AUGUST 11, 2010 - CRANSTON, RI - As part of their ongoing commitment to continuous improvement and maintaining state-of-the-art technology and peerless customer service, one of the world’s top ranked financial firms has selected AgitarOne to improve the quality of their Java testing.
]]> AgitarOne will be utilized in the development of an all new application. When the new project was given the green light, the project lead, a former Agitar user, was unwilling to settle for open source or other lesser solutions.“Agitar has always been popular within the Java development corridors of the banking and finance industry. We are proud to have customers of this caliber who recognize that maintaining the highest standards of software testing, by utilizing the best solutions available, is not something to be forsaken during these tough times”, says David Belhumeur, CEO of Agitar Technologies. “I believe that companies who find a way to make these types of investments will be exceptionally well positioned when we exit this difficult economic cycle.”
“AgitarOne enables today’s development teams to catch defects early in the lifecycle, dramatically reducing the amount of bugs from development to QA,” says Agitar’s VP of Development, Dale Brenneman. “This makes integration, system testing, and subsequent QA cycles faster and more predictable.”
About Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Using unprecedented JUnit Generation and software Agitation techniques, Agitar Technologies enables the enterprise to save time and money, releasing Java applications faster with fewer bugs. The “AgitarOne” product family improves both new and legacy applications by allowing software teams to easily create, use, and manage the extensive set of unit tests needed to be truly agile. Customers have cut legacy maintenance efforts by 50%, released new applications 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut the cost of finding and fixing post-release bugs by 90%. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2009 - CRANSTON, RI - Agitar Technologies has announced the latest version of AgitarOne, their award-winning and industry leading JUnit generation and software agitation solution. AgitarOne 5.1 includes an all new JSF Expert, enhanced Hibernate Experts, and support for Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo).
]]> “One of our primary goals with this latest release was to provide an additional level, or depth of analysis, for our users,” says Dale Brenneman, Agitar’s VP of Technology. “Our existing support for JSF is now significantly enhanced with the delivery of our new JSF Expert.”With version 5.1’s JSF Expert, AgitarOne provides mocks, using the Shale Test Framework, and test helpers to facilitate enhanced agitation and test generation of code using JSF. JSF is a development framework that provides a set of standard, reusable components used for building rich, dynamic graphical user interfaces for Java applications.
“We’ve had several customers request the new and improved functionality contained in version 5.1, particularly our JSF Expert,” says David Belhumeur, Agitar’s CEO. “I’m pleased that our Development folks consistently maintain the discipline of putting customer requests before all other concerns. That’s why we’ve been so successful”.
Another feature of AgitarOne 5.1 is an enhancement to the Hibernate Experts. The Hibernate Experts previously have supported Hibernate 2.x through 3.x, for configurations using XML mapping files. Hibernate 3.2 introduced configurations with annotations, which are now supported with this Hibernate Experts enhancement.
Agitar has also included other upgrades in the new version, such as those to the AgitarOne Client so that the Eclipse IDE plugins are now compatible with Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo).
About Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Agitar Technologies enables the enterprise to save time and money by releasing Java applications faster with fewer bugs. Both new and legacy applications are more easily managed to allow you to meet rapidly 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 legacy maintenance efforts by 50%, released new applications 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut the cost of finding and fixing post-release bugs by 90%. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
JANUARY 13, 2009 - CRANSTON, RI - Agitar Technologies has partnered with A.I. Corporation to expand the reach of AgitarOne, Agitar’s leading Java Unit Testing product line, in Japan.
]]> A.I. Corporation, based in Tokyo, Japan, is a proven champion that has had a long-term, successful relationship with McCabe Software, Agitar’s sister company. Both parties anticipate similar success with AgitarOne and the hundreds of existing users in Japan.“We are pleased that Agitar Technologies has an association with McCabe Software, whom A.I. Corporation has partnered with for a long time. Adding AgitarOne to our product offering, along with McCabe Software’s IQ, allows us to provide a comprehensive set of software testing solutions for our customers,” says Mr. Hiroyuki Kato, president of A.I. Corporation. “Investment costs for unit testing will be dramatically reduced using AgitarOne, providing the automation that would otherwise require much human resources.”
“Agitar is very pleased and excited about the opportunity to expand our long-term relationship with A.I. Corporation. We have relied upon A.I. Corporation for many years to successfully introduce our software in Japan,” says David Belhumeur, Agitar Technologies’ CEO. “A.I. Corporation has proven to be a most capable and highly valued partner. Their expertise in the software testing arena will prove to be a tremendous resource not only for the hundreds of existing users of AgitarOne in Japan, but also for the many prospective customers who require the AgitarOne technology and a local resource.”
“We are thrilled to bring on an organization like A.I. Corporation,” says Sharon Edquist, Agitar Technologies’ International Partner Channel Manager. “They have extensive experience and an invaluable understanding of the Japanese markets and application development in general.”
About A.I. Corporation
A.I. Corporation (AIC) is a leading software solution vendor for embedded system design and development services in Japan. AIC’s solutions and products cover a broad range of industries such as consumer electronics, automotive, and telecommunications with customers like Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Nissan, NTT, Toyota and Yamaha. For more information visit http://www.aicp.co.jp.
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 legacy maintenance efforts by 50%, released new applications 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut the cost of finding and fixing post-release bugs by 90%. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
DECEMBER 30, 2008 - CRANSTON, RI - Agitar Technologies announces the enrollment of the University of Geneva into the Agitar University Program, making it the first Swiss university to join.
]]> As a participant in the program, the University of Geneva will take advantage of AgitarOne - JUnit Generator for unlimited generation of JUnit tests on unique Java Classes, and AgitarOne - Agitator for ‘software agitation’.The University of Geneva’s Professor Didier Buchs will use AgitarOne to introduce students to professional Java testing techniques and solutions. The University of Geneva is the second largest university in Switzerland and was ranked #68 in US News & World Report's 2008 World's Best Colleges and Universities report.
The Agitar University Program is Agitar Technologies’ initiative to put their products into the hands of leading computer engineering programs.
“Participants in the Agitar University Program are awarded the full commercial version of AgitarOne. This is the same JUnit generation and ‘software agitation’ solution used by industry leaders like, Cisco Systems, IBM, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and HP,” says David Belhumeur, Agitar Technologies’ CEO “We are happy to provide the students with a professional grade product that they would not normally have access to in an academic setting.”
AgitarOne - JUnit Generator creates thorough JUnit tests on your code. This helps you find regressions and makes it safer and easier to improve your code and reduce the cost to maintain it. AgitarOne Agitator helps developers understand the behavior of their code as they write it. This helps them prevent bugs from being introduced and also helps reduce the code complexity that will become tomorrow's maintenance headache. The AgitarOne family is the best available way to create, use, and manage the unit tests that you need to be truly agile.
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 legacy maintenance efforts by 50%, released new applications 30% faster with fewer bugs, and cut the cost of finding and fixing post-release bugs by 90%. Agitar Technologies is a privately-held company headquartered in Cranston, RI. For more information visit www.agitar.com.
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David Belhumeur serves as Chief Executive Officer of Agitar Technologies, Inc. In addition, Mr. Belhumeur is 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.
###
Editorial Contacts: Jon Palmisano
Agitar Technologies, Inc.
Phone: +1 401-572-3150
Email: jpalmisano@agitar.com
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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]]>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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