Impact
Launch - In Control on Day 1
The pressure was high, the board was watching, and one week after going live, a mass media campaign was ready to go.
Test Automation as a Catalyst for Release Capability
Every day, 115 automated scenarios can run in about ten minutes
A New Approach to Quality
Shift Left in practice. Guided by its vision, Team Rockstars incorporated quality earlier in the process.
Avoided Reputation and Recovery Risks
Quality Assurance helped identify risks early on and reduced the likelihood of disruptions during the launch.
About
hollandsnieuwe went live. One week later, the mass media campaign was ready. Trams, online, everywhere. No quiet soft launch, no comfortable period to mature first. You might think that’s bold—until you realize that a single mistake can damage a new brand’s reputation before even a single satisfied customer has posted a review online.
A relatively small team, with a startup mindset, grew from a purely mobile brand into a provider of Internet and TV services. With a recognizable value proposition, target audience, and customer promise, hollandsnieuwe delivers exactly what the brand stands for: clear choices, transparent billing, and service that works.
For parent company VodafoneZiggo, this was a strategic move in a market under pressure from fiber-optic competitors. The goal was to drive growth in a segment where simplicity and control matter more than all the bells and whistles.
“The complexity lay in integrating all the systems. Jasper reached out to the right stakeholders and made sure everyone understood each other. That goes far beyond just testing.”
ONE ORDER. TEN SYSTEMS. A CAMPAIGN THAT WON’T WAIT
From the outside, it seemed simple: Hollandsnieuwe sold internet service over the Ziggo network. So wasn’t this just a new brand with a different website?
No. “It wasn’t about a new store,” says Erik Tigges, Cluster Lead for Customer and Tech at Hollandsnieuwe. “We built an entirely new business unit: with a new BSS on Salesforce, a new front end, a new billing system, modem logistics, customer management, and dozens of integrations with the Ziggo chain.”
The complexity lay in the chain of processes: address verification, customer identification, neighborhood availability, PostNL integration, modem activation, and billing. “A single order can easily involve ten systems that all have to work together seamlessly from start to finish,” explains Jasper Loos, Principal Consultant for Test Automation at Team Rockstars IT.
On top of that came the pressure. This project had C-level priority. The campaign was set in stone. Any misstep would damage our reputation just as the market was really starting to take notice. Quality Assurance wasn’t just a final check here. The question was whether hollandsnieuwe could launch its TV and Internet services responsibly.
QUALITY AS CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Hollandsnieuwe knew that quality couldn’t wait until the very end. The launch of Internet and TV was simply too strategic, too visible, and too dependent on a supply chain in which many parties had to deliver simultaneously. So the question wasn’t just whether testing was done properly, but how to ensure quality early enough in the process.
Together with Hollansnieuwe, Team Rockstars IT established quality control across the end-to-end chain: from test strategy to execution, from supplier agreements to daily feedback.
It all started with a focus on precision before implementation. “The sooner you get feedback, the less costly mistakes become. Ideally, you want to discover that something isn’t right as early as the design phase,” says Jasper. Requirements had to be clear, testable, and complete. Suppliers had to prove their own components. Team Rockstars monitored the entire customer journey: ordering, making changes, moving, and canceling. Not by taking over responsibility, but by making it clear where that responsibility lay.
At the same time, test automation was implemented from day one. Because the Internet and TV were new, there wasn’t yet a rich history of test data. Every morning, fresh orders were automatically generated for scenarios such as making changes, transferring service, and canceling service.
LIVE, IN CONTROL, AND AGILE
On April 14, Hollandsnieuwe Internet and TV went live. One week later, the mass media campaign kicked off. There were no production issues that hindered the launch. No troubleshooting was needed just as the market was really starting to take notice.
“We went live and were in control from day one. That’s quite an achievement for a launch like this,” says Erik Tigges.
The results are clear:
- Launch under control: the pressure was high, the board was watching, and the campaign was set in stone. Yet hollandsnieuwe remained in control from day one.
- Avoided reputational and recovery risks: Quality Assurance prevents a poor start, which would become apparent to customers, the media, tech forums, and VodafoneZiggo itself.
- Test automation as an accelerator: 115 automated scenarios can be run daily in about ten minutes. Not only to check new functionality, but especially to see if anything existing has failed without being noticed.
The least measurable result may be the most important one: Hollandsnieuwe takes a different approach to quality. QA isn’t at the back of the line—it’s right at the table. Product, development, and marketing teams think ahead about what’s needed and how to prove that it works.
This is Shift Left in practice. It means that test automation is more than just verification. It lays the foundation for greater release capacity: responding more quickly to customer issues, capitalizing on commercial opportunities sooner, and reducing risk per release.
Collaboration
When the pressure mounts, it’s tempting to just keep going. Especially when the board is watching and the campaign has already been purchased. That’s exactly when someone needs to be able to say: this is possible, this isn’t, and this is a risk you’re consciously taking. For Erik Tigges, that was precisely the value of working with Team Rockstars. “For me, Jasper wasn’t just the test lead—he was my personal advisor on quality. He helped us zero in on what we couldn’t overlook, despite the time pressure.”
Jasper, on the other hand, saw what was needed from Hollandsnieuwe’s perspective: space and trust. “Erik kept us informed about the pressure, but didn’t burden the team with it. That allowed us to just do our jobs.”
This led to a collaboration in which dissent didn’t slow things down—it actually sped them up. Erik, on the strength of Team Rockstars: “It’s that combination of daring to challenge, understanding that not everything can be done at once, and moving pragmatically toward a solution within that context.”
That’s exactly where the value lay: maintaining quality without losing momentum.
“The strength of Team Rockstars lies in that combination: having the courage to challenge the status quo, understanding that not everything can be done all at once, and working pragmatically toward a solution within that context.”
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