Reliance Security Services has used software testing firm Original Software’s end-to-end IT testing.
It’s to enable its IT team to respond to the increasing demands of the business, and deliver projects on time and on budget.
Since implementation, Reliance has seen the productivity of its programmers increase by 20pc, and general test cycles reduce by 80pc, whilst enabling a greater breadth of testing, reducing errors and improving user confidence in IT. It has also reduced the cost of back-filling user testing resources.
Tim Aitkinson, CIO of Reliance Security Services says: “The IT and business are now more closely aligned and working as a partnership to drive the business forward. The Original Software team are very approachable, understand our needs and are knowledgeable about how to get the most out of an improved test process – it has been a good partnership.”
It follows a lengthy project to re-engineer large parts of the security firm’s bespoke system. “We had a business critical development with a hard deadline. It was a large project with a lot of manual testing. The testing was a painful experience lasting over a year” says Chris Thompson, System Development Manager. The experience had made business users cautious about how IT could assist them in future challenges, Thompson says: “We found that even small fixes were a big effort, so how could we improve the delay in software changes and win back the confidence of the business whenever we had to change a system?”
To respond to business needs, the Reliance IT team wanted a solution that would help them improve the quality and speed of application changes. Chris Thompson says: “We knew that we needed better change control and more efficient testing. We already knew Original Software as we’d had previous success with their TestBench solution. They clearly had the technology lead.” Reliance chose to implement TestDrive and TestPlan to sit alongside TestBench and create an end-to-end solution, to bring business critical projects in, on time and on budget.
TestPlan freed up one day a month of Thompson’s already stretched schedule and is proving fundamental in co-ordinating all the testing activities and managing the handovers from development, to system test, to acceptance test. As different people are involved at each stage of the project, one group is able to review the tasks and results conducted by another group and can re-use test scripts. Thompson’s strategy has been to address as many areas of testing as possible. By implementing the Original Software solution, he is now able to test over the entire Application Development Lifecycle from Unit Testing to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and everything in between, at the database level as well as the visual layer. TestBench has been deployed in the development team allowing database effects to be isolated and checked, thus speeding up the programmer’s analysis of whether their program is working correctly or not. This has increased the programmer’s productivity by 20pc, while also improving the quality deliverable.
The system functionality is now tested to a greater depth before being handed over to UAT, reducing the number of errors detected, speeding up the delivery of the modifications and improving user confidence in IT. This process enables the projects to be delivered on schedule and makes better use of the testers’ time. “Use of TestBench and TestDrive for System Testing helped to relieve a key bottleneck that had added months of delays to system improvements in the past within Reliance. It also reduced the cost of back-filling user testing resources,” adds Thompson.
A key benefit was that the technology does not rely on code-driven scripts and so can be adopted for user testing. This was important for Reliance as UAT was a key part of the delivery strategy. Using TestBench and TestDrive-Gold, Reliance found that a test cycle which previously took one to two days for environment set up and data population, and five days to complete a full cycle (which was repeated three times), would now take only one day per test cycle, saving them 80pc on time spent testing.
Thompson says: “This could not have been possible without the Original Software suite. The whole process is condensed into a manageable timeframe. I think the fact that non-IT people have been able to use the solution is extremely beneficial.” Original Software for their software testing solutions. Current users range from small software development shops to major multinationals, including Cargill Global Financial Solutions, Circuit City Stores, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Ireland), DHL, Coca-Cola, Skandia and hundreds of others.
About Original Software
The software firm operates central offices near Chicago and London. Their solutions can be obtained through these offices or through business partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australasia and the Americas.
