Johannesburg, 15 Feb 2002
Intervate, a local software development company, has seen a significant improvement in its development, testing and time to market since implementing Compuware`s solutions for `Automated Software Quality` (ASQ).
The tight integration between Compuware`s DevPartner Studio and QACenter, which provide industry-leading automated software quality capabilities, made it possible for Intervate to start product testing earlier in the development lifecycle.
Intervate`s core focus is on the development of strategic intranet products that target areas specific to knowledge management and collaboration. The result of this focus is IntraCS, an acclaimed intranet application suite and proven development platform.
Commenting on IntraCS`s rapid growth in the SA market since its 1999 release, Shaun Dicker, development manager at Intervate, says: "We`re a young company with a passion for technology but were totally overwhelmed by the scope of our development cycle, due to the unexpected popularity and growth of our product.
"Because of this growth, projects became monsters for us to manage and keep on schedule. When our development and testing teams were faced with increasingly tightening deadlines, we knew we had to urgently improve our development process."
One of Intervate`s main concerns was to find the tools and processes which would enable them to deliver more predictable code. In order to support the processes they implemented, the developers needed tools to deliver higher quality code into testing. At the same time the testing team required improved testing tools to ensure 100% coverage on regression testing.
Dicker says Intervate investigated several vendors closely before deciding to adopt Compuware`s Automated Software Quality solution.
"In line with best practices, Intervate`s development and testing are driven by business requirements, ensuring higher quality applications and satisfied customers," says Alex Faul, account manager at Compuware SA.
After installing the defect tracking and change management tool, TrackRecord, the value of Intervate`s choice became even more apparent to the company.
"TrackRecord gave us the immediate benefits of being able to track all of our software defects and manage these defects with the tool`s easy to use workflow engine," says Dicker.
Using TrackRecord in the development and testing cycles, the teams at Intervate can easily generate valuable reports and performance metrics, significantly improving communication.
Intervate has begun automating the test management and execution of test cases, by following on the success of automating requirements and defect management.
Compuware`s NuMega DevPartner Studio suite provided the productivity and quality Intervate required early in the development process. DevPartner Studio speeds the development of applications and components built with Visual Studio by automatically detecting, diagnosing and facilitating the resolution of software errors and performance problems.
"Our DevPartner offering can dramatically increase the skill of every developer by removing the complexity, difficulty and guesswork typically required in software debugging and performance tuning," says Faul. Intervate also found other tools in the DevPartner suite to be just as helpful in the development process.
"Whereas previously we had no way of knowing whether, for example code snippet A ran faster than code snippet B, with TrueTime we know immediately. This is a great timesaver. With TrueCoverage, our teams are guaranteed that all code for their components has been tested. Our teams are using TrueTime and TrueCoverage on a daily basis."
Concludes Dicker: "QACenter has guided us to implement one of the industry`s best testing practices."
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