Major Telecommunications Operator

Maximizing the potential of a massive merger

Having formed through a merger of two large organizations, the telecommunications operator needed to integrate people, processes, and systems from two complex entities. The newly formed development team faced a huge challenge of its own: managing an application landscape that had effectively doubled in size.

A spokesperson for the company takes up the story: “Not only did the merger essentially double our application portfolio, it also doubled the number of vendors we work with, who have equally large teams and application landscapes. You can imagine how difficult it was to ensure effective collaboration between all parties and maintain a high degree of control and quality around application delivery.”

ALM Octane helps us to ensure tight coordination and efficient collaboration across different internal and external teams. It allows us to clearly track and manage requirements, development, and testing for all of our applications throughout their full lifecycles.

Assisting the move to agile

The development team had successfully used ALM Quality Center by OpenText™ to manage software quality for several years prior to the merger. Now, faced with a vastly more complex application landscape, the company took the opportunity to review existing quality and testing practices. It decided that the time was right to transition towards a more modern and integrated software delivery model and embrace agile and DevOps practices.

“During the merger, our organization started shifting from waterfall to agile methodologies,” recalls the spokesperson. “We quickly saw that we needed a toolset that was flexible enough to support agile frameworks. we were pleased to discover that Micro Focus (now part of OpenText™) had just the solution we were looking for in ALM Octane.”

Designed to accelerate transformations from iterative application delivery to agile testing and DevOps practices, ALM Octane acts as a central hub for aligning efforts from development to release. It helps teams deliver high-quality software by bringing greater agility, consistency, and traceability to development and testing processes.

Working closely with OpenText, the company successfully made the switch to ALM Octane. As the spokesperson notes: “We had great support from Micro Focus (now part of OpenText™) in shifting from ALM/Quality Center to ALM Octane. They helped us plan a very smooth, phased transition, so that there was no disruption to the business. Micro Focus (now part of OpenText™) also worked with us to provide extensive training to help our users get up to speed with the new platform quickly.”

Testing and development that keeps getting better

Today, the company has integrated ALM Octane with its DevOps pipelines and automated testing systems. It provides a unified platform for supporting reliable, consistent, and efficient quality and test management across an extensive application landscape and multiple teams, both internal and external.

“It’s not unusual for us to have multiple vendors and partners working simultaneously on an application,” explains the spokesperson. “ALM Octane helps us to ensure tight coordination and efficient collaboration across different internal and external teams. It allows us to clearly track and manage requirements, development, and testing for all of our applications throughout their full lifecycles.”

The company has also gained the ability to track key metrics and team productivity, which is helping it lift software development quality and efficiency to new heights.

The spokesperson states: “When everyone started working together on ALM Octane, we started capturing their metrics too. While productivity was quite low initially as people got used to the new solution, we have made great strides over time and are now seeing high productivity levels among both internal teams and external vendors.”

Two key metrics that have improved significantly are test case execution times and defect turnaround times. according to the spokesperson: “Since moving to ALM Octane we have drastically reduced defect turnaround times, which are now less than 24 hours. Likewise, we have cut the execution time for test cases by 60%. This helps us deliver better-quality software in less time and at lower cost.”

Since moving to ALM Octane we have drastically reduced defect turnaround times, which are now less than 24 hours. Likewise, we have cut the execution time for test cases by 60%. This helps us deliver better-quality software in less time and at lower cost.