Starting Small: Piloting Automated Testing Capabilities for an Unemployment Insurance Service

In a complex, regulated legacy environment with minimal test automation and tight deadlines, technical and non-technical challenges can make it difficult to accelerate the QA process. This session uses Mighty Acorn Digital's experience launching an automated testing program for the New Jersey Unemployment Insurance Modernization initiative as a case study on introducing automation to ensure safety across thousands of test scenarios spanning multiple different technologies. Introducing test automation in this environment presented several challenges. There was skepticism about the feasibility and value of automation beyond unit tests, especially in achieving end-to-end coverage in brittle, changing systems. Educating non-technical stakeholders required careful management of expectations and balancing manual and automated testing benefits. And with team members already spread thin across feature development, identifying who would take ownership of launching and maintaining these new capabilities was a concern. Additionally, questions remained about whether automation could support broader business needs, such as ensuring the application could handle pandemic-level traffic. Session attendees will gain insights from Sean Eddings' experience launching an automated testing program in a state government, see a demonstration of the developed capabilities, and learn key lessons for starting similar initiatives where it can be difficult to know where to start.