Summary
Key results
New IT career paths for employees
Internal testing team built through reskilling
Internal teams as a response to the tester talent shortage
In the insurance sector – characterized by complex processes and extensive IT landscapes – testing plays a critical role in ensuring quality and operational compliance. Aviva, like many organizations in the financial services sector, faced growing demand for skilled software testers.
At the same time, some experienced employees from Back Office and Administration teams (BO, ADM) expressed a need for professional change due to burnout and routine in their existing roles. To retain loyal employees with strong organizational and domain knowledge, Aviva’s management decided to offer them a new development path through an internal reskilling program for testing roles.
Aviva invited Sii Poland to collaborate as a partner with proven experience in IT training and competence development in large-scale organizations.
A proprietary reskilling program preparing participants for ISTQB certification and Agile work
Sii Poland experts designed a proprietary Tester Academy – a comprehensive program combining technical training with preparation for working in Agile IT teams.
The program was built around two core pillars:
- ISTQB Foundation Level certification path – an accredited training program covering requirements analysis, test case design and working with testing tools
- Agile module – Sii’s proprietary workshops on Scrum and Kanban, introducing participants to real-life development team practices and decision-making in iterative environments
Sii’s scope included:
- Assessment of participants’ needs and competency levels (pre-tests, 1:1 interview with trainers and the client)
- Definition of success criteria and an evaluation framework
- Delivery of workshops and mentoring for 15 employees
- Support for HR and IT managers throughout the transformation and progress assessment process
Based on test results and engagement levels, 10 out of 15 participants were selected to begin new career paths as software testers within Aviva’s IT projects.
New competencies and stable growth of IT teams
The Tester Academy enabled Aviva to strengthen testing competencies through internal resources, without losing valuable domain knowledge accumulated within the organization. Reskilling employees from Back Office and Administration teams allowed Aviva to apply their deep understanding of insurance processes directly to software quality assurance.
The newly formed testing team brought an operational, business-oriented perspective to IT projects, resulting in better alignment between tested solutions and real operational and end-user needs. Combined with ISTQB-certified skills and Agile working practices, this enabled the team to integrate quickly and effectively into ongoing IT initiatives.
The collaboration between Sii Poland and Aviva’s HR and IT departments also resulted in a repeatable model for internal competence development, which Aviva can reuse in future reskilling initiatives – both within testing and other IT roles.
Key results
- 15 participants in the reskilling program, with 10 transitioning into tester roles
- 100% ISTQB Foundation Level certification rate
- Creation of a new internal testing team within Aviva’s IT structures
- Faster onboarding of new testers thanks to domain knowledge and Agile preparation
- A shared HR–IT cooperation model for delivering reskilling programs