With growing demand, capacity shortages and new airspace users on the rise, the ATM industry is preparing for a major paradigm shift with rapidly approaching deadlines. However, the new components and procedures must be thoroughly tested before implementation. The ATM System Test Tool is a powerful asset to enable ANSPs and system manufacturers take control of these changes and take the lead in change management.
What is ATM System Test Tool?
The first ATM industry specific test automation platform and portable functional test suite, designed for ATM domain experts, to be used for blackbox, system level regression testing purposes, in a vendor and technology agnostic way. The only test platform capable to support in-house, horizontal and vertical collaborations among industry players.
What shall we prepare for?
The immense scale and magnitude of changes that the industry is facing today far exceed everything that has been encountered before. Traditional technologies and methods are all being replaced with something new, like SWIM, FF-ICE, TBO, E-AMAN, fine grained web-services and SOA, while traffic keeps increasing, and available human resources are becoming more and more scarce. Everything will change: even competencies and fields of responsibility will need to be re-evaluated and re-assigned as ATM complexity reaches new heights.
Based on ProofIT’s experience in the past 20 years in change management and test automation in other industries, it can be foreseen that this change will be of a disruptive magnitude, it cannot be achieved overnight. It will be constant, fast paced and will affect all players. These replacement projects have vast and overlapping impacts, making it impossible to handle as business as usual.
Who will be in charge?
These changes will affect every stakeholder within the industry: ANSPs, ATM system manufacturers and integrators alike. The immense task of replacing traditional systems and methods with completely new ones cannot be achieved from within an organization, nor from within the ATM industry alone. Regarding the short timeframes, pre-existing external competencies will have to be involved.
With such fundamental changes, strategic commitment and sponsorship by top management in each company will be crucial. This sponsorship will give the mandate to the committed experts to define the right risk mitigation focuses with the right details, and embrace the necessary additional toolchains and methodologies to get the 10-100 fold more tasks to be done with FTE gain and quick ROI.
The use ATM System Test Tool will enable the in-house experts to get detailed, accurate and reliable test results fast, mostly overnight. This way, teams will be able to take control of testing, ensure compliance and auditable test results and be in charge of implementation. Step first, lead the change.
How it works
To this day, most ANSPs rely on manual tests performed by their ATM system experts. This methodology already makes it very hard to cope with today’s testing demands, and with the anticipated magnitude and pace of changes, it will be impossible to execute manually sufficient regression suites.
Users of the ATM Test Tool already attest that automated regression testing enables organizations achieve far more detailed test results, unprecedented measurability and transparency in hours instead of weeks. The execution of tests no longer depends on the availability of ATM experts, and can be repeated an arbitrary number of times. In addition to higher testing speeds, coverage and frequency can be 10-100 times higher than that of manual testing. Automated testing and overnight test results will enable organizations to achieve higher system availability, reduce safety risks, cut costs and utilize their resources more effectively.
As a result, ANSPs and system manufacturers will be in a better position to collaborate on achieving safer and more stable system operations. ATM System Test Tool is not just another product, it enables and fosters true strategic partnerships.
Stronger together
This is the time of collaboration. Only together can we tackle the immense challenges our industry is facing, and the introduction of test automation is one such component. Over the past 12 months, ProofIT and HungaroControl have been engaged in countless workshops and meets with over 40 ANSPs, ATM system manufacturers and integrators all over the world. We have received very valuable insights and positive feedback and together we were able to build a roadmap of the tool and created an applicability assessment that is unique for each organization.
“The joint applicability assessments are resulting trust and confidence on both sides, realistic expectations, well defined “statement of work” chapters, and positive engagement in ANS, operation and developer teams.” says Attila Mészáros, R&D Director of ProofIT Ltd.
Everybody faces very similar problems and many requirements coincide. As a result, nobody will have to bear the costs and risks alone. They will be shared and distributed among stakeholders, and newly added functionalities will benefit all. This unique collaboration will create a community that will achieve far better results a lot faster than individual efforts would do. ProofIT will be there to help every industry member achieve their most desired results and lead the change in system level testing.
Join the future of ATM testing
Automated ATM system testing is already here and in productive use. This is a unique moment in time, which offers the opportunity to combine our forces, work together, and make the ATM industry safer, more efficient and more reliable, while saving costs at the same time!
ProofIT has over 20 years of experience in test automation, and is well established in other high-profile sectors, such as automotive, railway, commercial banking and public administration. Further information: https://proofit.tech/atm
HungaroControl is the ANSP of Hungary, handling record traffic growths, pioneering in innovation, and the first to put automated ATM system level regression testing in live operation in 2023, exceeding the extent of any previous manual regression testing. Further information: https://en.hungarocontrol.hu/solutions/atm-system-test-tool
