Compuware Enhances Enterprise-level Quality Management, Collaboration, and Optimized Testing
New functionality includes Web-enabled test management, enhanced requirements analysis, and new CARS portal with integration to Changepoint
DETROIT -- December 13, 2005 -- Compuware Corporation today released enhancements to its application quality solutions, The Compuware Application Reliability Solution (CARS) and Compuware QACenter Enterprise Edition. These new releases offer organizations enterprise-level quality management through support for centralized test asset repositories, decentralized test management, collaboration-enhanced requirements analysis and optimized testing. Additionally, CARS has been integrated with Compuware's IT governance and management solution, Changepoint, to provide senior IT management with an integrated view of project status and quality.
These releases form a key part of Compuware's overall quality solutions strategy, which combines the company's award-winning technology with methodology, best practices and professional services to achieve superior levels of application quality and business success. An enhanced portfolio of application quality solutions and flexible packaging, delivery, and pricing models further supports this strategy. Through this strategy, Compuware Quality Solutions provide customers with the ability to select the right solution to meet their specialized needs.
"Investing in quality is imperative. With more than half of all software projects considered failed or challenged and with support costs for defective software running as high as 50 percent of the total development cost, companies must invest in quality, even if they don't have the resources or the culture for a full quality assurance (QA) initiative," writes Margo Visitacion, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "By focusing on high-value areas like creating standard test procedures and reporting, companies can improve their production quality and reduce customer-reported defects while building the foundations for a more formal QA practice later."(i)
Compuware Quality Solutions help organizations align quality assurance with business goals to maximize application quality and business value. With Compuware Quality Solutions, IT organizations can ensure that more efficient and effective testing occurs throughout the application quality life cycle so that IT delivers outstanding application quality to the business.
Delivering Enterprise-level Quality Management
New in both CARS 5.1 and QACenter Enterprise Edition 5.1 is the capability to support an enterprise-wide quality management environment. Compuware has Web-enabled the test-management functionality in CARS and QACenter, adding support for geographically distributed quality assurance teams and simplifying ease of use. Users can now access commonly used test-management functionality from a Web browser, allowing them to create test plans that align testing objectives with business requirements, to create and manage manual test scripts, to schedule and manage test execution of manual and automated assets, and to review test results all from a Web browser. All Web functionality is exposed through the CARS workbench and the QACenter portal.
CARS 5.1 is also now packaged with Compuware Changepoint. Through a tight integration of both products, CARS project status is now available on the Changepoint dashboard, offering access to all CARS functionality. Integration with Changepoint introduces a new CARS portal that offers more robust portal (user interface) functionality by allowing individual users to customize their workspace. This can include content to support the daily testing tasks or additional metrics to enhance decision-making capabilities for managers and executives. Additionally, CARS provides an easy transition to standard IT governance and management functionality such as project portfolio management (PPM), resource management and application portfolio management (APM).
Enhanced Quality through Collaboration
Poor collaboration results in application defects that are more difficult to resolve and in reduced application quality. Ensuring that strong teamwork, communications and collaboration occurs between all members of the user and IT community is a must.
CARS 5.1 and QACenter 5.1 both now support and integrate with requirements-management tools including Compuware Reconcile as well as Borland CaliberRM, IBM Rational RequisitePro, Steeltrace and Telelogic DOORS. These integrations allow the user to publish requirements to CARS or QACenter from their requirements-management tool and synchronize results. This allows quality assurance teams to quickly react to changing requirements and business priorities, and ensure that information regarding the quality of the application is relayed back to the business user in meaningful terms.
To allow quality assurance teams to optimize their testing efforts by balancing quality and schedules more effectively, Compuware has enhanced test-planning capabilities in CARS 5.1 and QACenter 5.1. By combining a time estimate with test-requirement risk factors, quality assurance teams can prioritize their testing efforts, understand how long testing will take, and adjust their plans accordingly. CARS and QACenter automatically generate a test-execution plan (test suite) based on the decisions taken. This allows QA managers to quickly take action on changing requirements or business priorities.
Compuware Corporation
Compuware Corporation maximizes the value IT brings to the business by helping CIOs more effectively manage the business of IT. Compuware solutions accelerate the development, improve the quality, and enhance the performance of critical business systems while enabling CIOs to align and govern the entire IT portfolio, increasing efficiency, cost control, and employee productivity throughout the IT organization. Learn more about Compuware at http://www.compuware.com/.
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(i) Forrester Research, Inc: "Quality Assurance Versus Quality Control" by Margo Visitacion. December 22, 2004