Case Study: AutoTrader.co.uk achieves 95% reduction in testing effort and 75% reduction in testing time with ThoughtWorks' Twist

Auto Trader - Customer Case Study

AutoTrader.co.uk, the UK’s leading automotive marketplace with over 10 million monthly users and 700+ million monthly page impressions, struggled to sustain high-quality releases as its 20,000-line Java application and fast-paced changes made testing slow, fragmented and maintenance-heavy. Multiple tools (HP Quality Center, FitNesse/Selenium) failed to provide robust automation, source control integration or easy collaboration, meaning regression suites ran 50+ minutes and full manual QA took up to six weeks.

By adopting ThoughtWorks’ Twist—with plain-English test specs, built-in SVN, Eclipse-based workflows and CI integration—AutoTrader refactored a modular test suite that now runs 72 end-to-end scenarios in 12 minutes. The change cut testing effort by 95% and testing time by 75%, increased coverage to 89%, reduced manual testing to two days, doubled Twist usage across teams, and supported twice-monthly releases with zero production defects over a recent three-month period while exercising 8,000+ page impressions per day in CI.

Auto Trader