Case Study: Turning Test Experience Into Faster Execution

How CoordinateTRM helped an aerospace test organization improve coordination, reuse operational knowledge, and increase test speed by 50 to 75 percent

The Challenge

The customer’s test organization supports multiple programs competing for specialized facilities, equipment, engineering support, and other constrained resources. Success requires close coordination among the lab, its program customers, project engineering, managers, and supporting functions.

However, the information needed to coordinate this work was not always shared consistently or early enough. Changes in hardware availability, test readiness, schedules, priorities, and resource requirements could quickly affect multiple teams. Without complete transparency, the lab and its internal customers could struggle to establish a common understanding of the situation, resolve conflicts, and adapt before commitments were threatened.

The organization also faced a broader challenge. Much of the knowledge gained during testing remained with individual engineers, technicians, and program teams. Important facts about delays, equipment problems, setup decisions, successful responses, and opportunities for improvement were often contained in personal notes or individual memories.

As a result, teams could encounter situations that had happened before without knowing where to find the people, information, or experience needed to respond. Lessons from one test did not consistently improve the planning and execution of the next.

The customer needed a repeatable way to:

• Create transparency between the lab and its internal customers
• Coordinate commitments across programs and functions
• Respond quickly as conditions changed
• Capture facts and lessons from test execution
• Make operational knowledge available to future test teams
• Improve speed without simply asking people to work harder

The Solution

The customer implemented CoordinateTRM alongside structured coordination and learning practices, supported by Sente playbooks.

The solution connected three practices into a continuous operating cycle.

Cross-Functional Coordination

Weekly coordination and scheduling meetings brought representatives from the lab, program teams, project engineering, management, and supporting functions together around a shared view of current and upcoming work.

These sessions were not simply schedule reviews. Using Sente playbooks, participants established a common understanding of the situation, surfaced changing conditions, coordinated commitments, identified resource conflicts, and determined the required action.

CoordinateTRM provided visibility into active tests, upcoming demand, test cell availability, readiness, and schedule changes. The meetings provided the structured dialogue needed to interpret that information and make decisions.

Over time, the practice also helped build trust between the lab and its internal customers. Program teams became more willing to disclose emerging hardware delays, readiness concerns, and changing requirements because the information could be used to coordinate an effective response rather than assign blame.

In one instance, an engine scheduled to enter a test cell encountered a hardware delay. Because the situation was quickly communicated and the organization had visibility into other ready and approved work, the team identified another engine that could use the opening. Within approximately one hour, the decision was made, the affected teams were notified, and the replacement engine was delivered to the test cell.

Fact-Based Post-Test Reviews

At the end of a test, the customer used structured Post-Test Reviews to understand what actually happened during execution.

CoordinateTRM provided a factual record of the test timeline, including setup activities, installation and removal, test duration, schedule changes, delays, and other significant events.

The Post-Test Review allowed the team to interpret those facts and examine:

• How well commitments were met
• Where delays or breakdowns occurred and why
• How the team responded
• Which practices produced good results
• What should change before the next test
• What knowledge should be preserved for future teams

The practice converted test experience into organizational knowledge. Instead of relying only on memories or disconnected notes, teams created a shared, fact-based understanding of test execution and the opportunities to improve it.

Reusing Knowledge During Future Tests

The knowledge captured during execution and post-test reviews was then made available to future test teams.

During planning, teams could use prior experience to improve schedules, estimates, readiness, equipment plans, staffing decisions, and risk assessments. They could identify situations that had affected similar tests and incorporate successful responses before execution began.

During a test, teams could quickly determine whether an emerging problem had occurred before, what actions had been taken, and whether that experience could help them respond to the current situation.

CoordinateTRM, therefore, supported two important capabilities:

Better preparation before the test

and

Faster adaptation during the test

Together, weekly coordination, post-test reviews, and the reuse of captured knowledge created a continuous improvement cycle:

Coordinate transparently. Execute visibly. Review factually. Capture knowledge. Reuse knowledge. Improve the next test.

Capability Maturity in Practice

The improvement did not come from a single process change or software implementation. The organization progressively matured its capability to coordinate and execute testing.

It first established greater Control by creating a shared, factual view of upcoming work, readiness, resources, schedules, changes, and actual test execution.

That visibility supported a more Accountable operating environment. Teams could make commitments explicitly, identify when changing conditions threatened them, and coordinate corrective action across organizational boundaries.

As these practices became connected across the lab, programs, engineering, management, and supporting functions, the organization became increasingly Integrated around the shared intention of successful test execution.

Finally, structured Post-Test Reviews and the reuse of accumulated experience allowed the organization to begin Optimizing its capability. Each test became an opportunity not only to produce the required test outcome, but also to improve how future tests would be planned, coordinated, and executed.

In this sense, capability maturity meant more than improving individual processes. The organization was progressively improving the human practices, operational knowledge, technology, and coordination structures required to produce successful test outcomes.

Control → Accountable → Integrated → Optimizing

Common maturity practices helped establish discipline and control. The larger gains came from maturing the domain-specific capabilities that most constrained test execution.

The result was a reinforcing cycle: better visibility enabled better commitments; better coordination produced better execution; better execution produced better facts; and better learning improved the next test.

The Results

By combining CoordinateTRM with structured coordination and learning practices, the customer produced significant improvements in test speed.

Across multiple programs, the customer achieved speed improvements of approximately 50 to 75 percent.

These improvements included faster test setup, shorter test duration, and reduced time from the beginning of test preparation through completion and shipment.

The customer also strengthened its ability to:

• Respond quickly when hardware, schedules, or priorities changed
• Coordinate decisions across programs and functions
• Identify and address risks before they disrupted execution
• Transfer knowledge between engineers, technicians, teams, and programs
• Avoid repeating previously encountered problems
• Improve test planning using facts and experience from prior work
• Reduce dependence on individual memory and informal records
• Create more reliable cost and schedule estimates for future testing

Most importantly, the customer established a repeatable system in which the knowledge gained from one test could improve the planning and execution of the next.

By capturing the essential complexity of test operations in context, CoordinateTRM also created a foundation for AI to surface relevant knowledge and reduce the accidental complexity surrounding test work.

CoordinateTRM did more than provide visibility into test operations. It helped the customer create the transparency, trust, disciplined practices, reusable knowledge, and operational context required to continuously improve test performance and prepare for an AI-enabled future.