Non-profit TRR saves 1,000 minutes a day using Postman CLI - Postman Case Study

Quick Overview

The non-profit foundation TRR reduced their time taken for test executions from 5 minutes to 30 seconds and cut daily API call volume by 15 million by adopting the Postman CLI for automated API testing and integrating it into their CI/CD pipeline.

Key Points: TRR reduced test execution time from 5 minutes down to 30 seconds after implementing Postman CLI. The new process led to a reduction of approximately 15 million API calls per month that were previously made by their older testing tool. TRR utilizes a domain-driven architecture where internal and external APIs are crucial for communication between domains. The previous testing tool was not optimized for their needs, resulting in slow test execution and difficult onboarding for new team members. The team developed custom tooling to integrate Postman's capabilities into their existing CI/CD pipeline. The improvement resulted in saving approximately 1,000 minutes daily in waiting time for test executions. The organization now focuses development efforts on core business functionality rather than maintaining legacy testing tools.

Context: This video is a case study featuring TRR, a non-profit foundation that assists people who have been laid off with services like coaching and job searching. The discussion focuses on the technical challenges their development team faced with their previous API testing methods, specifically slow execution times and difficulties in onboarding new staff, leading them to adopt Postman's Command Line Interface (CLI) solution.

Detailed Analysis

TRR, a non-profit foundation, implemented the Postman CLI to significantly improve their API testing workflow. Mathias Sköld Strandberg, Chief Architect at TRR, highlights that their previous testing tools were slow, taking about 5 minutes for test executions, which negatively impacted developer velocity and onboarding for new team members. He emphasizes that TRR operates on a domain-driven architecture, making robust API communication essential. Gonzalo Medina, Solution Architect, explains that they previously had issues with onboarding and that writing more tests was difficult. By integrating the Postman CLI into their CI/CD pipeline, TRR achieved dramatic efficiency gains: test execution time dropped from 5 minutes to just 30 seconds (01:54). This optimization also resulted in a massive reduction in unnecessary API traffic, cutting down around 15 million API calls per month previously generated by the old tooling (2:11). The adoption allowed the team to spend less time fixing bugs and waiting for tests, freeing them up to focus on core business functionality and delivering more value to customers.