TVNZ is New Zealand’s largest free-to-air broadcaster and the nation’s public service broadcaster, operating the TVONE and TV2 television channels.

TVNZ first launched its flagship tvnz.co.nz news service in 2004, replacing the nzoom.com news site. Originally, it had flat HTML content, but soon after launch, TVNZ decided to add further functionality to support major television events. The proposed solution was a complex web site, consisting of a content management and publishing system, supported by a cluster of application and web servers utilising multiple caching mechanisms.

TVNZ recognised that the second phase of the web site needed to be a well architected and thoroughly tested solution. However, at that time, the company did not have the resources required for the testing needed, and so outsourced its testing project to Gen-i.

Gen-i’s software testing resource is underpinned by our best practice methodology and extends from analysis of the documentation and design, to test planning, execution, management, evaluation and reporting. Gen-i provided TVNZ with a software testing team that included a test manager, test analysts and a specialist load tester. The team was supported by a part-time Gen-i project manager with previous testing experience. During the final stages of acceptance testing, the team was also supplemented by TVNZ’s own producers.

One of the key factors in the success of the project was the decision to set up a QA environment that duplicated the production environment. This allowed the performance testing to be conducted on the same hardware as the production system. That not only ensured the live web site remained unaffected by software testing, it also guaranteed that the testing was not constrained by the availability of a testing environment.

With the latest national and worldwide news, as well as information about forthcoming television programmes, tvnz.co.nz is a key plank in TVNZ’s strategy to provide New Zealanders with integrated delivery of content on static or mobile screens.

Named Best Website at the 2006 Qantas Media Awards, the site is built to host periods of intense activity, often when major television events are screened.  The site has also been praised for its depth of multimedia content and its ability to supply video on demand for news shows or major sporting events, such as the Commonwealth Games.