How Stantec Scaled Test Automation with a Lean Team and Testsigma

About Stantec

Stantec is a global engineering, design, and consulting firm, delivering infrastructure, environmental, and architecture projects across six continents. Its internal software teams build the field-data systems, collaboration platforms, and environmental monitoring tools that Stantec’s own distributed project teams run on daily, including for government-agency clients where data residency and security carry real weight.

Challenge: Scaling QA with Automation

The dev-to-QA ratio was stretched thin: a small QA team supporting a growing engineering org across a dozen-plus initiatives running at once. So scaling the QA efforts had to come from automation.

Stantec already had automation in place, but it was script-driven and locked behind coding skill, so only a few people could touch it. Maintaining those scripts ate up most of the team’s time. The goal became 95% of test cases needing no scripting at all.

The bar kept rising. Testing needed to reach web, mobile, API, legacy desktop apps mid-modernization, and Power Platform, and business stakeholders (BAs, product managers, product owners) needed a way to contribute without learning to code.

We were looking to improve the efficiency and scalability of our test automation efforts across multiple applications and teams. Traditional automation approaches required specialized coding skills, significant maintenance effort, and created bottlenecks when business stakeholders wanted to participate in testing.

Andrew Preston

Director, Software Development, Stantec

Solution: Automation Built for the Whole Team

Stantec picked Testsigma for the low-code, no-code approach and what it opened up: testing wasn’t limited to the three people with the QA title anymore.

• Broader participation: Non-technical stakeholders started contributing test cases directly in Testsigma’s no-code interface, closing the gap between "who wants to test" and "who knows how."
• Reduced maintenance tax: Testsigma Copilot handled first-run test creation and debugging; Atto ran shift-left testing earlier in the cycle. Less time spent re-writing scripts after every UI change.
• Solve the hard cases, not just the easy ones: The team automated a genuinely gnarly polygon-drawing map interaction, OTP and mailbox flows, REST API tests, and parameterized test data, on top of standard web and mobile coverage.
• CI/CD and Jira integration: CI/CD integration ran tests automatically on deployment. Jira integration pulled in story data to write test cases and auto-filed bugs when tests failed, so failures didn’t sit in someone’s inbox.

Scaling Across the Org

Onboarding started in August 2025 with structured training and ongoing workshops since. Stantec’s QA organization in India is onboarding onto the platform now, with more of the team joining as the rollout continues.

Shilpa Patil, QA Specialist, was one of the first to lean in, calling Testsigma "useful and user-friendly" and confirming it saves real time next to hand-coding tests.

What Changed for Stantec

Andrew tracks four outcomes above the QA layer: software quality, release risk, speed of shipping new capability, and the experience Stantec’s own users get. Testsigma feeds all four the same way: repetitive tests run each release, coverage widens, and code changes come back with fast feedback.

Teams were able to develop and execute automated test cases more quickly, increasing overall testing coverage and supporting faster delivery cycles. It also improved collaboration between technical and non-technical stakeholders involved in quality assurance.

Andrew Preston

Director, Software Development, Stantec

Andrew was candid about what Stantec has consistently seen since:

• Faster creation and execution of automated test cases.
• Reduced maintenance effort compared to Stantec’s previous automation approach.
• Increased test coverage across critical business processes.
• More frequent releases, without losing confidence in quality.