TRR reduces deployment gate duration time 10x with Postman

TRR relied on a previous tool for API testing, which was not developer-friendly, creating a stilted experience that was not conducive to productivity. Developer onboarding was difficult, resulting in low motivation to expand integration test coverage. This was particularly important as expanding test coverage is essential to developing new features. Creating and modifying tests required navigating a complex setup.

The lack of shared structures meant integration tests could easily break when changes were made. Only the backend team used integration tests, and collaboration was limited between the backend, frontend, and SAP teams.

Authentication processes required duplicate API calls in tests. With 15 million API test executions running across the system, deployments were delayed. Third-party integrations with the CI/CD pipeline were needed. Maintaining a custom-built API CLI tool and writing code for testing added to the workload. Significant time and resources were being used that could be spent elsewhere. It was not possible to reuse authentications when sending requests, which resulted in duplicate logins.

Ultimately, TRR needed a solution to maintain high-quality testing standards while enabling better cross-team collaboration and reducing friction in the development process.

With an API-first approach in mind, TRR chose the Postman API Platform to enhance its testing workflows. Over eight months, the entire testing suite was migrated to Postman.

“Postman and APIs go hand in hand. With an enhanced developer experience and easier team collaboration, we're saving time and maintaining high-quality code.”

Gonzalo Medina, Solution Architect, TRR

Global variables and the Package Library reduced the number of test executions for monitoring and integration tests by one-third. The Package Library allows authentication scripts to be defined in a single place, creating reusable authentication logins. Now, there is no need to duplicate scripts as the same code can be used across multiple collections, reducing the number of redundant API calls.

Each team operates in a domain-specific workspace that includes its own documentation, tests, health checks, and API contracts. Consequently, API tests are easier to discover and reuse. Teams have edit access to their own workspace and read access to others, enabling collaboration through forks and pull requests. Developers can safely make changes, verify them locally, and merge without breaking functionality using version control for Postman Collections and environments.

“The third-party integrations baked into Postman are essential, alongside the other features used for API management. We no longer need to search because everything is in one place.”

Gonzalo Medina, Solution Architect, TRR

Postman's third-party integrations have streamlined workflows. The Statuspage integration with Postman Monitors keeps the teams up-to-date on API health and performance. When an API or test fails, the incident is automatically created and communicated to the relevant teams.

The Azure DevOps integration with the Postman CLI allows integration tests to be configured and run in the CI pipeline, serving as a deployment gate for quality control. The deployment gate runs tests across development, test, and production environments every 15 minutes, ensuring high-quality code, test utilization and coverage. With tests running so frequently, using the Postman CLI in the CI/CD pipeline has delivered significant time savings, which has had an incredibly positive impact. At the same time, Postman Monitors are being run to continuously check the health and performance of the APIs.

“Postman keeps evolving and has become an integral part of API development. It provides a complete picture of function quality.”

Mathias Sköld Strandberg, Chief Architect, TRR

The quality control achieved with integration tests enforces reliability and compliance in development environments to ensure only high-quality code reaches production. By emphasizing quality assurance upfront, the team reduces future bug fixes and delivers features that work reliably for users from day one.

Finally, Postman has dramatically improved collaboration and transparency. Integration and monitoring tests are centralized, and teams can comment on pull requests and review work across workspaces. The frontend, backend and SAP teams are aligned and working closer together.

The deployment gate duration time was drastically reduced. Across 20 backend pipelines, waiting time dropped from five minutes to just 20-30 seconds, a difference of 10x with the Postman CLI. These improvements save approximately 1,000 minutes per day across all the daily releases. There's more time to focus on strategic tasks, and it has led to a more efficient use of computing resources, which also contributes to energy savings.

Developer productivity and engagement were boosted, resulting in an increase in both test coverage and new feature development. Optimization reduced the number of API test executions from 15 million to 10 million, a 33% decrease. Simultaneously, the test execution time decreased from five minutes to 30 seconds.

The Postman API Platform is essential to the entire API development process, from ensuring quality to adding data to APIs. Postman has transformed testing and deployment workflows, making them efficient and more enjoyable for developers while delivering measurable operational and environmental benefits.