APCOA FLOW: UAT from 35 days to 5

Context

As Program Manager at Get My Parking — APCOA’s technology partner — I owned delivery of the APCOA FLOW platform in the markets Get My Parking served (nine European countries). The platform spans payments, partner integrations, and operational releases across regulated mobility environments.

Problem

Release and UAT cycles were too long to keep pace with the product and integration roadmap. Multiple markets, 100+ engineers, varied partners (e.g. payments rollouts, OEM ecosystem), and strict regulatory requirements increased coordination load.

• UAT cycle previously around 35 days per release window
• Heavy manual coordination between product, engineering, operations, and partners
• GDPR and market-specific requirements had to be satisfied every cycle

Actions

The cut from about 35 days to 5 came from three concrete changes in the release flow: improved internal testing, a stabilised test environment, and a dedicated design phase before acceptance. Program governance across the markets Get My Parking served stayed in place.

• Improved internal testing before formal UAT started
• Stabilised the test environment so acceptance was not blocked by environment faults
• A dedicated design phase in releases, before build and test ran in parallel
• Program and release governance across 9 countries
• Coordinated payment platform migrations and partner integrations (including Stripe, Ingenico, OEM ecosystem)
• Stakeholder alignment across product, engineering, operations, and enterprise partners
• Embedded GDPR and regulatory requirements into integration and delivery processes
• Led engineering teams (100+) across markets, time zones, and release cycles

Results

The UAT cycle was reduced to about 5 days (measured against the previous ~35-day window). The platform continues in production with 4M+ users and 35M+ annual transactions in Get My Parking–served markets; customer resolution time improved by 95% (as stated on the CV).

What I would do differently today

I would lock the design phase and a stable test environment even earlier, so the improved internal testing does not run against an unsettled environment.

UAT duration

Delivery flow (simplified)

Before: overlapping build and test with an unstable environment, about 35 days of UAT. After: a design phase, a stable test environment, improved internal testing, about 5 days of UAT.