19 December 2011 – An IT adaptation of a popular children’s Christmas story has sparked much interest within the software testing community today. The famous story by author Dr. Seuss*; “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, was given a modern IT revamp by leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, Original Software, in a bid to highlight the way many businesses are forced to gamble with software quality.

According to Original Software, the difficulty of executing effective software testing has left businesses significantly exposed to the risk of gambling with their software quality. Taking risk is a necessary evil in order to obtain competitive advantage, especially in today’s economic climate. However, unmanaged risks in software development can have disastrous consequences. Application failures can lead to a loss of external and internal confidence, cause damage to brands and ultimately have a negative effect on revenue streams.

Borrowing the theme of the Grinch, Original Software offers pragmatic advice on achieving software quality, whilst illustrating the negative impact that current testing tools have had in the application quality lifecycle. Publishing this advice in the form of an “Original Insight”, the paper tells the story of the Grinch with a modern technological twist.

The newly entitled story: “A Tester’s Winter Tale – “How the Grinch Stole Scripting!” is aimed primarily at QA Management and focuses on software test automation. The opinion piece explains how removing the burden of code-based scripting, makes automation more widely achievable even by subject matter experts, and not limited to just developers and testers. The impact on IT development teams is reduced and in short, quality can become less of a risk.

“Original Software offers a solution that is not code-driven and requires no programming skills by users. This empowers all users to define and execute their tests without the need to use any kind of code,” says Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “The application quality management process becomes even more efficient, enabling businesses to increase their test coverage during the delivery of business critical projects. This latest Original Insight was welcomed by the testing community during last week’s Special Interest Group on Testing, which took place in London. Not only does it communicate the benefits of using code-free automation, it also adds a little seasonal fun to the subject in the lead up to the holiday period,” adds Armitage.

“A Tester’s Winter Tale – “How the Grinch Stole Scripting!” is available for download at: http://www.origsoft.com/grinch.

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

Press contact
Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
+44 1256 338 689
tpledger@origsoft.com

21 December 2010 Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) vendor, today announced the release of its latest version of TestDrive, the only agile test automation solution in the market place, and TestDrive-Assist, the leading dynamic manual testing solution.
Version 7 is in direct response to an independent study undertaken earlier this year which revealed that the need for enhanced business agility was the highest rated market driver for improving software quality. With more complexity in IT projects and a need to respond faster to changing markets, development and QA teams have had to adapt the way they work. Original Software addresses the need for a more dynamic way of working and for agile test automation.

“Users have had a limited choice of agile test automation tools, which often seem rigid and inflexible to use in such a fast moving development environment,” said Colin Armitage, CEO at Original Software. “The truth of the matter is that traditional test tools such as HP’s QTP struggle to work in an agile environment. These kinds of tools only really suit application testing that involves long development cycles and strict change management regulations. Otherwise they simply won’t work.”

TestDrive-Assist and TestDrive are fully integrated solutions that allow companies to manage the journey to automation in a seamless and painless manner. TestDrive-Assist, discreetly captures tests while they are performed, including what is happening within the application. It also provides an audit trail and clear information for reproducing bugs. Its ability to automatically migrate these tests to an automated test script in TestDrive is a unique and powerful enabler for customers practicing agile or iterative development techniques. The functionality allows customers to test earlier, in bite-sized pieces and, by the end of the scrum or iteration, these scripts form the foundation of a future automated test.

The announcement comes shortly after HP’s launch of HP Sprinter. “3 years after the launch of TestDrive-Assist, we were amused by HP’s entry into manual testing and their claims to be establishing a new paradigm,” continued Colin Armitage. “It’s reassuring for us to see HP taking its first baby steps in following Original Software and sharing our vision of making manual testing more efficient and productive. However, HP Sprinter is definitely not “a new approach to manual testing”¹, especially when you consider that you need Quality Center installed to make any headway with your manual testing. Not exactly a cost-effective or stand alone solution.”

Version 7 continues with Original Software vision of continued innovation for the testing community, and incorporates a number of new benefits and features:

• Full support for the Adobe Flex framework, enabling the productive testing of web applications built using Flex.
• Intelligent test annotation whereby the automated test uses the same input descriptions that a user would see on the screen, enabling greater tolerance of application changes.
• One click conversion of manual tests to automated test scripts.
• Use of a single script over multiple technologies, meaning that a Firefox script could be run over Internet Explorer

A recent Ovum report stated: “TestDrive-Assist provides you with a rich environment for manual testing, but the bigger payback is how it facilitates adoption of full automation. Uniquely for any of the guided manual test execution products that we know of, Original can automatically convert a manual TestDrive-Assist test into a fully automated TestDrive test that can be repeated. Overall this is a low risk, low cost way of progressively adopting test automation. It fits in with classic waterfall processes, and it can also be used in agile processes more easily than other functional test automation suites.”

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¹ eWeek

23 April 2010 – A study into the views of Application Development Managers and IT Executives, announced today by Original Software, revealed that the need for business agility is driving the growth in spend for Application Quality Management (AQM) and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solutions. However, the same study also uncovered an incredible discontent with current solutions available in the market place, with 84% of respondents claiming that they are not meeting their needs.

 The independent study, undertaken during March 2010, throughout the UK and USA, revealed that the need for enhanced business agility was the highest rated market driver for improving software quality, with 65% of respondents citing this as their main reason for investing in AQM and ASQ solutions. Almost half of the respondents claimed that the increasing complexity in their IT environments was also a key driver.

While the market focus on pure Agile development, the survey exposed that the real growth area is in mix and match development techniques, with 72% of organisations using combined approaches. Either developing their own hybrid blend, by choosing best practices from various methodologies, or by taking a combined approach, using different methodologies across departments and on different projects.

Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software stated: “The study has shown that systems supporting these developments need to be able to cope with complex scenarios and multiple, concurrent process models. When asked about the shortfalls of their current AQM solution, it’s not surprising that 38% are crying out for an option that would allow them to map different processes and methodologies into their system and not be straight-jacketed into one particular way of working.”

Software quality does seem to have increased in importance within organisations in the last few years, with 75% of companies recognising that ensuring application quality is vital to their business success. This is a substantial increase and a positive move from a year and a half ago when Original Software conducted a similar survey and found that many still viewed ensuring software quality as a nice-to-have or non-essential practice.

The study also revealed that IT budgets for AQM and Automated Software Quality (ASQ) are beginning to look healthier with 43% expecting their budgets to increase, (up from 21% in the 2008 survey). Only 10% expected spend on Quality Assurance to decrease (down from 31% last time).

 The 84% discontent with current solutions is mainly attributable to the way development teams are now working. With more complexity in IT projects and a need to respond faster to changing markets, development teams have had to adapt the way they work. The solutions they are using are just not meeting these new requirements. 37% of respondents suffer from a lack of cross-project information and require solutions to provide a unified view of all projects currently underway. 36% would like to see a solution that allows more effective communication and collaboration between team members.

With the current recession driving the need for organisations having to do more with less, optimising resources and enhancing productivity is key for AQM and ASQ solutions. 34% of those surveyed think that their systems are not user-friendly enough. 32% would like to be able to better manage their resources and 28% want a solution to provide them with real-time visibility into project status. The ability to be able to personalise the information users view and to be able to better trace requirements throughout the lifecycle, are also widely desired, with 22% of respondents unable to achieve these goals with their current solutions.

“Flexibility is vital when it comes to AQM solutions of the future. Businesses are being driven towards being more agile, so it stands to reason that users are demanding dynamic solutions that can adapt to business changes quickly and easily. AQM that supports a mixture of development techniques is now absolutely essential and vendors that don’t respond to this are not reacting to customers quickly enough. The future of AQM has to be focused on providing better visibility, collaboration and control across multiple projects.” Armitage concluded.

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About the survey

This independent study was conducted by emedia Ltd. It surveyed 101 Senior IT executives and Application Development Managers during the month of March 2010. A full report on the survey results is available from Original Software upon request.

About Original Software: www.origsoft.com

With a world class record of innovation, Original Software offers a solution focused completely on the goal of effective quality management. By embracing the full spectrum of Application Quality Management across a wide range of applications and environments, the company partners with customers and helps make quality a business imperative. Solutions include a quality management platform, manual testing, full test automation and test data management, all delivered with the control of business risk, cost, time and resources in mind.

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 with the likes of Coca-Cola, Cargill, HSBC, FedEx, Pfizer, DHL and many others.

Press contact

Tulin Pledger
Head of Marketing
+44 1256 338 689
tpledger@origsoft.com