Cutting regression testing from a 3-person week to 10 minutes at a Tier-1 SA bank

Context

A Tier-1 South African bank ran a critical regression cycle by hand before every release. It took three people a full week clicking through the same flows, which meant releases were slow, expensive, and stressful, and defects still slipped through because manual coverage was inconsistent.

The problem

Manual regression was the single biggest bottleneck in the release pipeline. It didn't scale with the pace of development, it was error-prone, and the same high-value flows were being re-tested by hand every single cycle. The team needed reliable, repeatable coverage they could trust and run on demand.

Approach

We audited the existing test coverage and release process to find the highest-value, most-repeated flows. We designed an automation framework fit for the bank's stack, then built an end-to-end regression suite covering those critical journeys and wired it into CI/CD so it runs automatically. Flaky tests were triaged and hardened so the suite stayed trustworthy. Finally, we handed over documentation and trained the team to own and extend it.

Tech stack

Outcome

The week-long, three-person manual cycle became an automated run of about 10 minutes, removing roughly 95% of the manual regression effort and freeing the QA team for exploratory and higher-value testing. Conservatively, this represented around R12M in annual saved effort, and releases became faster and less risky.