Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration

Transcription

1 Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration In partnership with

2 Introduction Software has become a key competitive differentiator in nearly every industry. This is why many companies now recognize software development and delivery as a makeor-break business process that is key to growth and profit. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to derive optimum value from their software development teams. There are delays and inefficiencies caused by poor collaboration and friction that results from disconnected tools and information silos. Isn t there a better way? A better way to exploit the investment in existing tools, a better way to streamline information flow, a better way of achieving visibility across the entire project team, and a better way to promote collaboration among different software lifecycle disciplines? Actually, there is. Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 2

3 Collaboration Challenges For many companies, competitive advantage hinges on creating innovative, high quality software. It s therefore a smart business decision to optimize the software development process for improved time to market, better quality product, increased productivity, and reduced cost. But although software development teams have great people, modern tools, and the latest methodologies, why do they still experience disconnects in process and collaboration? Either software is slow out the door, or there are too many defects that get into production. Even when organizations realize that the development process is not optimal, they find it difficult to pin down what actions could make measureable improvements. Process inefficiencies are not due to deficient tools. There are excellent application lifecycle management (ALM) tools for every phase of software development and delivery specialized tools for requirements and project management, automated testing, model-driven deployment, and build. These improve individual productivity. But they are not designed to synchronize the process end-to-end. In effect, all of these specialist tools have created silos of information within software development disciplines. A business analyst uses a requirements management tool, but all that important information remains within that tool. Testers do a great job developing their test plans and executing their test cases, but they need to access the requirements created by the business analyst to know what to test. These information silos translate into disjointed teamwork. Teams do not work together efficiently because their specialized tools are not integrated. Collaboration is stymied because information does not flow seamlessly from team to team. There is a lack of visibility across the entire workflow. Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 3

4 This can cost the organization in numerous ways: Reduced capacity to innovate because data is trapped within information silos Inefficiencies caused by the need to manually reenter information in different systems, or to use s, spreadsheets and frequent status meetings to share information Reduced productivity because individuals act on old, incomplete information, or spend time trying to find the most up-to-date information Costly delays in delivery, including being slow to act on customer requests More defects in production releases, including improperly implemented requirements, causing financial loss, lost opportunities, or embarrassment The Solution: Software Lifecycle Integration Clearly, organizations must unite their disconnected software delivery disciplines if they are to increase quality and productivity and benefit from the latest methodology innovations, such as scaled Agile, Lean Software, and DevOps. All of these initiatives require automated integration of tools to eliminate friction points and to enable teams to work with the same information in near real time. Additionally, emerging platforms, such as mobile, cloud, and open source ensure that heterogeneous tool stacks will continue to be with us. Integration among these tools is a must. Reporting is not just important for the purposes of delivering the project, but also to ensure that the project conforms to corporate requirements. Supporting compliance often requires cross-tool traceability and reporting. The cross-organizational infrastructure necessary to connect the practice of software delivery should include an integration architecture, process monitoring, measurement, and reporting. PROJECT MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS DEVELOPMENT DEPLOYMENT AGILE TESTING Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 4

5 Historically, software development teams attempt to solve disciplinary disconnects through workarounds, first through ad-hoc collaboration, such as and meetings, and then through manual duplication, tool import/export, or custom-built data synchronization utilities. For most organizations, these strategies are ineffective. They don t create conflict-free synchronizations, they fail to manage the impact of continual changes caused by tool updates, they can t reconcile disparate artifact types and the relationships among artifacts, and therefore don t improve overall performance and scalability. Unlike piecemeal integration solutions, true software lifecycle integration solutions should: Connect all software development and delivery tools Synchronize information across disciplines Unlock cross-discipline value through shared information Give practitioners real-time access to the changes other team members are making in their tools Improve visibility across the entire project team for traceability and compliance Enable end-to-end reporting Why Tasktop Sync? Tasktop Sync is the definitive integration solution. It works in the background, keeping the flow of information among the practitioners and their tools constant. As businesses integrate more systems, they add that system to the Tasktop integration bus through a straightforward configuration process. This eliminates cumbersome point-to-point integrations and ineffective manual integration methods, such as bulk transfer of data and manual re-entry. The result is a more robust infrastructure that reduces the cost and risk of the deployment. Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 5

6 Consider these Tasktop Sync benefits: Ease of deployment. Tasktop Sync can be used for large-scale deployments and complex artifact relationships. Non-developers can readily integrate best-ofbreed, open source, legacy, enterprise, and Agile tools. Real-time operation. Synchronize artifacts across connected applications. Remove the silos separating each functional discipline, while maintaining the existing tool infrastructure. Practitioners can operate in their preferred tool while receiving continual updates from other systems. Data stored in existing systems. No new repositories are required. Enhance the reporting capabilities of existing systems so practitioners and managers gain greater visibility through current reports. Support for diverse artifact types. Support for tasks, work items, defects, requirements, trouble tickets, test cases, time, and more. Tasktop Sync offers a highly scalable solution that does not limit performance by the number of synchronized artifacts. Simplified management. Tasktop analytics and dashboards simplify management and monitoring of the systems it integrates. Administrators can view synchronization statistics, the current synchronizations in process, those queued for processing, and those completed. Tasktop Sync and the Microsoft Azure Platform + Many large companies have heterogeneous tool stacks developers use one tool, testers are in a second, and the help desk employs a third. When some tools live onpremises and others in the cloud, coordination becomes even more complex, even if the tools are from a single vendor. Tasktop Sync enhances the value of developing in the Microsoft Azure Platformas-a-Service (PaaS) environment. With support for Visual Studio Online and Team Foundation Server, it provides the ideal integration support between development in the PaaS environment and on-premises development practices and tools, enabling organizations to ease into developing on and for Microsoft Azure. Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 6

7 Summary Tasktop Sync provides fully automated, enterprise-grade synchronization among the individual tools used by software development organizations. The result: a simple and powerful way to connect these tools, share the artifacts they create, and improve collaboration among all team members. By integrating the tools each discipline uses and synchronizing artifacts across ALM application boundaries, Tasktop Sync tears down the tool silo around each functional discipline, while preserving investments in existing tool infrastructure. Practitioners operate more efficiently because they access the most current information shared among all stakeholders in the software delivery supply chain. Management gets better visibility and governance across the entire lifecycle. Tasktop Sync enables businesses to unleash the full capabilities of their software development and delivery teams, drive innovation, and build differentiating value for their companies. <class> <> <h3> <!> # </> <h> </> <div> <href> <class> <head> # </> %d\ if {/} # {_4} #include database C++ = \n bret *y << Want to learn more? Software Lifecycle Integration Tasktop Sync Unleash Competitive Advantage through Software Lifecycle Integration 7