David Belhumeur serves as Chief Executive Officer of Agitar Technologies, Inc. In addition, Mr. Belhumeur CEO of McCabe Software, Inc., a leading Software Quality and Configuration Management company. He has served as CFO of NationStreet, Inc., an Internet Capital Group company and CFO of Daly & Wolcott, Inc., an international provider of distribution management software. In 1999, David was instrumental in the execution of one of the nation's most successful IPOs - NaviSite, Inc., a CMGI company. Mr. Belhumeur received his Masters degree (MBA) and undergraduate degree from Bryant College. He is a CPA and member of the state Society of CPAs and the American Institute of CPAs. David has been involved with several local charities, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of The Tomorrow Fund.
Ken Pereira serves as President of Agitar Technologies, Inc., bringing over twenty-five years of technology industry experience to the company. Mr. Pereira is also currently the President of McCabe Software, Inc. Over the past ten years, Ken was the CEO of Tradesafe.com, an Internet payments provider as well as CEO of Healthcare Automation, Inc., a company he founded and continues to co-own. Mr. Pereira has a successful track record as an entrepreneur and customer-focused technologist, having built successful businesses on the basis of anticipating technology needs in the marketplace. Mr. Pereira is a Rhode Island native and received a Bachelor's degree from Bryant College and an MBA from Babson College. He devotes his time to local charities including the Tomorrow Fund, a charity for children with cancer.
Dale Brenneman has been in the software development industry for over 30 years. He has served as a manager of development, testing, services, and support organizations, and as a programmer, tester, quality assurance specialist, trainer, and consultant. Mr. Brenneman has worked for the federal government, including contracts for NASA, and in the commercial software arena. He has worked on such diverse applications as communications systems, orbital flight systems, government administrative systems, and application development tools. Most recently, Mr. Brenneman has been involved in the development of McCabe IQ, the industry leading software quality management solution from McCabe Software, Inc. which provides source code analysis and test coverage analysis for numerous languages and platforms. Mr. Brenneman has taught training courses and is an active presenter at numerous industry events. He has lectured on such diverse topics as structured programming, software optimization, and software analysis and test tool usage. His education includes a degree in Mathematics.
]]>Two Software Quality Innovators Join Forces
CRANSTON, RI, June 30, 2008—McCabe Software announced today that they have acquired substantially all of the assets of Mountain View, CA based Agitar Software, Inc., makers of award-winning software test automation solutions. McCabe’s and Agitar’s tools are used by sophisticated developers and testers at Fortune 500 companies, and by leading defense, aerospace, and technology companies around the globe.
]]> “Agitar has won a multitude of industry and technology awards over the years and the company has a passionate following in the marketplace, particularly in agile development circles,” says David Belhumeur, McCabe’s CEO. “McCabe has always kept on eye on Agitar because our products are complementary and we have many customers in common. With our 30+ year track record, McCabe is the perfect home for Agitar, whose customers will continue to enjoy uninterrupted product support, customer service, and innovative engineering, enhanced by the resources that McCabe Software brings to the table.”“Agitar’s and McCabe’s customers have a strong need to develop bug free software and a thirst for world class tools to reduce costs and improve quality”, says Ken Pereira, McCabe’s President, “and there is a consensus in the industry that the Agitar technology successfully delivers on those goals in both the traditional and agile software development arenas.”
The Agitar technology is the result of over $35 million of investment by the previous owners who decided in April to place Agitar in a trust so that a transaction such as this acquisition could be consummated to drive the company forward in a non venture-funded environment.
“We have the good fortune of acquiring not only industry-leading, cutting edge technology but also acquiring the experience and expertise of existing Agitar personnel. They know the market quite well, have an exhaustive understanding of the technology, and an unmatched ability to support it,” says Dale Brenneman, McCabe’s VP of Technology.
About McCabe Software, Inc.
McCabe Software has provided Software Quality Management and Configuration Management solutions worldwide for over 30 years. “McCabe IQ” analyzes the quality and test coverage of critical applications, utilizing a comprehensive set of software metrics including the McCabe-authored Cyclomatic Complexity metric. “McCabe CM” is the only Software Change and Configuration Management solution to utilize “integrated difference” technology. McCabe Software has offices in the United States and distribution worldwide, and can be found on the web at www.mccabe.com.
About Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Agitar Technologies enables the enterprise to release Java applications faster, reduce the cost of bugs, and more easily change both new and legacy applications to meet changing business needs. The “AgitarOne” product family enables software teams to create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut by 50% the staff time needed to maintain and enhance old applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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Editorial Contacts: Jon Palmisano
Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Phone: +1 401-572-3150
Email: jpalmisano@agitar.com
O'Reilly's Best-Selling Book "Beautiful Code," with Contribution from Agitar CTO Alberto Savoia, Also a Winner
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 11, 2008—Agitar Software, the leader in unit testing solutions, today announced it was awarded the 18th Annual Jolt Productivity Award in the Testing Tools category for JUnit Factory, AgitarLabs' free, web-based unit-test generation and execution service. In addition, O'Reilly’s best-selling book Beautiful Code, which includes a chapter contributed by Agitar CTO Alberto Savoia, was awarded the Jolt Excellence Award in the General Books category.
]]> Each year, the Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards, presented by Dr. Dobb's, recognizes those products, books, and websites that have "jolted" the industry in the past year. Winners are selected by an esteemed panel of judges consisting of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders.Since it first shipped in 2004, every major release of Agitar's unit testing solution has won an award from the Jolt judges, a continuing testimonial to Agitar's breakthrough innovation in automated testing. With the addition of this year's award for JUnit Factory, Agitar is the only vendor of testing tools to win a Jolt award four years in a row.
"JUnit Factory is one of the most ambitious software testing ideas I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on," said Alberto Savoia, Agitar's CTO. "By combining the most effective Java test generation engine in the world with a cluster of powerful CPUs, JUnit Factory can do the work of hundreds of Java developers. But what makes JUnit Factory even more exciting is that, by leveraging the Internet, we can make this powerful test generation cluster freely and easily available to anyone who wants to experiment with it. I can't imagine a more appropriate award than the Jolt Productivity Award for JUnit Factory, and I am thrilled and thankful that the Jolt judges agreed."
"This year was an exceptionally exciting year for the Jolt's, because there were so many strong candidates in each category," said Amber Ankerholz, conference manager for Dr. Dobb's Events. "Agitar’s selection in the Testing Tools category puts it among an elite group of software development innovators."
Introduced a year ago, JUnit Factory (www.junitfactory.com) is a free, on-demand, JUnit test generation service, utilizing a technological subset of Agitar's commercial product and three-time Jolt Award winner, AgitarOne. With nearly 20,000 users in 120 countries, JUnit Factory has an average throughput of more than 250,000 lines of JUnit per hour, which is the equivalent of 1,000 developers working manually.
Agitar's cofounder and CTO, Alberto Savoia, contributed a chapter to the O'Reilly best-selling book on software development, Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think, a collection of essays and articles by well-known software development and programming experts. Savoia's contribution, "Beautiful Tests," shows developers how to create more beautiful and robust code by writing different types of tests; and that testing itself can be a challenging and rewarding activity.
The 18th Annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Award winners were announced on March 5, 2008, at the Software Development Conference and Expo (SD West) in Santa Clara, Calif. A complete list of all winners is available at www.joltawards.com.
About AgitarLabs:
AgitarLabs is an internal research group for Agitar Software that works with academic and open source communities to advance the future of software testing and test automation. Founded by Agitar's cofounder and CTO Alberto Savoia, AgitarLabs unites industry, academia, and open source efforts through collaborative research and sponsorship to tackle the cultural and technical hurdles that exist with testing software. For more information, visit www.agitar.com/agitarlabs.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release Java applications faster, reduce the cost of bugs, and more easily change both new and legacy applications to meet changing business needs. The AgitarOne product family enables software teams to create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut by 50% the staff time needed to maintain and enhance old applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
About Dr. Dobb's:
Dr. Dobb's is recognized worldwide as the leading resource for the professional software development community. With an award-winning monthly publication (Dr. Dobb's Journal), world-wide technical events and conferences (Dr. Dobb's Events) and one of the web's most comprehensive sites (Dr. Dobb's Portal), Dr. Dobb's attracts the industry's most authoritative audience of professional developers, architects and managers and provides marketing partners highly actionable integrated marketing solutions to reach the software development buying team.
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]]>AgitarLabs' JUnit Factory and O'Reilly Best-Selling Book "Beautiful Code," with Contributions from CTO Alberto Savoia, Recognized
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., January 15, 2008—Agitar Software, the leader in unit testing solutions, today announced it is a 2008 Jolt Award finalist in two categories. JUnit Factory, AgitarLabs' free, web-based unit-test generation service introduced less than a year ago, has been named by Dr. Dobb's Journal as a finalist in the testing category. In addition, O'Reilly’s best-selling book Beautiful Code, which includes a contribution from Agitar CTO Alberto Savoia, has been named as a finalist in the general books category.
]]> AgitarLabs is the company's research group focused on advancing the future of software test automation. It developed JUnit Factory (www.junitfactory.com), which crossed the one million tests mark just 10 months after its release, as a free, on-demand unit testing subset of Agitar’s commercial product and three-time Jolt Award winner, AgitarOne. With nearly 20,000 users in 120 countries, JUnit Factory has an average throughput of more than 250,000 lines of JUnit per hour, which is the equivalent of 1,000 developers working manually. In its first year, JUnit Factory has attracted a wide spectrum of users: while allowing testing teams to try unit testing for the first time, JUnit Factory is also a popular testing solution for global enterprises that need to generate key unit tests for their Java code."It’s always best for developers to play an active role in testing their own code while writing it. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of legacy code out there without any tests," said Savoia, who is also the founder of AgitarLabs. "JUnit Factory has seen widespread adoption, with users generating more than a million tests since it was launched a year ago. JUnit Factory's success, and now its recognition from Dr. Dobb's Journal, further validates the value for automated unit testing solutions to help developers with the monumental and very difficult task of providing test coverage for untested code."
Savoia’s contributions are also part of the O'Reilly best-selling book on software development, Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think, a collection of essays and articles by well-known software development and programming experts. The book was the No. 9 best-selling title for O'Reilly in 2007, a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon.com's programming category, and the No. 1 title in the software engineering industry, according to Bookscan figures. The book contains advice and case studies on how to creatively and carefully design solutions to high-profile software projects and development dilemmas. AgitarLabs' contribution, "Beautiful Tests," written by Savoia, shows developers how to create more beautiful and robust code by writing different types of tests; and that testing itself can be a challenging and rewarding activity.
The 2008 Jolt Award winners will be announced on March 5, 2008, at the Software Development Conference and Expo (SD West) in Santa Clara, Calif.
About AgitarLabs:
AgitarLabs is an internal research group for Agitar Software that works with academic and open source communities to advance the future of software testing and test automation. Founded by Agitar's cofounder and CTO Alberto Savoia, AgitarLabs unites industry, academia, and open source efforts through collaborative research and sponsorship to tackle the cultural and technical hurdles that exist with testing software. For more information, visit www.agitar.com/agitarlabs.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release Java applications faster, reduce the cost of bugs, and more easily change both new and legacy applications to meet changing business needs. The AgitarOne product family enables software teams to create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut by 50% the staff time needed to maintain and enhance old applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>Agitar Testing Technology and Programmer Training Makes Inroads at Top-Tier Computer Science Programs in the United States
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., November 27, 2007—Since it was established a year ago, several U.S. university computer science programs have participated in AgitarLabs' academic outreach program. AgitarLabs is Agitar Software's research group focused on advancing the future of software test automation.
]]> Designed to increase awareness and use of unit testing, the practice in which software developers create tests for their code as they write it, the "No Java Class Left Behind" program provides Agitar's products free of charge to accredited educational institutions for teaching and research. It also includes class material, exercises, and guest lectures from senior AgitarLabs researchers. Since launching "No Java Class Left Behind," AgitarLabs members have delivered several guest lectures to computer science graduate students at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. AgitarLabs has also helped support the use of AgitarOne, Agitar's flagship product, at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)."We are grateful to AgitarLabs for providing free academic licenses for AgitarOne to Carnegie Mellon University," said Dr. Jonathan Aldrich, a professor at CMU and the instructor of the graduate course on analysis of software artifacts. "The students definitely came away with a better understanding of the capabilities of analysis tools in general and Agitar's testing tools in particular. We look forward to using Agitar’s tools in our courses next year."
AgitarLabs is actively involved with the open source community and academic researchers. In addition to the "No Java Class Left Behind" initiative, AgitarLabs runs internship and fellowship programs involving high-impact industrial research projects in software testing and test automation. This past summer, AgitarLabs hosted Brett Daniel, a graduate student from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), who worked at Agitar's California headquarters for several months.
"I am very glad that Brett Daniel interned at AgitarLabs," said Dr. Darko Marinov, a professor at UIUC and Daniel’s dissertation advisor. "Agitar’s research interests align very well with the topics of Brett’s work in my research group. It's great that Brett had an opportunity to focus on real-world research issues, with the potential to publish research papers contributing to his graduate student career."
The Agitar Research Fellowship was established to reward individuals who demonstrate extraordinary creativity, the potential for innovative research, and the likelihood of becoming thought leaders in their field. This program provides financial sponsorship and other forms of support to researchers and open source contributors working on software testing technology. This year, AgitarLabs is supporting the research of David Saff, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working under the supervision of Dr. Michael Ernst.
"The core of my dissertation research is an extension of the ideas that underline Agitar’s technology," said Saff. "I am very interested in how writing tests not only helps to catch bugs, but also helps developers think harder about what their software should do. Agitar’s support gives me financial and creative freedom to pursue several innovative research directions related to this topic."
"Agitar’s test automation technology owes a lot to academic research and I am thrilled we are in a position to give back to colleges and universities," said Alberto Savoia, cofounder of AgitarLabs and CTO of Agitar Software. "I enjoyed giving guest lectures at Stanford, but what really excites me is when professors and students use our technology and teaching materials as a starting point and come up with their own curriculum and experiments."
About AgitarLabs:
AgitarLabs is an internal research group for Agitar Software that works with academic and open source communities to advance the future of software testing and test automation. Founded by Agitar's cofounder and CTO Alberto Savoia, AgitarLabs unites industry, academia, and open source efforts through collaborative research and sponsorship to tackle the cultural and technical hurdles that exist with testing software. Since its inception in 2006, AgitarLabs has fueled Agitar's growth through JUnit Factory, the industry's first free, web-based test generation service, and Crap4j, an open source tool to help estimate the effort and risk associated with maintaining legacy code. For more information, visit www.agitar.com/company/agitarlabs.html.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release Java applications faster, reduce the cost of bugs, and more easily change both new and legacy applications to meet changing business needs. The AgitarOne product family enables software teams to create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut by 50% the staff time needed to maintain and enhance old applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>Agitar’s Jeffrey Fredrick and Stelligent President Andrew Glover Present Ways to Build Better Software Faster
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., November 9, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in unit testing solutions, today announced it will host a free hour-long webinar on continuous integration and testing at 9 a.m. PT on Wednesday, November 14, 2007.
]]> The webinar entitled "Continuous Integration and Testing" is geared toward lead engineers, architects, and development managers who are seeking to improve development practices within their organizations. The webinar will focus on how using continuous integration (CI) helps organizations build better software faster."Continuous integration is a key practice for organizations concerned about development agility who need to respond quickly while delivering high quality mission-critical applications," said Jeffrey Fredrick, vice president of product management for Agitar Software. "We’ll discuss how continuous integration combined with unit testing saves time and money by dramatically lowering the lifetime of defects."
Fredrick also is the lead committer on CruiseControl, the popular open-source framework for continuous integration, and co-organizer of CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference. Andrew Glover, co-author of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk (Addison-Wesley, June 2007), will join Fredrick in providing an introduction to CI, describing why CI works, and explaining how businesses can start taking advantage of CI immediately.
Glover is an established expert in automated testing frameworks and tools, and a published author for publications including IBM's DeveloperWorks and O’Reilly's ONJava and ONLamp portals. Glover is also the co-author of Java Testing Patterns (Wiley, 2004), and Groovy in Action (Manning, 2007). He is president of Stelligent Incorporated, a consulting firm advising companies on optimizing software production. Glover is also a frequent speaker at Java Users Groups around the country as well as a speaker for the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium group.
To find out more information and to register for this webinar, go to:
http://www.agitar.com/news/events/webinar_continuous_integration.html
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>Agitar CTO Alberto Savoia Shares Ways to Defend Against "Crappy Code" and Transform Software Applications into an Easily Managed Business Asset
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 24, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in unit testing solutions, today announced that CTO and Co-Founder Alberto Savoia will be presenting at the Business of Software 2007 Conference on Monday, October 29th, from 4:15 - 5:15 p.m. at the San Jose Marriott.
]]> Savoia will present "Better Code: Recognizing, Avoiding and Sanitizing Crappy Software" alongside some of the software industry’s most compelling visionaries and experts, including VC/journalist Guy Kawasaki and Fog Creek Software CEO Joel Spolsky."The software industry needs to shake-up and shape-up in order to stop producing crappy code and advance to the next level in terms of quality and productivity," said Savoia. "Most production software is as fragile as a house of cards built on top of a Jello mold. If your business depends on software, and the people working on your software will change over time, which is the norm, it's essential to ensure that the underlying code can easily change hands."
Savoia's talk will outline the challenges associated with maintaining and enhancing an existing code base. He will share the key characteristics and symptoms of crappy code, and explain how companies can protect themselves from it. He will also describe how to measure and predict the cost and challenges associated with maintaining and enhancing an existing code base, and how to identify if an organization has crappy code.
According to Savoia, crappy code can double or triple development cost and delay schedules. And, when original developers leave the company, it often leaves a company stuck with an un-maintainable mess. If a code base is crappy, software assets can easily turn into liabilities.
Through his work with AgitarLabs, Agitar's research group focused on advancing the future of software test automation, Savoia and his colleague Bob Evans are creating an open source Change Risk Analysis and Prediction metric to help estimate the effort and risk associated with maintaining legacy code. The prototype open-source tool uses cyclomatic complexity and code coverage from automated tests to calculate a score for Java code.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>JUnitFactory has served more than 14,000 users from 120 countries in its first 10 months
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 15, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in enterprise unit testing, today announced that JUnit Factory (www.junitfactory.com), its free, web-based, unit-test generation service, has generated more than a million JUnit tests since it was launched in January of this year. JUnit Factory was developed by AgitarLabs, the company’s research group focused on advancing the future of software test automation.
]]> JUnit Factory is the only free test generation service of its kind available. Users can submit their Java code to the JUnit Factory website (www.junitfactory.com), which is hosted on AgitarLab’s servers. They automatically receive generated JUnit tests in return. JUnit factory also provides a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. In addition to requesting and receiving tests from the JUnit Factory servers, the plug-in also contains a JUnit runner with built-in code coverage.JUnit Factory is a subset of AgitarOne JUnit Generator, Agitar’s comprehensive, server-based JUnit generation solution for Java, which enterprise customers deploy in their development and QA organizations. JUnit Factory has been used to generate tests not only for open source projects and academia, but for thousands of Java projects at companies throughout the world. Website usage statistics include:
Using JUnit Factory, Java developers have been able to dramatically reduce the manual effort and time involved in writing unit tests. According to one user, "Wow! I have just generated unit tests for some code that would have taken months or years to do manually and I did it in under 30 minutes, including registering on the server and waiting for the reply email. That is truly awesome!"
Kent Beck, the co-author of JUnit, said: "I like the JUnit Factory tests because they give me an independent perspective on my code."
"There are two main uses for JUnit Factory," said Kevin Lawrence, Distinguished Engineer at AgitarLabs and JUnit Factory’s manager. "In an ideal situation, you have developers who are already committed to writing unit tests for their code and use JUnit Factory to amplify and complement their manual testing efforts. More often than not, the generated tests show some unexpected code behaviors or test corner cases that the developers did not cover with their manual tests."
"In a less than ideal, but more common, situation, you have developers who have inherited and have to maintain a steaming pile of legacy code that came without any tests. In this situation, JUnit Factory can help by generating a basic set of characterization tests to provide a safety net and catch unintended changes in behavior as the code is modified."
A web-based Flash demo of how to use JUnit Factory to generate unit tests can be viewed at www.junitfactory.com/demo/flash/.
About AgitarLabs:
AgitarLabs is an internal research group at Agitar Software that works with academic and open source communities to advance the future of software testing and test automation. Founded by Agitar’s Co-Founder and CTO Alberto Savoia, AgitarLabs unites industry, academia, and open source efforts through collaborative research and sponsorship to tackle the cultural and technical hurdles that exist with testing software. For more information, visit www.agitar.com/company/agitarlabs.html.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>JUnit, Industry's Most Widely Used Open-Source Testing Framework, Celebrates 10th Anniversary, Continues to Transform Application Development and Quality of Software
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 4, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in unit testing solutions, today announced results from a new Evans Data survey that found unit testing as a growing development practice with significant additional market opportunity within financial services, telecommunications, retail, manufacturing and IT consulting in North America. The survey from the Santa Cruz, Calif.-based software development market research firm explored manual and automated testing practices.
]]> According to the study, nearly three quarters of Java developers worldwide use the open-source JUnit testing framework, which today celebrates its 10th anniversary, to expedite and simplify testing to improve software quality. Furthermore, with global development teams trying to boost time-to-market, quality, and flexibility, the survey also shows growing use and demand for tools that automate and further simplify unit testing.With unit testing, software developers create tests for their code as they develop it. This allows development teams to inspect the building blocks of a system during each phase of development, which produces more cost-effective, flexible, and high-quality software.
Downloaded more than two million times, and included as a plug-in in all major IDEs, the first version of JUnit was co-created by Kent Beck (an Agitar Fellow since July 2004) and Erich Gamma ten years ago. Since then, it has helped developers prevent and catch countless numbers of software defects. "Never in the field of software development was so much owed by so many to so few lines of code," said Martin Fowler, a leading software development expert.
"The adoption of JUnit has far exceeded my early expectations," said Beck. "However, far too much programming is still done without the benefit of tests. I believe that the biggest barrier to greater adoption is culture. For decades, programmers have ceded responsibility for quality to someone else. Programmers need to turn this around and insist that their code work before asking anyone else to invest time in it. There is also the need for better design skills. You can only write better tests if you can design better software (more modular, less coupling, more cohesion). To get better tests, you need more skilled programmers making good large- and small-scale design decisions. Finally, the tools could still be even simpler and provide higher value. That was the goal behind the latest release of JUnit 4.4."
Industry research shows that the cost to fix a defect jumps by an order of magnitude at each phase of the software lifecycle. That means fixing a bug in Quality Assurance (QA) can cost 100 times more than fixing it during development. This inefficient workflow makes software late and expensive, whereas unit testing helps ensure code works correctly early on and improves the agility, quality, and costs of application software development.
"JUnit has had a remarkable impact on the way software is developed and tested. It literally started a developer testing revolution," said Agitar CTO and Co-Founder Alberto Savoia. "But we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible when testing is moved forward in the development process. Ten years ago, holding developers responsible for unit testing their own code would have been a pipe dream in most organizations. Today – mostly thanks to JUnit – unit testing is considered a best practice."
Survey Highlights:
The new Evans Data research shows that 87 percent of Java developers are using unit-testing tools and 71 percent are using JUnit.
The survey also finds:
"Our research substantiates that most global development teams value unit testing and understand that it can help build better software," said John F. Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data Corporation. "However, manual testing often requires specific skills and extra time, which developers may lack. At the same time, complex code, legacy code, and the growth of web services further complicate Java application development. This has created a growing market opportunity for tools that automate and simplify testing."
"Evans Data research, and our own experience, shows that for unit testing to reach its full potential, developers need additional tools and automation to help them deal with the more difficult and time-consuming aspects of test generation, execution, and management," said Savoia. "That’s the reason why we started Agitar Software – to help continue what Kent Beck and Erich Gamma started with JUnit."
AgitarOne is the only comprehensive, fully integrated, unit-testing solution available on the market. AgitarOne not only automates testing with JUnit, it handles legacy code, shortens QA cycles, and provides continuous visibility into code quality.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>One of the common problems facing software projects is that while the developers understand the new code well, they must also deal with a large body of legacy code that they don't understand and for which they don’t have tests. As this code is changed, it is easy to introduce subtle bugs. These bugs are often not detected until much later in the project cycle – and sometimes are found only by users of the released application. These bugs are a common cause of delays in meeting schedules because developers don't fully understand the impact of their changes and lack tools that can give them that insight.
]]> Because the biggest pain point for most software teams is the cost and risk of maintaining and enhancing their legacy Java applications, our recommended best practice for using AgitarOne is to tackle the legacy code first, then address new code creation. Teams already adept at unit testing and not facing the burden of legacy applications can start with Improve New Code Creation (see below).Use AgitarOne JUnit Generator to generate automatically a safety net of thorough JUnit tests – averaging 80%+ coverage out-of-the-box on most code – that documents the current behavior of the application. This safety net makes it easier to see the impact of code changes, which makes changing the code much less risky. This safety net can be generated with little or no involvement from the development staff. The generated tests are checked in and run at desired intervals using AgitarOne's continuous integration and testing support. Test failures are analyzed and developers are notified when they have broken something (and introduced a regression). This approach brings immediate benefits with minimal effort.
AgitarOne JUnit Generator creates a thorough test suite that enables a small "SWAT Team" of QA personnel, an architect, or a few lead developers to greatly improve the code, improving the business agility of the entire development organization. The high out-of-the-box coverage provides the necessary foundation for safe code changes. You can limit these changes to the identification and elimination of common problems, such as unhandled exceptions. You can go further and refactor the code; refactoring takes work but it is the best way to reduce the complexity and ongoing cost of the code. Any of this work can be done on an as-needed basis, focused on the most important and/or fragile parts of the code as they are about to be modified. As this work results in less fragile code, the overall team will spend much less time on legacy maintenance and enhancement. This frees staff for new applications and to start to simplify and improve other applications. This process will also serve as an example to the enterprise of what is possible when a comprehensive agile development and unit test strategy is in place and begins to show benefits, which makes it much easier to focus on proactive testing by developers as they create new code.
Developers interactively use AgitarOne Agitator as they create new code or extensively modify their code. Agitator provides valuable insights into the actual behavior of the code and provides a way for developers to validate behaviors (class- or method-level invariants) that they expect of the code. AgitarOne Agitator helps developers to prevent complexity and minimize bugs so today's new code does not become tomorrow's fragile legacy code. Teams can also use AgitarOne JUnit Generator on the new code to complement hand-written JUnit tests, providing much more thorough coverage than is practical with purely hand-written tests, with much less effort.
The three approaches described above can be used separately or combined into one continuous agile process on legacy code and new projects. The complexity, coverage, and risk associated with any given project or projects roll up into an overall dashboard report to management. This report provides real-time visibility where it did not exist, before and provides the ability to make good decisions during code construction, instead of waiting to discover problems in a QA review, system test, or production release meeting.
]]>Whether your project is outsourced to an on-shore domestic vendor or an international offshore firm, you are wise to be concerned about the code quality because you’re accepting the software that your partner delivers. If you maintain and enhance it in-house, you want to make this as easy as possible, starting with a smooth transition of the software and supporting tests from the outsource partner. If you plan to use your outsource partner to maintain and enhance the software, you want to make sure that you won’t face high future costs.
To ensure your confidence in your outsourced projects, you need:
AgitarOne can help you increase control of your outsourced software development projects by enforcing objective quality levels using our Quality Level Agreement.
When you outsource a software development project, you increase your chance of success by agreeing with your outsourcing partner on some clear and objective measures of the outcome of the project. These measures should provide insight into the progress of the project, not just a final report. Tight metrics are needed so you can measure and understand where the project is in terms of quality, not just "percent complete" or "man-days of effort." Important metrics include how much of the code is tested at the unit level (code coverage), how many test points there are, how often these tests are run, and whether the trend is toward higher coverage and better quality, or toward less of both.
Agitar's technology not only provides you with all these metrics, but helps your developers identify and fix defects faster and with less effort.
Continuous visibility is needed because your project team isn’t on your premises, and isn't under your direct control. If metrics are only provided once a month, it's harder to tell how your project is going. Agitar's management dashboard provides visibility into how your project's quality is progressing – daily, automatically, objectively, without interfering with your developers' work.
Contractual enforcement is possible only if you have solid metrics and agreed-upon terminology about quality and team progress. Agitar pioneered the use of Quality Level Agreements (QLA) to formalize the levels of quality achievement required for the acceptance of outsourced project deliverables. Like Service Level Agreements, QLAs have numerical thresholds for the key indicators of project quality: percentage of code that is tested, number of test points, frequency of running tests, allowable numbers of failed tests, required period for fixing failed tests, and other measures.
Using Agitar and QLAs can give you much more visibility, control, and assurance when outsourcing, off-shoring, or procuring Java software.
]]>Adoption of Automated Unit Testing Requires Management Commitment and Enforcement to Ensure Compliance Across IT Teams
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., September 12, 2007 - Agitar Software, a leader in enterprise unit testing, today announced the availability of "Coding In Quality for Business Agility," a new IDC white paper sponsored by Agitar Software examining how automated, iterative unit testing can help software development teams improve the quality of their applications and reduce development costs. With software defects costing the U.S. economy roughly $60 billion each year, the paper cites a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that suggests $22 billion of these costs could be recovered through better software testing.
]]> "IT organizations continue to feel relentless pressure to deliver more results with fewer resources as they cope with the increasing complexity and business criticality of software systems and applications," said Melinda-Carol Ballou, program director for Application Life-Cycle Management Software at IDC and author of the white paper. "Automated unit testing, especially incorporated into test suites, can help software development teams boost the overall quality of the software they deliver, cut costs, reduce the risk of failure due to defects, and free up resources that can be more productively applied to new development to generate new business value."According to IDC, typical "top-down" software development encourages little testing before code is sent to Quality Assurance (QA) teams. The white paper estimates that software defects found late in the development cycle can cost 10 to 100 times more to fix when compared with the cost of fixing bugs during initial code creation. Errors that accumulate due to late bug detection force developers to revisit the entire code logic, delaying production and preventing development teams from smoothly adjusting code to suit changing business demands.
Unit testing allows development teams to inspect units of code during each phase of development thereby delivering more cost-effective, flexible and high-quality software. Citing exhaustive manual unit test code generation as the main barrier to unit test adoption, the white paper advises developers to adopt comprehensive automated unit testing solutions such as Agitar Software’s AgitarOne to significantly reduce the risk of regression errors.
The white paper stresses the need for an up-to-date test suite to continually verify an application’s quality as changes are made to legacy and newer code. IDC highlights how automation in unit testing gives developers immediate feedback on the code they check, allowing for immediate repairs to accelerate development and capturing business metrics to indicate the level of progress in a software development cycle.
AgitarOne is cited as a tool that can help development teams overcome the barriers to unit testing. The white paper highlights various features of AgitarOne, including "change detection" features through automated JUnit generation, "software agitation," which provides interactive exploratory testing, automated code rule enforcement, project dashboards to evaluate development progress against business targets, continuous integration support with cruise-control, and server-based deployment to further speed large enterprise deployments.
"For an enterprise that depends on how well it can deliver and enhance its software applications, fragile code is dangerous. The agile enterprise needs applications that are easy to change," said Jerry Rudisin, CEO of Agitar Software. "Having and using a thorough set of unit tests is the key to delivering good code sooner and to changing the code later with confidence. That’s why unit testing should be a top priority for any development organization that is serious about time-to-market, productivity, and quality. Agitar's solution provides the automation needed to make unit testing far more thorough and effective than is practical with a purely manual approach."
A free copy of "Coding In Quality for Business Agility" (Doc #206924, June 2007) is available for download at http://www.agitar.com/solutions/resources/whitepapers.html.
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>Sabre Travel Network Will Leverage Agitar’s Unit Testing Solution to Help Customers Improve Agility, Quality, and Costs
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., September 5, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in enterprise unit testing, today announced that Sabre Travel Network will standardize on Agitar technology for its Java development Sabre Travel Network projects worldwide. As a world leader in the travel marketplace, Sabre Holdings merchandises and retails travel products including distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry.
]]> Sabre will employ Agitar technology in its basket of developer productivity tools to continue its program to help bolster developer productivity, achieve better time-to-market, and improve software quality. Agitar’s automation technology accelerates developer unit testing, an approach where development teams test their software code as they write it."Sabre sets itself apart by combining extreme agility in our development processes with unmatched quality. We’re able to do this because we consistently leverage software best practices such as unit testing," said Sara Garrison, Senior Vice President at Sabre Holdings.
"Agitar’s unique technology makes unit testing a fast, highly effective process for Java developers," Garrison added. "And we’re particularly excited by AgitarOne’s powerful JUnit generation capabilities. In our business, we deal with business-critical Java applications, ranging from green-field applications to large legacy code bases. With AgitarOne, we can generate a thorough safety net of JUnit tests, which helps us build, extend, and enhance Java code with even greater reliability and speed than before. We see a significant positive impact on developer testing productivity and effectiveness through the use of Agitar’s solutions."
Agitar’s flagship product, AgitarOne, helps developers discover and eliminate defects early in the software lifecycle, enables better software design, and simplifies integration and QA, increasing the predictability of software development and lowering costs.
"Building quality into software by unit testing early in the development process, rather than testing bugs out later in the cycle, helps development organizations bring applications to market faster and significantly enhances developer productivity," said Jerry Rudisin, CEO of Agitar Software. "Sabre Holdings has built its reputation with a commitment to quality that aims to continuously exceed client expectations. I am delighted that Sabre will use Agitar's software to achieve a competitive advantage based on quality and agility."
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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]]>Test Automation Breakthrough Guarantees 80 Percent Code Coverage of Java Applications, Delivers in Hours What Used to Take Months
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., August 28, 2007 - Agitar Software, the leader in enterprise unit testing, today announced a new version of AgitarOne, its flagship product that brings unprecedented power, performance, and simplicity to Java unit testing. AgitarOne now achieves – and guarantees – 80 percent project code coverage out of the box, improving business agility by giving development teams a basic safety net of tests to dramatically reduce risk when changing applications.
]]> It’s hard for an enterprise to be agile when its software applications are fragile. To keep up with rapidly changing business requirements, an organization must be able to change its software not only quickly, but also safely. Even minor code changes can often cause major regressions in functionality. A thorough suite of unit tests is a proven way to help development teams detect potential regressions quickly and easily, but test development is a time-consuming, combinatorial problem. Without some form of automation, it’s easy to fall short in unit testing efforts; most software organizations that practice unit testing rarely achieve coverage of more than 10 to 20 percent.With AgitarOne, development teams can now generate a basic set of unit tests that provide 80 percent code coverage across the project in a matter of hours. With this set of tests, the team now has the basic foundation needed to detect unwanted or unexpected changes in code behavior. Using AgitarOne’s automated tests as a starting point, teams can dramatically reduce the risk associated with changing business applications to achieve improved business agility.
"I can say with confidence that AgitarOne 4.2 is the world’s fastest and most powerful automated test generator for Java – nothing else comes even close," said Alberto Savoia, CTO of Agitar. "Being able to generate 80 percent or better unit test coverage in hours is a game changer for IT teams."
"By giving developers a basic suite of unit tests that they can immediately run, analyze, and enhance, AgitarOne makes it much more likely that developers maintaining existing applications will embrace and take a more active role in unit testing – which should be the ultimate goal," added Savoia. "Starting from 20 percent or less code coverage, and faced with the prospect of having to write hundreds of thousands of lines of JUnit by hand just to catch up, is an understandably depressing prospect for developers and a huge schedule hit and expense for the organization. AgitarOne’s out-of-the-box automation gives developers the time to focus on testing the areas of the code that can benefit the most from human insight, intuition, and domain knowledge. Armed with AgitarOne, an organization can transform its code base from fragile to agile, and have exhaustive tests without exhausted developers."
AgitarOne’s unprecedented project-wide code coverage is made possible by multiple breakthroughs in code analysis and test automation, including major advances in mocking technology to solve complex dependencies on other code components. AgitarOne’s highly scalable, server-based architecture also helps users achieve this level of coverage at unprecedented speed, with recent benchmarks showing throughput of 250,000 lines of JUnit test code in an hour—which is orders of magnitude faster than manual testing.
To ensure effective creation, usage, and management of unit tests, AgitarOne is a comprehensive integrated solution that also includes
About Agitar Software:
Agitar Software enables the enterprise to release its Java applications faster and to change them more easily to meet changing business needs. AgitarOne automatically creates the tests needed to simplify complex code and to make all code easier to change. Customers have cut by 50% the time they spend fighting with existing applications, released new ones 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut by 90% the cost of finding and fixing bugs after releasing applications to users. Software teams can use AgitarOne to meet their schedules without sacrificing quality and functionality. Customers such as Bank of America, Cisco, EDS, Fujitsu SSL, IBM Global Services, MindTree Consulting, Siemens, Tata Consultancy Services, and Tokyo Gas see these benefits using Agitar’s solution for in-house, offshore, or outsourced software development. Agitar is a privately-held company headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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