Automation Case Study: BYU-Idaho Registration System Testing

Client

BYU-Idaho

Higher education institution with thousands of active students enrolling each semester.

End-to-End Automation of Class Registration System Testing

While this system was built for a higher education institution, the underlying challenge is common across many organizations: complex systems that break under manual testing, slow release cycles, and high operational overhead. The same reliability-first automation principles apply to CRM workflows, finance systems, and operational processes in growing businesses.

Project Overview

The university’s internal registration system was being tested manually every semester, which consumed up to 3 weeks per test cycle. Each test case needed to cover:

The Challenge

Prerequisite validation
Class capacity logic
Time conflict handling
Enrollment rules across departments

This process slowed down release timelines and drained developer and QA resources.

To build a fully automated testing framework that:

Project Objectives

Simulates real-world registration scenarios
Validates system logic with 100% accuracy
Reduces manual testing time to under an hour

The Solution

As the automation lead, we developed a custom framework using:

Selenium – for simulating UI interactions across thousands of test cases
ASP.NET MVC – integrated directly with BYU-I's internal web systems
SQL Server – queried and validated backend data for consistency
Custom Unit Testing – modular tests to isolate and debug specific rules
Dynamic Data Sets – to test edge cases like overbooked classes or last-minute drops

We also implemented a reporting dashboard so QA and academic staff could instantly review test results and rerun failed scenarios.

Results & Impact

Reduced testing time from 3 weeks to just 20 minutes
Saved over 100+ hours of manual QA effort per update
Enabled faster release cycles with more confidence
Created a reusable framework the internal team now maintains