Postman Academy enables California State University to reduce testing time from 2 weeks to 1 day

The adoption of Postman initially began because Oracle systems were so complicated that troubleshooting issues was difficult. But with an endless list of daily tasks, there was never time to explore Postman's features or its latest product updates fully.

It soon became apparent that only a small, limited percentage of Postman's capabilities were being used. The full potential of the Enterprise features available to CSU lay dormant.

By signing up for the Enterprise plan, CSU was given access to the Postman Academy, which offers workshops, self-study learning modules and student programs.

Enterprise Training Workshops compromise instructor-led sessions where participants gain hands-on experience in a group setting. Workshops are designed to address core challenges using Postman by delivering timely, relevant educational content.

Whereas lesser training sessions provide step-by-step instructions that can be followed passively, Postman's workshops use real-world scenarios to actively engage participants in solving issues.

“The Enterprise Training Workshops have me convinced that my children must learn Postman. It makes things flow. You type, you click, and things happen effortlessly.”

Sushmita Saha, Identity, Access Management and Security, California State University

CSU participants soon realized that Postman was more than just a tool for API communication and testing. The potential for enhancing collaboration among teams and across departments became crystal clear. With automated testing, mock servers and more, the CSU participants soon realized that Postman provides support throughout the entire API lifecycle.

The hands-on nature of workshop challenges enabled participants to gain confidence and, most importantly, understand how to implement their learning. Some participants attended multiple sessions to deepen their working knowledge of Postman.

In a class setting, the questions of one developer may also be applied to others, so time is saved in a group setting. Workshops expedite everyone's learning while encouraging a sense of camaraderie, which is conducive to future collaboration. A developer alone may spend between four to six hours solving an issue, as one issue may give rise to others.

The workshops have uncovered multiple treasures, and these features are now being deployed for testing routes and retrieving data from the backend. By strengthening testing processes, code quality can be improved, which will result in fewer breaking changes in production.

“Postman is the intelligent assistant J.A.R.V.I.S to my superhero Ironman software engineer ambitions. In time, I will unlock the full potential of Enterprise features.”

Paul Valderama, Senior Web & Mobile Developer, California State University

Postman is now being used in a structured manner. Environments have eliminated the need for repeating steps, which was time-consuming and cumbersome. By adjusting variables, the same environment can be used multiple times.

In the near future, CSU team members anticipate leveraging Postman's collaboration capabilities, which would be extremely useful to such a large organization. The level of transparency and seamless communication would accelerate the progress of projects.

Before attending the Enterprise Training Workshops, it would take up to two weeks to fully test an API. Now, with all the knowledge gained from the Postman Academy, testing an API takes as little as one day.

“I had only scratched the surface of Postman. The workshops had me learning actively. The Postman Academy learning revealed an unrealized potential for collaboration.”

Sushmita Saha, Identity, Access Management and Security, California State University

The cumulative effect can be seen in usage metrics for the API/QA Engineer 101 workshop. Three months after attending the workshop, on average, users tripled the number of collections they created. The efficiency and ease of collaboration enabled users to become even more productive than before.

Additionally, users updated collections an average of 31 times more in the three months after the workshop than in the preceding three months. The same collections were being frequently leveraged, so updates were required. The average number of requests created in a user's collections increased by approximately 18 times. This increase in requests indicates that users enthusiastically utilized other features in their collections.

“The workshops accelerated my learning of Postman in a supportive social setting. The alternative is spending hours and hours alone trying to figure things out.”

Paul Valderama, Senior Web & Mobile Developer, California State University

The workshops are a great reminder that mastery is a learning journey. Whether someone has fifteen years of experience or fifteen days, having a flexible mindset and being able to adapt to the latest advancements is critical.