In the current business landscape, enterprise software has become vital to productivity for nearly every organization. Yet, even with the availability of powerful commercial software platforms for core business activities, customizations are the norm, not the exception. This shift has turned many large enterprises into de facto “software development firms,” with in-house development and testing teams becoming increasingly common.
This may sound like an easy solution, but most company leaders don’t understand the complexity of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), even if their software project leaders and CIOs do. Exacerbating the challenge, stakeholders and sales teams want “pet” customizations to make their jobs more efficient, from a more user-friendly mobile interface to workflow automation. Shrewd business leaders understand this evolution is a natural consequence of doing business — and remaining competitive — in a world undergoing rapid digital transformation.
Rather than buck the trend, or attempt to ignore it, they seek solutions that will enhance their Dev and Test teams’ ability to innovate faster. One proven method for achieving this goal — and for driving greater value from software customizations — is software tool integration.
Faster Time to Value…with Governance
ConnectALL Integration Case Example
Challenge: Development (Dev) and testing efforts were not unified, so developers could only review defect reports in ALM/QC, not from within JIRA.
Solution: Use ConnectALL to create a seamless bridge between the Dev (JIRA) and Test (ALM/QC) sides of the software effort.
Results: Dev teams have access to defect reports in JIRA — where the defects are occurring. Defect reports flow seamlessly between users, testers and developers, and software engineers can respond transparently to requests. Process efficiency has been increased by 25%.
“The efficiency positively impacted our R&D streams, where the aggregated information saves our techs time over working with multiple tools. Also, reporting processes have become much smoother, so operational teams are realizing great value.”
Many companies have already adopted integration at some level, but it’s usually middle-ware centric and dependent upon the technical knowledge of a specialist. Rarely do these integrations address the needs of business users. Consequently, system users with no special IT skills seek workarounds that make their jobs more efficient, carrying out “ad hoc” integrations using self-service tools.
While such an effort can deliver some value, because it exists outside the corporate governance framework, it also exposes firms to security and compliance risks. Furthermore, the siloed nature of these updates prevents the organization as a whole from reaping benefit as part of a complete value stream.
To support organizations at all levels of sophistication and DevOps adoption, Orasi recommends ConnectALL. Able to integrate applications, databases, partners, clients, personnel and more, ConnectALL facilitates the connectivity that maximizes release velocity while boosting governance and reporting, whether for individual, on-premise projects or global cloud initiatives.
On a more localized scale, ConnectALL enables teams to work in the manner that makes them happiest and most effective. Developers can work in DevOps-focused tools like Atlassian JIRA; testers can continue using tried-and-true platforms such as Micro Focus ALM and Quality Center (ALM/QC), also eliminating the need to migrate volumes of test cases and other artifacts.
Following is just one of many examples illustrating how ConnectALL helped an organization achieve its integration goals.
Increasing Process Efficiency by 25% Through Integration
When a global software and services provider sought to unify its JIRA and ALM/QC environments for research and development (R&D) efforts, the project manager wanted to provide the centralized reporting that is pivotal to meeting development and delivery goals. Optimally, such an approach would also enable Dev and Test teams to interact with one another, seamlessly, across the platforms.
Clear Answer; Complex Environment
In addition to the need to integrate JIRA with ALM/QC, the project team also used ServiceNow (SNOW) to manage customer support requirements. Leadership wanted a solution to enable and maintain two different synchronizations:
JIRA and QC: A two-way sync, creating and updating information on change requests and defects in both directions.
JIRA and SNOW: A two-way sync, with change requests in SNOW flowing into defects in JIRA and vice versa.
The company selected ConnectALL as its preferred solution. “We knew our software teams needed one information source for development. If they can’t see everything in one place, it is useless,” reports the project manager. “With ConnectAll, all the defects and change requests are centralized in the development backlog. Having all our data in one repository, in real time, helps us to identify defects and remediate them sooner. We have a one-stop shop for all of our project data, which is accelerating time to market.” More importantly, the firm’s software teams have achieved a 25% boost in high-level efficiency, thanks to ConnectALL.
