Fortune 500 Firm Consolidates Test Case Management Using QAComplete

Business Need

When a US-based multi-billion-dollar Fortune 500 company that provides solutions to identify and treat diseases merged two large software development organizations, the Director IT Quality Assurance overseeing the combined operation center knew the time had arrived to deploy a new test case management tool.

“Together, the two organizations are responsible for the quality testing of nearly 90 percent of the applications used within the company,” says the Director IT Quality Assurance. “Those applications drive our day-to-day operations and facilitate communications with our clients and partners.”

Following the merger of the two software organizations, the management team realized the challenge of keeping the software development lifecycle running smoothly while managing so many technical resources. Those resources relied on different tool sets for software testing, which could cause confusion and inefficiencies when different teams collaborated on shared projects.

“We wanted to consolidate testing onto one platform so everyone would be using the same tool,” the Director IT Quality Assurance explains. “This would make it much easier to collaborate and to move resources from project-to-project.”

One group of teams in the merged organization had utilized SmartBear QAComplete for test case management and defect tracking for many years. Another group of teams relied on HP Quality Center while some teams used no test case management tools. That left the Director IT Quality Assurance with a tricky decision as to how to convince the entire organization to migrate onto a single test case management platform.

Targeted Solution

The Director IT Quality Assurance and her team decided to evaluate both SmartBear QAComplete and HP Quality Center as well as Micro Focus Silk Central. After narrowing the choice down to QAComplete and Quality Center—for their superior performance in test case management, test execution, test maintenance and workflow management—the team conducted proof-of-concept tests.

Many software developers and testers evaluated the company’s use test cases on both QAComplete and Quality Center. Following the test runs, the company chose QAComplete for its ease-of-use, simple workflows and reporting. “Where we were trying to get so many people onto one tool, we did not want to deploy cumbersome software, which would hamper the adoption rate,” the Director IT Quality Assurance says.

The lower cost offered by QAComplete was also a factor. “The year-over-year maintenance costs for QAComplete are about $50K less,” reveals the Director IT Quality Assurance. “We also reduced our upfront licensing fees by more than $200K.”

The company initially rolled out SmartBear QAComplete for day-to-day defect tracking and management to give everyone on the team the opportunity to adjust to using the single tool. The next phase involves utilizing QAComplete for test case management.

The Director IT Quality Assurance particularly appreciates how easy SmartBear QAComplete makes it to assign test cases to each resource and then track their progress. In addition to the tool itself being simple to use for testing, QAComplete features reporting capabilities that make it straightforward to execute automated and ad hoc reports with clean, easy-to-interpret views.

Benefits and Results

“We rely on QAComplete reports to track the number of test cases, the number of defects and defect types as well as whether the defects are performance-related or environment-related,” the Director IT Quality Assurance explains. “We can also see the severity of the defects and the percentage of defects that have been fixed.”

The QAComplete API also makes the tool easy to integrate with other tools that play a key role in the company’s application development lifecycle. Plans call to eventually integrate QAComplete with a requirements testing tool and an application lifecycle management tool.

Another key benefit that played into the Director IT Quality Assurance’s decision to choose QAComplete is the technical support her teams receive from SmartBear. She also values the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provisioning model that SmartBear provides so the software teams don’t have to worry about deploying and maintaining on-premise servers.

“We’ve maintained a solid long-term relationship with SmartBear now for many years,” the Director IT Quality Assurance adds. “And the subscription-based pricing model enables us to increase or decrease our licenses if the size of our software teams change.”

“QAComplete is very intuitive. Even teams without testing personnel can use the solution with very little training for tracking defects.  It’s easy to get them up and running to create and edit test cases and to notify their teams about identified defects. The hierarchal defects view provided by QAComplete makes it easy to prioritize our mitigation efforts.”

By deploying QAComplete, this Fortune 500 firm can now bring its two software teams together and deploy consistent testing best practices across the company. This improved capability aligns with the firm’s change away from a product-centric focus and to a focus on performing tasks that ensure quality across the software development lifecycle. Relying on QAComplete as a single consolidated testing platform also aligns with the company’s effort to cross-train developers and testers on a range of applications.

“QAComplete plays a key role in our efforts to build a more flexible workforce that allows us to be more nimble when we need to assign more resources to a high-priority development project,” the Director IT Quality Assurance says. “We are always looking to sharpen our processes and standards, and QAComplete is helping us accomplish our mission.”

• Deploy single test case management tool for two large software development organizations that previously relied on separate tools.
• Prevent confusion and inefficiencies when different teams collaborate on shared software development projects.
• Convince software teams to move away from their current test case management tool and processes to a new testing platform.

• Offers ease-of-use and simple workflows to facilitate end-user adoption, even for resources not trained in testing.
• Delivers advanced reporting to easily track number of test cases, number of defects, defect types, severity of defects and percentage of defects to mitigate.
• Makes it easy to assign test cases to each resource and then track their progress.
• Provides straightforward execution of automated and ad hoc reports with clean, easy-to-interpret views.
• Integrates easily with other tools in the application development lifecycle.

• Reduces upfront licensing costs $200K and annual maintenance $50K compared to HP Quality Manager.
• Provides superior performance in test case management, test execution, test maintenance and workflow management.
• Eliminates need to deploy and maintain on-premise servers.
• Allows for increasing and decreasing licenses as the size of the software team changes.
• Plays key role in building a flexible workforce when assigning resources to other software development projects.