Software development for financial markets – integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) offers rich rewards

How does a business derive profit from a department that exists largely to perform maintenance and support tasks? Indeed, the IT department is often considered to be more of a cash drain than a source of revenue for a company. However, successful financial organizations recognize that while the cost of maintaining an IT department may be high, IT is invaluable both in ensuring that everyday operations run smoothly and in developing in-house driven technological solutions – thus, the oft-quoted CIO mantra, “buy for parity, build for competitive advantage.” For those who see legacy applications as too complex and risky to replace, the only option is to maintain these core systems while building for innovative value. As a result, companies ask with growing urgency, how do we ensure that IT contributes to company profit and success while remaining solvent in a volatile financial market?

The goal for IT development professionals today is not only to survive but also to thrive given the many challenges of the global market. They must not only deliver the technological results demanded of them, but must also align these solutions with increasingly sophisticated business objectives. These include extending and leveraging mission-critical legacy applications using the service-oriented architectures of contemporary platforms, as well as building new applications that deploy both rapidly and certainly. In addition, IT professionals in the financial market must deal with strict governance and regulation standards. To ensure success, IT development, which may be split into multiple teams and locations, needs to be organized in a way such that complex processes can be unified and simplified. TechExcel’s DevTest Studio provides a solution that meets these requirements, allowing services to be deployed on time, every time, to specification, and within budget.

To meet the challenges faced by the modern financial industry as a result of increased market volatility, demands for scrupulous documentation, and intense regulatory procedures, managers must have constant oversight and control over business practices. Globalization also presents further challenges: IT professionals may need to organize and share information between teams separated by thousands of miles. Their projects are rarely simple or quick, and the attention of project leaders may be scattered. Managerial vision is easily obscured by distance, and issues and tasks may be ignored or forgotten in a maze of more pressing company demands. Project managers need change management tools to help maintain good governance practices among large or distributed teams.

In addition to ensuring that business practices are thoroughly documented and that departmental direction is coherent, managers have another responsibility: keeping the IT department solvent. In the financial services industry, as indeed all others, IT professionals are tightly bound by budgetary concerns. The work done by IT professionals must mirror business objectives exactly, and since IT by nature tends to consume resources, the emphasis for IT professionals is on reducing costs and improving efficiency while ensuring that solutions are delivered bug-free and on-time.

Keeping these exceptional challenges of the financial industry in mind – documentation, governance, and cost – it is clear that any viable Change Management and Application Lifecycle Management solution must:

• Provide powerful capacities for change governance and management
• Enforce constant visibility and accountability for all tasks
• Be cost-efficient and support easy configuration and use with existing and future development methodologies
• Meet the demands of companies of any size, in any industry

To help project managers and IT professionals streamline and improve internal development practices, TechExcel has introduced a powerful change governance and issue tracking platform: DevTest Studio. TechExcel, Inc. has been a market leader for years in offering Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions, in addition to providing IT Service Management and Customer Relationship Management tools. Using its expertise, TechExcel has developed issue tracking and service solutions designed to help companies in all markets meet the challenges of changing requirements, geographically divided teams, rising costs, and stringent documentation.

DevTest Studio combines two of TechExcel’s most successful solutions: DevTrack and DevTest. DevTrack is the software industry’s leading issue and defect tracking tool, while DevTest remains unparalleled in providing both managed and automated quality assurance and streamlining testing processes. Integrating these two solutions has allowed TechExcel to deliver a change management solution suited to the needs of IT professionals in all industries. DevTest Studio is designed around the following qualities:

• Powerful governance: administrator-defined workflows and accessibility rules
• Knowledge management: clear issue ownership and history, along with an easily accessible knowledge sharing database
• Improved efficiency: seamless integration of development and testing teams, coupled with task automation and reusable task templates
• Scalability and flexibility: easy to use, cost-effective, and customizable for any project or need

Governance

TechExcel ensures that its products can readily deal with the challenges of change management in today’s market, while integrating with and enforcing existing governance structures. IT managers and software developers use a wide variety of development processes and management strategies, ranging from long-term, Waterfall methods to iterative, Agile development models. DevTest Studio allows managers to design their own project workflows to fit any development model, while also giving them strict control over issue and knowledge accessibility. Hierarchy and privacy concepts are built into DevTest Studio, allowing project managers to define user access to issues. Users can be organized into groups with specific roles and permissions, and can share issues and tasks with group folders. These abilities allow managers to use their existing management structures more efficiently and effectively.

To design a workflow, managers use a simple graphical tool to draw states and transitions. All issues tracked using DevTest Studio proceed along the workflow. A new issue might flow to developer review, where it is then delegated to QA testing teams. The use of a workflow ensures that all tasks and unexpected changes are thoroughly examined. Tasks can also be automatically forwarded to certain individuals based on workflow, issue priority, and skill level of users, and DevTest Studio’s automatic email notification features can be used to alert project managers of new changes. This streamlined process ensures that change is always rigorously managed, and that project managers have constant oversight over their teams.

Knowledge Management

For every issue that is processed using DevTest Studio, issue ownership is assigned and tracked with the issue history feature. Whenever knowledge is added or changes are made to a work item, the change can be recorded. DevTest Studio also offers time tracking and cost tracking tools, helping managers allocate and track resource usage in projects.

To help companies cope with the demands of globalization, TechExcel integrates a central knowledge-sharing solution into DevTest Studio. This powerful database system is used to aid in the sharing of documents, screenshots, and virtually any other relevant file. A search feature helps users locate needed information quickly. Knowledge-sharing processes are a tremendous aid to IT project managers and developers in any industry, helping to bridge product vision with specific areas of work.

Efficiency

DevTest Studio allows users to create reusable test templates from which they can then generate test tasks for specific environment variables, such as languages or platforms. The TestLink feature enables testers to script automatic testing processes and receive automated testing results. The integrated nature of DevTest Studio allows developers to pass issues directly to quality assurance testers, while testers can forward defects or bugs back to development for examination. DevTest Studio’s time tracking and cost tracking features are again a huge advantage, helping to trim excess resource usage. Together, these qualities allow companies to reduce downtime and encourage efficiency among separated teams and workers.

TechExcel also understands that a practical change management solution should not try to drastically overhaul a company’s methods and workflows, but should instead help streamline existing practices. Indeed, DevTest Studio offers complete integration with third-party software configuration management (SCM) and version control tools, including Perforce, Subversion, and ClearCase. TechExcel also realizes that for a change management solution to succeed, it must fit within a company’s financial means while offering unparalleled features. The result: an incredibly powerful solution at only a fraction of the cost of competing products.

Flexibility

DevTest Studio can be implemented straight out-of-the-box, without lengthy training or set-up procedures. The crisp graphical user interface uses trees, tabs, and lists to display issues. Administrators can customize the software to meet their needs, inserting extra fields, tabs, or other organizational spaces. DevTest Studio is also highly intuitive, allowing users to add notes and forward issues with the click of a button. TechExcel understands the importance of simplicity along with customizability and power.

Scalability is also achieved with DevTest Studio. Users can access DevTest Studio’s database either through a software client or a web portal, allowing them to work anywhere in the world without sacrificing functionality, given a simple Internet connection. Project members on opposite sides of the globe can use the same workflows and see the same knowledge items and issues. DevTest Studio’s flexibility enables businesses to expand painlessly in a global market by connecting teams in different time zones and geographical locations.

TechExcel, Inc. is the leader in unified Application Lifecycle Management as well as support and service solutions that bridge the divide between product development and service/support. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Lafayette, California, TechExcel has over 1,500 customers in more than 42 countries and maintains offices in London and Beijing.

For a free evaluation copy of DevTest Studio, visit www.techexcel.com. Send enquiries to emeainfo@techexcel.com or call +44 (0)208 322 7750 for more information.