidence on a continuously evolving product.

What we do

Ten capabilities, organised around the problem you need solved

Our capabilities are grouped by the business problems organisations bring us, not by traditional testing disciplines. Across every engagement we apply the same framework — establish the right approach, deliver measurable outcomes, then advance quality performance over time.

Advise

Establish the right strategy, operating model and assurance approach — so effort is aimed at the outcomes that matter before any testing begins.

Deliver

Deliver practical outcomes against that approach, with evidence at each gate and a clear view of what remains at risk.

Advance

Advance organisational quality maturity as business needs evolve, so the capability improves rather than simply repeating.

Ten capabilities — select any one to see the detail.

We provide independent, evidence-based assurance that gives executives, steering committees and boards a clear view of quality risk, delivery readiness and the actions required. We also help organisations establish the strategy, operating model and governance needed to improve quality at enterprise scale.

We provide independent, evidence-based assurance that gives executives, steering committees and boards a clear view of quality risk, delivery readiness and the actions required. We also help organisations establish the strategy, operating model and governance needed to improve quality at enterprise scale.

Services
Quality maturity assessments Independent programme quality assurance QE target operating model and practice establishment Test process optimisation Quality-gate reviews and go-live readiness Quality intelligence and executive reporting Tooling and vendor assessments Programme recovery reviews
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“I am moving a business-critical system onto a new platform. I need confidence in the migration, release and operational readiness — not simply a progress update from the delivery team.”

Migration and release are where quality risk concentrates. We provide independent, risk-based assurance across data migration, cutover, release readiness and hypercare. Our focus is on evidence: what has been validated, what remains at risk, and what decisions are required before go-live.

Services
Programme quality strategy Migration and cutover assurance Data migration reconciliation Release and regression assurance Environment and test-data strategy Mock-run rehearsals Go-live readiness assessment Hypercare defect governance
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“Our applications are complex and interconnected. We need confidence in the impact of change before customers or operations find the issue.”

We test across the full lifecycle — from component and integration through to end-to-end business processes and user acceptance. Our approach is risk-led: effort is directed toward the services, journeys and outcomes that matter most, rather than applying the same level of testing everywhere.

Services
Integration testing System testing End-to-end business process validation User acceptance facilitation Regression testing Test-case design and optimisation Exploratory and risk-based testing Defect triage and governance
Tooling
Azure DevOps Test Plans Jira and Xray Tricentis qTest SAP Cloud ALM SAP Solution Manager test suite
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“Manual regression is slowing releases, absorbing critical business resources and creating risk we cannot afford to carry.”

Automation is not an end in itself. We begin with business risk, test candidacy and return on investment, then build maintainable automation that integrates into delivery pipelines and supports sustained change. We focus on automation that improves release confidence — not simply automated test counts.

Services
Automation strategy and candidacy assessment Framework and library design Tool selection and implementation Model-based test automation Automation suite rehabilitation CI/CD quality gates Service virtualisation Capability transfer
Tooling
Playwright Selenium Cypress Tricentis Tosca Worksoft Certify OpKey SAP CBTA and eCATT Karate REST Assured Pytest Robot Framework
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“Critical reports, dashboards and data sources produce different answers, and we cannot reliably evidence which is correct.”

We treat data quality as an engineering discipline, not a reporting clean-up exercise. We validate pipelines, transformations, reconciliations and reporting outcomes — helping clients build confidence in the data used to run the business, serve customers and meet regulatory obligations.

Services
Pipeline and transformation testing Data contract definition and enforcement Source-to-target reconciliation Data observability Business intelligence and report assurance Semantic-layer regression Master data quality rules Sensor and time-series data quality
Tooling
Data observability platforms dbt testing SQL-based reconciliation frameworks BI regression tooling
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“Security and access risks are repeatedly found after change, creating audit findings and exposing the organisation to avoidable risk.”

We embed security and access assurance into the change lifecycle. This includes validating authorisations, segregation of duties, privileged access and security controls, while helping clients establish repeatable assurance practices that support compliance and reduce rework.

Services
Authorisation and segregation-of-duties test design Access-risk ruleset validation Privileged-access control testing Pipeline security scanning Secure-code and dependency analysis Abuse-case testing Penetration-test coordination and re-test assurance
Tooling
Static, dynamic, dependency and secrets scanning suites GRC access-risk platforms ABAP security analysis
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“The system works in test but fails under real operating conditions — at peak demand, month-end, shift change or during critical processing.”

We use production-informed workload models to test how systems perform under the conditions that matter most. We combine performance testing, observability and resilience validation to identify not only whether a system will fail, but why — and what is required to prevent it.

Services
Performance assessment and advisory Workload modelling Load, stress, soak and spike testing Scalability and capacity modelling Front-end and remote-site performance Observability and monitoring design Resilience and failover validation
Tooling
Apache JMeter k6 Gatling NeoLoad Cloud-based load platforms APM and observability suites
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“Customers and field teams use our services in real-world conditions, across devices and unreliable networks. We need evidence that the experience works for everyone.”

We validate digital experiences in the conditions users actually encounter: across browsers and devices, under degraded connectivity, and against accessibility requirements. Our work combines technical assurance with practical user outcomes.

Services
Web, mobile and responsive test design Cross-browser and device coverage Degraded-network and offline-sync testing Accessibility conformance testing Accessibility conformance reporting Usability and task-completion validation
Tooling
Playwright Appium BrowserStack and device clouds axe and accessibility scanners Assistive-technology suites
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“We need quality capability that can scale with demand, strengthen our team and avoid creating long-term dependency on a consultancy.”

We build capability as we deliver. Stepchange can provide sustained managed quality services, defined outcomes or specialist practitioners on demand. We transfer knowledge, improve ways of working and leave clients with stronger internal capability — not just completed work.

Services
Managed Quality as a Service Specialist quality resourcing and augmentation Embedded quality engineering Coaching and mentoring Quality curriculum and upskilling Agile and DevOps quality consultancy Certification pathway design
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

“We are introducing AI-enabled services, but need confidence that they are safe, reliable, governed and fit for customer and business use.”

AI introduces new quality challenges: non-deterministic outcomes, changing models, safety considerations and difficult-to-define acceptance criteria. We help organisations establish the evaluation, assurance and governance practices needed to introduce AI responsibly. We also apply proven AI-enabled techniques where they demonstrably improve quality engineering outcomes.

Services
AI readiness assessments Evaluation-harness design for non-deterministic systems Guardrail and safety testing Model-change regression AI-assisted test generation and maintenance Intelligent automation Robotic process automation quality
Tooling
Evaluation frameworks AI-enabled authoring within mainstream test platforms RPA platform test harnesses
Delivery Model

Strategic advisory, independent assurance retainers and outcome-based improvement engagements.

Start a conversation

Define the most valuable next step

Whether the immediate need is a strategic assessment, assurance for a critical programme, automation uplift or a scalable delivery model – a short conversation is usually enough to identify where the value is.

Email us +61 8 9324 1020