Archive for the ‘Original Software News’ Category

A Testers Winter Tale How the Grinch Stole Scripting!

Every Tester in Testville liked testing a lot.
But the Grinch, who sat north of Development – did not.
The Grinch was a Tester and he hated the whole damn lot!
Now, please don’t ask why; no one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
Or it could be that his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that he sat alone near the wall,
Testing all night!
He looked such a fright!
Throwing quality away as the changes came again.
And there it sat on the shelf collecting dust.
Test Automation, “Oh what a fuss!”
How it failed to deliver him from his testing damnation.
So he finished his email with a large exclamation: “No not another software release!”
Staring down at his desk in QA with a sour grinchy frown,
He observed busy Testville and its Testers in town.
For he knew that every Software Tester was busy right now, testing the winter release.
Would there ever be peace!

With a focus on test automation software, we have published a seasonal Original Insight, aimed primarily at QA Management, that borrows the story of the Grinch* and highlights the challenges of software testing and the damage that can be done if the business gambles with software quality. It attempts to outline the main benefits of test automation in conjunction with pragmatic advice on software testing, whilst illustrating the negative impact that current dominating testing tools have had in the application quality lifecycle.

If you have a good sense of humour and believe that software testing does not need to be dull, this Original Insight is one for you to read!

The paper can be downloded as a PDF at: http://www.origsoft.com/grinch

I hope you enjoy reading this paper and let us know your thoughts!

*Originally from the children’s story by author Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

Software Testing Briefing Next Week!

Would you like to join us for breakfast and enjoy an informative look at software testing?

Keeping up with the latest trends in software testing can be time consuming, especially when you’re trying to get a new release out the door! So why not join your fellow QA professionals for breakfast, where you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the following and more:

• Is there a smarter way to test manually?
• Is there a need to have disposable test assets?
• Should we throw away test automation?

If you happen to be in Chicago, why not join us for breakfast?
Please join Original Software at our breakfast briefing on November 30th, at 8am for an alternative look at manual testing and test automation.

I do hope you can join us?

Software Testing Breakfast Briefing in Chicago

During our daily interaction with the global testing community, we hear a similar theme on the challenges and issues faced by the testing and QA teams of companies, both large and small. Some of these include:

- How can we deliver quality applications within the budgetary constraints we face?
- How can we meet the growing demands of the business in a pragmatic and achievable way?
- What alternatives are there to reduce the business risk of poorly rolled out applications?
- Can I really ensure that my quality strategy helps my business gain a competitive advantage?

So with the above in mind, and if you are based in Chicago, would you like to join us for breakfast and enjoy an informative look at software testing? Join your fellow QA professionals at this briefing where you’ll have the opportunity to discuss all of these topics and more.

Find out more and register here!

Software Testing Club Goes Stateside

The Software Testing Club (STC), has now gone stateside with its very first software testing meetup hosted in Chicago! The “STC Meetups” have taken the software testing community by storm, and we are very pleased to be hosting the first US meetup in Illinois’ Windy City.

The Software Testing Club is a very successful and widely acknowledged community of software testing professionals, which has now grown to 10,000 active members.

The meetup will be held on the evening of November 10th from 5:30pm, and will be a relaxed social event for Chicago-based testers to gather, chat and have a drink, while discussing the finer points of software testing.

So if you are local to Chicago, enjoy a bit of testing talk and you are free that evening, why not come along?

To register for this event, simply visit the registration page here!

Software Test Automation at Coca-Cola Computer Services

At Original Software we believe that good customer service isn’t just providing fabulous products with a smile, but forging strong partnerships with our customers and working with them to ensure our solutions are a success within their businesses, generating an ROI that’s bound to make them internal heroes.

More than 400 organisations operating in over 30 countries use Original Software solutions. Current users range from major multi-nationals to small software development shops, encompassing a wide range of industries, sectors and sizes. We are proud of our partnerships, such as Coca-Cola Computer Services.

Read more about how Coca-Cola use Original Software solutions for their software test automation.

“The Original Software solution enabled the QA team of Coca-Cola Computer Services to create a wide range of automated tests and help maintain the high quality of the BASIS application used by many bottling plants around the world. The Coca-Cola team needed a solution which would enable them to build rapid and maintainable automation as well as address other aspects of the testing challenge including the database and managing test data environments, and they found this unique combination with Original Software in a partnership which has continued for over 8 years. During this time the test assets created proved especially beneficial when Coca-Cola delivered big releases that required a complete retest of the complex and business critical application. Around 130 Test Cases with about 3000 Scripts comparing 200,000 individual screens have been recorded over time and are readily available to run business process related tests in a short time. It has saved the team many hundreds of man-hours and means that BASIS can be assured to a level just not possible manually, supporting Coca-Cola’s mission of delivering quality to their business partners in a timely manner.”
Gerald Weichselbraun, Quality Manager, Coca-Cola Computer Services

If you would like to speak to us about how we can help you with your software testing processes, from manual testing to automation, Agile or even Test Data Management, simply contact us today at http://www.origsoft.com/contact

Reach for the EuroSTAR

The stars are out at the very first EuroSTAR Virtual Conference.

With over 1200 registrations, it’s going to be a busy day online on Tuesday 13th September 2011.

Presentations by top industry experts from the Software Testing community will be running all day, from the comfort of your own desk!

Original Software will be there with our virtual booth, where you can chat to us in real-time and access our whitepapers, brochures and videos. Our experts will be on hand to answer your questions on manual and automated testing, application quality management and the management of test data. You can also play our “The Pit Stop Challenge” game for your chance to win an iPad.

Please register now, because we’d hate you to miss out on the first time that Original Software goes virtual with EuroSTAR! The Virtual doors open at 9.00am London Local Time (Check your local time) and the first session starts at 9.15am London Local Time.

I hope you stop by the Original Software virtual booth and say hello!

Original Software Nominated for Innovation

Original Software is proud to announce that it has been recognised for its innovation in software testing. We are one of many nominees in the 10th annual Chicago Innovation Awards.

The Chicago Innovation Awards continues to shine a bright light on the creative spirit of Chicago. It focuses attention on the most significant new products and services, regardless of sector or industry, introduced in ‘The Windy City’ region.
Qualify, our Application Quality Management solution which was launched last year, is the new product that has been nominated. With our US office based in Chicago, it’s great to be part of such a local awards ceremony and we would like to thank the Original Software Community for nominating us.

Please spread the word so that others may join our revolution to show the software testing community that software quality can be achieved through innovative and easy-to-use technology.

Find out more at: Chicago Innovation Awards.

Please sign up to our RSS feed to find out the results of these awards in the near future. http://www.origsoft.com/blog/feed/rss/

In the meantime, if you would like to ask us any questions about our solutions and why they have been nominated for their innovation in test automation, you can get in touch here: http://www.origsoft.com/contact/

Will you join us at TMF next week?

Gerrard Consulting have been hard at it again as they get ready for their main Software Testing two day event. Workshops will be running on Tuesday, whilst the Summit will be on Wednesday and we hope to see you there!

If you are looking to step out of the office and have a little refresher, discovering what is new in the software testing world, how your peers are coping or even how your competitors are getting on, this event is the perfect opportunity, and the best part of all is that there are still places left!

Join us at the Test Management Summit in London, Wednesday 26th January and listen to George Wilson’s presentation, “Successful Agile Testing – How did you make this work?”.

There will be lots of topics to engage in, such as:

– Test Team and People Management
– Project/Programme Test Management
– Agile Test Management
– Test Strategy and Communicating It
– Performance and Non-Functional Testing

Remember, the event is coming soon. Don’t hesitate, register your attendance now by clicking through to the TMF website from: http://www.origsoft.com/about/events/

We hope you can make it!

Original Software signs Tesnet as reseller

Did you know that we have a live rss feed that shows all our latest online press coverage? Take a look at our latest coverage announcing our new partnership with The Tesnet Group by visiting our “In The News” page http://www.origsoft.com/news-desk/news/

Here is an extract from the release, which highlights the value this new partnership will bring.

“Tesnet is a great example of how service providers are in search of a new way of differentiating themselves and delivering enhanced value to their client base,” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “With our innovative solutions and Tesnet’s track record of service excellence, we will be able to redefine best practice in the market place. Tesnet already has a very strong customer base and I am confident that together we will continue to put quality right at the heart of our customers’ application delivery.”

You can also visit our Press Releases page if you would like to read the full version of this announcement:
http://www.origsoft.com/news-desk/press-releases/

Customers Get Quality-Centric VIP Treatment

Original Software’s robust approach to software quality helps Vermont Information Processing reduce release bottlenecks and improve customer support forecasting

Vermont Information Processing (VIP), IT solutions supplier to the beverage wholesale industry, has utilized Original Software’s end-to-end testing solution to increase its software quality. Even with an intensely accelerated development schedule, VIP has improved its customer upgrade experience and reduced pressure on its support team. This in turn has enabled the business to respond effectively to the complex requirements of its customers during volatile market conditions.

A period of market consolidation had caused significant growing pains for VIP. As its customers’ operations increased in complexity, the software that they relied on to manage their business needed to be able to handle much more complicated processes. VIP’s old development cycle just didn’t fit this new development schedule. Putting out new releases became painful, not just for customers and its development team, but the support team was also beginning to feel the repercussions.

With the help of Original Software, VIP was able to develop a much more robust approach to software quality. The company has completely turned around its QA process and overcome its customers’ cautious attitudes to upgrades. VIP has now transformed into a software testing center of excellence with happy customers who are keen to upgrade to new releases.

Since implementation, VIP’s QA department has increased the scope of test coverage, taking control its test environments, comprehensively unit testing and running full regression tests on all system updates. Previously customers went on average three years before updating systems, creating a bottleneck in the upgrade process, now 97% are running a recent version of the software. The team has also vastly reduced the strain on support. Fixing a single bug could save support around 80 hours; it takes a lot less time to run the regression suite now, which on average turns up 10-12 similar bugs. This equates to five and a half months of support time per release!

VIP moved from having one major update release every three years to producing major releases once a year, with numerous maintenance builds in-between. The old eight month-long beta testing phase was too time consuming for the business with its new rapid development schedule and it could no longer afford to do this. With the crunching development cycle, quality was becoming an issue for VIP. “Our customers were really frustrated with us,” explained Bobby Erwin, Quality Control Analyst at VIP. “To get a new feature, they’d also get all these other problems to boot. This would become a strain on the support team too, as they’d spend hours on the phone going through problems.”

“Our main business drivers were to reduce the level of risk by increasing the scope of test coverage. Original Software was the ideal choice” said Erwin.

VIP purchased the solutions from Original Software in May 2007 and once they’d had the initial training it took two or three months to develop their first regression capabilities. They’ve been developing and building on these tests ever since. “Prior to this we conducted no regression testing at all – just a month or so of acceptance testing by customer service and then the beta tests. Now we have a battery of tests we perform every time we release,” imparted Erwin.

“We are providing a much more robust and better product to the end users,” said Bobby Erwin. “Our support and customer service teams are delighted. Our builds are just so much better now, and we can also tell them exactly how risky a release is, and predict the levels of support that might be needed.”

“The regression tests help us manage our exposure: improving experience for the customer, decreasing support needs for a given update. Testing gives us a feel for how stable the build is. It’s a known entity. If the build looks good in testing, we can install with greater confidence. If we find problems, we get a better idea of the support resources needed,” confirmed Chris Boucher, Support Manager at VIP.

To read the full customer case study, please visit: http://www.origsoft.com/customer-stories/vip

Older Posts »