Improving Requirement, Test, & Defect Process

Today’s show is all about how to improve your Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) efforts as we TestTalk with Matt Angerer, an SR Solutions Architect for Results Positive. In this episode Matt shares with us a methodology called RPALM that will help you improve you ALM efforts.

If you’re struggling with managing and creating traceability between your requirements, tests and defects, or if your results lack visibility to your team, this episode is for you — check it out.

About Matt

Mr. Angerer is a versatile, innovative, results-oriented IT professional with over 15 years of experience in enterprise, mission-critical systems implementation, and support for large entities including Unilever HPC, Defense Logistics Agency, Nationwide Insurance, Honda Motors, Tory Burch, SM Energy, Imperial Irrigation District (IID), Wisconsin Public Services Corporation, and Mettler-Toledo, Inc. Matt believes in the Bi-Modal IT paradigm described by Gartner and has worked across the continuum of start-up companies embracing pure Agile principles (Fluid IT) to Fortune 500 companies rooted in Core IT (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft).

He has solid expertise in SAP ECC and CRM software quality assurance, business procesBs analysis, full lifecycle software development, large-scale software integration, interface design/testing, and Independent Verification and Validation (IV and V) methodologies. He successfully rolled out SAP Testing Center’s of Excellence (CoE) from the ground-up with 50 full-time resources supporting the global testing needs of organizations and reporting directly to him. Matt is an HP Certified Professional in Quality Center and QuickTest Professional, a Certified Scrum Master, as well as an IBM Certified SOA Associate.

He is the founder of an award-winning software-as-a-service product called VerticalRent that recently achieved a significant milestone of 15,000 customers in all 50 states. He is the Product Owner of VerticalRent and uses the HP Enterprise Software Product Suite (ALM.NET, ALM.Octane, UFT, StormRunner, Sprinter) to ensure the velocity of software changes and quality that go into VerticalRent’s world-class rental property and tenant screening platform. Matt is the Application Delivery Management Practice Lead for ResultsPositive and can be reached at mangerer[@]resultspositive.com

Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk

One of the things that we would do is the recommendation would be have us do a quick RP ALM assessment. Which also includes a requirements tracing workshop or one of our senior engineers, or solution architects would facilitate the workshop with all the key stakeholders and help them fit the pieces of the puzzle together, in terms of the requirements. All the different requirements types ranging from business, to functional, to performance requirements and tying those to the specific regression test cases and ensuring that they had a process in place as they use the tool. A process in place as they are using the tool to ensure that they could effectively perform change impact analysis.
One suggestion that we have for clients is this; as you start using ALM, it’s we always suggest that instead of going directly to designing test cases within ALM or, directly, they’re just logging defects right away. Start at your requirements level and understand best practices around using ALM to manage your requirements. If you can start there and you can master the definition of your requirement’s intake process with using a tool like ALM, then move on to the next step and then move on to the next step.
I think one of the key things, and I know everyone, this sounds very cliché, but it’s leading with education. What I mean by that is helping organization stakeholders as an example. Your release managers, or your project managers, understanding key features of ALM such as the performance, the PPT functionality, project, planning and tracking.
What’s great about Octane is they’ve built it to integrate nicely with Jenkins, so you can leverage the current tools that your developers are using today and that your development lead has embraced. Then you can take advantage of the experience and the know-how of HPE and leverage another tool, Octane, which by the way you can sign up for your free trial at hpe.com. You can integrate that with ALM.
With tools like Octane and agile manager, you get the virtual planning board. You get all that information set up, because we as practitioners realize that it’s not pragmatic to co-locate everybody from around the world into one room. You have to learn how to deliver agile outside of a room. That’s where tools like Octane and a next gen ALM come into play.
The best piece of actionable advice that I can provide to anybody listening to this podcast is to, first and foremost, look at your master test strategy for your QA organization. Before you even start looking at tools, before you start looking at, “Do you have the right people?” Before you really start looking at the process. Because when you speak about process, there’s … I think a lot of Visio diagrams and I think a lot of other things are involved in the process.

[tweet_box design=”default”]You have to learn how to deliver agile outside of a room. #TestTalks w@resultspositive

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Resources

Connect with Matt

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