Why Treating Test Management and Test Environment Management Separately Is Killing Your Efficiency
By Alon Inditzky

Imagine that you have hundreds of development, testing, and operations teams spread across the globe that rely on each other to execute software testing. You have 245 test environments and you release to pre-production several times a day and deploy to production once a week. How do you manage all the software tests, test data, and test environments?

Traditionally, the answer would be to fill out spreadsheets or siloed tools, send emails, and hope that everything and everyone is ready at each stage of the software testing lifecycle (STLC).

But this often doesn’t work well. Requirements change and not everyone gets notified or reads email updates. Test environments aren’t ready or available when they need to be. Further, a host of other challenges stand in the way of efficient software testing.

Why Manage Across the Entire Software Testing Lifecycle?

Four of the top challenges in application development, according to Capgemini’s World Quality Report, are:

• 43% – Too much design complexity
• 42% – Difficulty integrating applications with the existing application ecosystem
• 42% – Lack of access to dev and test environments
• 39% – Manual environment management and deployment

These three application development challenges are all either made worse or better by how you manage your STLC. Many organizations have integrated testing and agile development to solve these challenges, but according to the same report these agile organizations are facing the following challenges:

• 44% – Early involvement of testing team in inception phase or sprint planning
• 44% – Difficulty in identifying the right areas on which test should focus
• 43% – Lack of appropriate test environment and data
• 41% – Inability to apply test automation at appropriate levels
• 40% – Difficulty to re-use and repeat tests across sprints/iterations

Even if mature agile organizations have solved all of the problems above, they continue to be plagued by challenges managing their test environments. Those challenges include:

• 48% – Having to maintain multiple versions of test environments
• 46% – Lack of facilities to book and manage their own environments
• 46% – Lack of visibility to test environment availability and demand
• 46% – Lack of the right tools for testing has jumped again
• 46% – Lack of availability of right test environment at the right time
• 45% – Inability to manage excess needs for test environments

The simple fact is that the manual processes, spreadsheets, and legacy tools that we use to be able to depend on cannot keep up with the accelerated delivery pace of Agile and DevOps.

Why Legacy Tools Can’t Keep Up?
Legacy testing software compounds many of the challenges above. They don’t fully integrate with the Agile and DevOps tools such as JIRA, CA Agile Central (formerly Rally), Selenium etc. This makes it even more difficult to involve testing teams in the inception phase or sprint planning.

Most legacy testing tools do not support cross-platform or cross-browser testing. This makes it extremely difficult to ensure that your applications will provide a good experience to your customers and makes testing take longer.

Even when legacy tools are updated with new features to help them be more agile, it is very difficult to go through the upgrade process. This tends to keep most organizations from upgrading to the latest release. So, legacy tools are already slow to incorporate the innovation needed as Agile and DevOps evolve, and most organizations don’t have access to the latest features.

Just as Agile development teams use modern agile project management tools to manage the entire development lifecycle and DevOps delivery teams use fully integrated automation tools to optimize the delivery pipeline, testing teams must use tools to manage the entire software testing lifecycle and fully integrated tools to automate test environment management.

This means using enterprise testing software that combines test management with test environment management and fully integrates with the Agile and DevOps tools your teams use. An increasingly growing number of forward thinking enterprise organizations have done just that and the results have been nothing short of stunning.

The Results
Here are a few examples of how companies are benefiting from combining test management software with test environment management software.

Improved Quality & Predictability
United Energy and Multinet Gas (UE & MG) can now continuously synchronize code and configuration between production and test environments through their Plutora integrations.

“We now have improved the use of time and resources within the IT department,” says Bharat Anand, Projects and Portfolio Release Manager at United Energy and Multinet Gas. “By improving our efficiency and productivity with Plutora, we have removed the dependence on spreadsheets and improved our quality and predictability.”

Greater Visibility, Transparency, & Control
BT Financial Group has been able to achieve a Return on Investment (ROI) of $464,512 (1,222%) and a payback period of less than two months.

BT Financial Group has now improved the use of its IT Department’s time and resources, and reduced dependency on key personnel, which has led to fewer outages and project delays.

“Plutora allows us to have greater visibility, transparency, and control of environment composition that ensures the right configuration has been applied to environments at the right time,” says Marc Dovico, Senior Project Manager at BT Financial Group. “We now have better insight into our IT projects’ team of release and test environment managers.”

How Plutora Helps Manage the Entire Software Testing Lifecycle
Plutora has combined test management software with test environment management software that has pre-built integrations to the tools your development and operations teams use to provide a single centralized solution for managing the entire STLC. Here is how Plutora helps you at each phase of the lifecycle.

Requirement Analysis
Plutora’s test management software, Stryka, automatically imports software requirements from development tools such as JIRA. When those requirements change, they are instantly updated in Stryka.

Stryka has a pre-built Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) which can be viewed across teams (both agile and traditional), projects, and features. The RTM gets populated automatically as requirements are imported into Stryka, ensuring that you don’t miss any test gaps.

Test Planning
Stryka enables you to plan, assign, and schedule tests with ease. You can provide stakeholders reports so they are always aware of when testing will be executed.

Test Case Development
The Test Designer in Stryka ensures comprehensive test coverage through a mix of functional, agile, and automated tests. Testers can easily create tests or import existing test assets from automated test suites. Stryka’s test designer clearly links business requirements, test plans, and test cases.

Test Environment Setup
Plutora’s Test Environment Manager (TEMS) provides comprehensive pre-production environment management. TEMS supports intake requests, environment change requests, environment allocations, conflict detection, and impact analysis.

Test Execution
Stryka streamlines manual and automated test execution, which enables testers and developers to cover more test cases faster. Sharing test artifacts and status across Stryka helps teams cuts cost and improve quality.

The defects manager helps teams identify, manage, and track the defects found during test execution. Testers can easily categorize and raise defects with rich contextual information to ensure rapid resolution by the appropriate teams.

Test Cycle Closure
The reporting in Stryka provides insights into software quality and delivery pipelines through metrics, graphs, reports, and leaderboards. Stryka’s unique correlation engine links upstream and downstream disciplines to help teams continually improve.

Conclusion
Software testing in the enterprise is becoming increasingly complex as organizations continue to accelerate the pace of delivery.

Of course, you can use spreadsheets or legacy tools, but you’ll undoubtedly have challenges at some point.

Even if you somehow manage to meet all the deadlines, team members will still have some dependencies that will impede progress.

The best way to handle enterprise testing is to use a platform that was built to manage enterprise testing in today’s Agile and DevOps environment.

An enterprise testing platform will not only reduce your risk, but also accelerate testing, not to mention that it improves quality and compliance.

To learn more about Plutora, check out this webinar: Stryka: The Next-Generation Test Management Tool.

The post Why Treating Test Management and Test Environment Management Separately is Killing Your Efficiency appeared first on Plutora.

@DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo taking place June 6-8, 2017, at Javits Center, New York City, and is co-located with the 20th International Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.

DevOps at Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo 2017 New York 
(June 6-8, 2017, Javits Center, Manhattan)

DevOps at Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo 2017 Silicon Valley
(October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

Download Show Prospectus ▸ Here

The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.

@DevOpsSummit will expand the DevOps community, enable a wide sharing of knowledge, and educate delegates and technology providers alike. Recent research has shown that DevOps dramatically reduces development time, the amount of enterprise IT professionals put out fires, and support time generally. Time spent on infrastructure development is significantly increased, and DevOps practitioners report more software releases and higher quality. Sponsors of @DevOpsSummit will benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through:

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• Online advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications
• Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage.
• Unprecedented PR Coverage: Editorial Coverage on DevOps Journal
• Tweetup to over 75,000 plus followers
• Press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts.

For more information on sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities, contact Carmen Gonzalez by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

The World's Largest "Cloud Digital Transformation" Event

@CloudExpo / @ThingsExpo 2017 New York 
(June 6-8, 2017, Javits Center, Manhattan)

@CloudExpo / @ThingsExpo 2017 Silicon Valley
(Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA)

Full Conference Registration Gold Pass and Exhibit Hall ▸ Here

Register For @CloudExpo ▸ Here via EventBrite

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Sponsorship Opportunities

Sponsors of Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo will benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through:

• Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers
• Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours
• Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 35 minute technical session
• Online targeted advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications
• Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage
• Unprecedented Marketing Coverage: Editorial Coverage on ITweetup to over 100,000 plus followers, press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts

For more information on sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities, contact Carmen Gonzalez (@GonzalezCarmen) today by email at events (at) sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

Secrets of Sponsors and Exhibitors ▸ Here
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All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

Track 1. FinTech
Track 2. Enterprise Cloud | Digital Transformation
Track 3. DevOps, Containers & Microservices 
Track 4. Big Data | Analytics
Track 5. Industrial IoT
Track 6. IoT Dev & Deploy | Mobility
Track 7. APIs | Cloud Security
Track 8. AI | ML | DL | Cognitive Computing

Delegates to Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo will be able to attend 8 simultaneous, information-packed education tracks.

There are over 120 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content.

Join Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo conference chair Roger Strukhoff (@IoT2040), June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA for three days of intense Enterprise Cloud and 'Digital Transformation' discussion and focus, including Big Data's indispensable role in IoT, Smart Grids and (IIoT) Industrial Internet of Things, Wearables and Consumer IoT, as well as (new) Digital Transformation in Vertical Markets.

Financial Technology - or FinTech - Is Now Part of the @CloudExpo Program!

Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 20th Cloud Expo / @ThingsExpo June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA will find fresh new content in a new track called FinTech, which will incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and blockchain into one track.

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More than US$20 billion in venture capital is being invested in FinTech this year. @CloudExpo is pleased to bring you the latest FinTech developments as an integral part of our program, starting at the 20th International Cloud Expo June 6-8, 2017 in New York City and October 31 - November 2, 2017 in Silicon Valley.

@CloudExpo is accepting submissions for this new track, so please visit www.CloudComputingExpo.com for the latest information.

Speaking Opportunities

The upcoming 20th International @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA announces that its Call For Papers for speaking opportunities is open.

Submit your speaking proposal today! ▸ Here

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About SYS-CON Media & Events
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