Case Study - Mission-Critical UI Test Infrastructure for Emergency Communications
Phil GeLinas designed and delivered a production-grade UI test automation platform for Cisco’s mission-critical streaming media provisioning system—used by emergency responders, law enforcement, and the FBI to capture and replay 911 calls. The project transformed fragile, slow, and unmaintainable tests into a scalable, maintainable, and high-coverage infrastructure supporting continuous delivery.
- Client
- Cisco Systems
- Year
- Service
- UI Test Automation, CI/CD Integration, Developer Enablement
The Challenge
Cisco’s streaming media provisioning platform is used by emergency responders, local law enforcement, and the FBI to capture and replay 911 calls. The existing UI test automation was broken, unmaintainable, and painfully slow—over six hours for a single suite—leaving teams without confidence in releases and forcing manual testing that slowed delivery.
(Delivered prior to founding Vectorworx in November 2024 — using the same production‑proven methods we use today.)
What We Did
- UI Test Automation
- CI/CD Integration
- Developer Enablement
- Mission-Critical Systems
- Rebuilt UI test automation from scratch using Selenium WebDriver and Selenium Grid, replacing a spaghetti-code legacy suite with a clean, maintainable, and scalable framework.
- Integrated with CI/CD pipelines on Tomcat/Jenkins using Maven, Git, and custom shell scripts to deliver fast, reliable feedback on every build.
- Applied best practices including Page Object patterns, Loadable Components, DRY principles, and targeted waits to slash runtime from 6+ hours to just 30 minutes.
- Extended coverage to 80% of critical UI workflows in under 2,000 lines of code, increasing release confidence and reducing regression escapes.
- Delivered hands-on training for 60+ engineers to write, run, and maintain automated tests for their own stories, ensuring sustainability.
- Provided comprehensive documentation in Confluence and inline, enabling rapid onboarding and long-term maintainability.
Managers noted the delivered test infrastructure was fast, reliable, and maintainable—straightforward for internal teams to own and evolve.
Source: Engineering management briefings and sprint reviews
Documentation: Engineering briefings and sprint review documentation
Disclaimer: Recollection from project documentation; not a direct quote
(Delivered prior to founding Vectorworx in November 2024 — using the same production-proven methods we use today.)
- Critical UI workflow coverage
- 80%Critical UI workflow coverage
- Regression runtime (down from 6+ hours)
- 30 minRegression runtime (down from 6+ hours)
- Engineers trained on UI automation
- 60+Engineers trained on UI automation
- Saved by AWS-based Selenium Grid vs. internal hosting
- $20K/yearSaved by AWS-based Selenium Grid vs. internal hosting
Results
- Release confidence restored for a mission-critical system used in life-or-death scenarios.
- Regression execution time cut by 90%, accelerating release cycles and developer feedback.
- UI automation ownership shifted to dev teams, embedding quality into daily work.
- CI/CD integration ensured automated tests ran on every build, preventing high-cost production defects.
Why Real Engineering Matters for Test Automation
When the stakes are measured in lives, not just SLAs, automation can’t be fragile. By applying proven engineering patterns, embedding quality practices into developer workflows, and integrating directly into CI/CD, Cisco now ships with confidence—knowing every critical flow is tested, fast, and reliable.
Need bulletproof automation for high-stakes systems? Contact Vectorworx to design test infrastructure that teams can trust—and own.
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