MAXWELL AFB-GUNTER ANNEX, Ala. -- Women have made great contributions to creating positive change in the Department of the Air Force (DAF). To celebrate their outstanding achievements, this article recognizes the following women who work in Developmental Test and Evaluation, Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex, Ala., and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
- Yvette Brown, Test Manager
- O’Kesha Jacobs, Software Test Engineer
- Poonam Issar, Software Test Engineer
- Kseniia Skorokhod, Software Test Engineer
- Charlene Mason, Software Test Engineer
The work they currently perform for the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) program Government Integration Test (GIT) team represents how far the DAF has come in providing a work environment that represents Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
MRO is being developed to provide Air Force Sustainment Center customers with integrated enterprise capability for planning, scheduling, and executing organic depot maintenance. GIT informs the readiness review Authority to Proceed decision with a test report reflecting a level of confidence to deploy the MRO application to the production environment. The Chief Development Tester at the MRO Program Management Office (PMO) provides oversight of all Developmental Test and Evaluation, (DT&E) activities for the program with support provided by Developmental Test and Evaluation. During Pre-GIT and following on into GIT, DT&E executes test scripts with real-world and simulated data.
The MRO pre-production (MROPRP) environment is used for GIT. Before the work on MROPRP begins, the team completes a significant amount of work in the MRO testing environment used to configure and test the MROPRP environment.
To ensure environmental readiness, the team extensively tests automated and manual data conversions and ensures sufficient test procedures and documentation are in place for the broad tester base. Using Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Octane, the PMO’s source of truth for baselined features and tests, creates various test suites and test scripts for the greater MRO testing team.
One of the most important contributions of this outstanding team of women is the work performed to prepare the test instances for testers. This effort includes performing data setups to add suppliers, certifications, resources and resource groups, labor and overhead rates, approvers, and other needed data to enable testers to effectively run the applications.
The team ensures the test scripts developed are business process oriented, utilizing realistic data and specific identified Role Based Access Control (RBAC) roles. The test scripts also include detailed click-by-click directions based on solution design and contain narrative tasks to be accomplished and usable data.
MRO functionality depends on mission-essential information data exchanges with other Defense Business System trading partners. The team thoroughly tests various interfaces included in the release under test. The test and evaluation include both the successful exchange of data and the effective use of the data by the receiving interface partner.
Further, the team identified and documented 25 substantial defects. Ten of the defects were resolved, one is currently being worked on, and the remainder are in backlog waiting to be worked.
As required by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C 794), the team extensively tests the MRO application to ensure it is accessible to people with disabilities. Thus far, the team has completed accessibility testing on the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Initiative (MROi) Conversion Manager module.
Historian Gerda Lerner so eloquently stated, “Women’s history is women’s right – an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision.”
By recognizing the contribution of the women who are an essential part of the Developmental Test and Evaluation team, we honor Lerner’s message and celebrate their accomplishments.