Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions

Transcription

1 Dynamic Value Brief Application Delivery Management Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Manage software testing and IT quality management with consistent processes to deploy applications faster with confidence

2 Table of Contents page Executive Summary... 1 Benefit Categories... 2 The Micro Focus Approach to Application Testing: A Comprehensive Solution... 2 Micro Focus ROI approach... 3 Customer Data and Results... 6 Consolidating Results... 9 Summary... 10

3 Quality Center software gives us the information we need to support quality across the development cycle. We now do more than simply catch defects. We reduce the risk of defects in the first place, streamline development processes, and do it all with fewer resources while supporting more applications. DAVID MOSES QA Manager, delta.com, Self-Service & CRM Delta Air Lines, Inc. Executive Summary Today s fast-paced, dynamic business environment demands innovative software to support growth and success with proven quality. With increased competition and accelerated business change, IT quality teams need solutions that enable them to deliver modernized applications faster while maintaining and improving quality, reliability, and security. Micro Focus Quality Center software is the right quality management solution for time-pressured quality teams working in partnership with development, business analysis, and delivery teams to deliver the promise of modern applications for business success. Quality Center is a comprehensive, unified, and extensible application software quality platform. It manages and automates the delivery of secure, reliable, and high-quality applications. With Quality Center, you can implement complete IT quality management and establish consistent, repeatable processes for managing requirements, tests, and business components. Software today is core to any business process and ultimately every business outcome. Maintaining quality in software is necessary in order to provide facilities to customers, such as the delivery of high-quality product or software applications, which requires lower maintenance cost and, hence, results into more accurate, consistent, and reliable results. This paper focuses on benefits provided by Quality Center, including examples of the return on investment (ROI) an organization can realize when it effectively addresses the fundamentals of Quality Center. These examples, coupled with an explanation of the Micro Focus ROI approach, are intended to help business managers develop an ROI analysis for their unique business situation, quantifying the business benefits of Quality Center in their environment. 1

4 Dynamic Value Brief Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Benefit Categories Quality Center benefits both line of business and IT functions. ROI for Quality Center can be quantified in terms of cost reduction and risk mitigation, or time-to-value benefits, as suggested by the examples listed in Table 1. Cost Reduction Risk Mitigation Time to Value Manage cost control by: Centralizing the management of manual and automated test assets Automation of application testing and test management Faster development/test environment setup Faster defect remediation Automated reporting Facilitating standardized testing and quality processes that boost productivity Mitigate risk by: Detecting and resolving defects early in the application software development lifecycle Reducing application issues Improving the organization s ability to meet legal and compliance requirements Improve time to value by: Reducing application issues, which lowers the cost associated with productivity losses experienced by testers and developers Reducing the duration of the test lifecycle through proactive, automated application testing, thereby ensuring faster release of applications and accelerating revenue Table 1. Categories for Benefits The Micro Focus Approach to Application Testing: A Comprehensive Solution Although this paper primarily focusses on Quality Center, there are other functional components in the Micro Focus portfolio that also generate value across the software lifecycle, as listed in Table 2. Component Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Micro Focus Unified Function Testing (UFT) Capabilities Micro Focus ALM is a unified software platform for managing and automating activities, insight, and assets to deliver applications from requirements through development, testing, and readiness for delivery. ALM integrates with your development and testing tools. Through integrated analytics, it provides real-time visibility of the progress, quality, and defect profile of your application projects at any stage in your software development lifecycle. In addition, ALM integrates with upstream project portfolio management software and downstream deployment, monitoring, and incident management software to drive complete ALM of applications from inception to retirement. Micro Focus UFT software automates functional testing through an intuitive, visual user experience that ties manual testing, automated software testing, and framework-based testing together in one integrated development environment (IDE). The capabilities in UFT help you to significantly reduce the cost, time spent, and complexity of the functional testing process while driving continuous quality. Continued on the next page 2

5 Component Micro Focus Performance Center Micro Focus Fortify Micro Focus LoadRunner Micro Focus Sprinter Micro Focus Agile Manager Micro Focus StormRunner Load Micro Focus Business Process Testing Capabilities Micro Focus Performance Center software provides the first lifecycle approach to optimizing application performance, helping to ensure that your applications will scale to support the right number of users, transaction volumes, and performance levels. Micro Focus Fortify's comprehensive suite of software security solutions finds security vulnerabilities in applications, automates the process of fixing security vulnerabilities by securing the software development lifecycle (SDLC), and protects applications against attack in production. Micro Focus LoadRunner is a comprehensive solution for testing system behavior and performance. It provides an efficient and robust means to verify end-to-end application performance before going live. Micro Focus Sprinter software is an easy-to-use solution that enables fast, accurate, and efficient manual software testing. Fully integrated into Quality Center, Sprinter improves tester productivity and accuracy with easy-to-use screen toolbars; screen annotation, video, and textual test step capture; intelligent defect logging; automated data injection for repetitive testing; and mirrored platform support to execute one test targeted on multiple platforms. Sprinter is particularly valuable for teams conducting exploratory testing and manual testing, frequently in iterative environments Micro Focus Agile Manager is a SaaS and on-premises agile project management solution to organize, plan, execute, and track Agile projects. Quality Center supports Agile delivery by enabling teams to track project status, accelerate testing, reduce cost, improve development and QA collaboration, and manage both Agile and non-agile projects in parallel. Your teams can leverage the two-way synchronization between Agile Manager and Quality Center. Micro Focus StormRunner Load is a SaaS-delivered cloud load and performance testing solution that makes it easy to plan, run, and scale web and mobile testing. Micro Focus Business Process Testing is an integrated, component-based test framework that helps to accelerate functional test automation. Table 2. Value offered by each of the functional components in the Micro Focus Application Delivery Portfolio Micro Focus ROI approach The Micro Focus ROI approach is based on third-party validated models and industry/customer research by leading IT consultancy IDC and their ROI tool partner, leading ROI/TCO consultancy Alinean. The ROI Analysis process, models, and metrics were developed by researching overall IT spending and KPIs worldwide in over 37 different industries, interviewing selected customers to determine specific realized and proven value, and directly engaging with customers with the methodology and tools to further refine the modeling and value estimates. This work resulted in the definition of a customer-centric ROI framework and process as illustrated in Figure 1 and described above. 3

6 Dynamic Value Brief Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Discover Challenges (Anecdotes¹) Business Applications Initiatives Infrastructure Align Value Proposition Model Benefits and Investments Deliver + = Customer Data Figure 1. The Micro Focus ROI model approach ROI Results Business Case Package Discover: A credible business case/roi must be anchored in a customer s business reality. This schematic suggests four categories of discovery to hone in on. It is during this initial discovery stage that it is helpful to document challenges and specific problems. These challenges can be collected as business value/roi anecdotes. 1 Align: The key to a successful ROI is converting this somewhat abstract understanding of a customer s business context and Business Value Anecdotes into a set of quantifiable value propositions. A value proposition is a specific, customer-centric statement of expected business or IT value ideally, quantifiable in monetary terms. Model: Two types of models are crafted. The benefits model consists of a set of benefit worksheets. Each ROIbenefit scenario is a quantified value proposition representing the most granular unit of annualized business or IT value. Micro Focus has compiled a collection of ROI-benefit scenarios from our work to date that customers might find helpful in launching their ROI projects. Investment models provide Micro Focus software-related costs, as well as any incremental staffing or infrastructure costs associated with the Micro Focus solution. Deliver: The benefit and investment models are packaged into an ROI Business Case Package. A clear understanding of the business perspective helps to ensure that a meaningful set of value propositions are characterized. 1 A Business Value Anecdote is a brief statement of a pain, or the observed or expected benefit of a Micro Focus solution from the customer s perspective. 4

7 Value propositions fall into two distinct categories: business value and IT value. The business value propositions describe how the use of the Quality Center solution contributes to reduced business costs (for example, automation of application testing and test management) or revenue protection (for example, audit/ compliance management). Similarly, an IT value proposition demonstrates how Quality Center contributes to IT cost reduction. Often this is expressed in terms of faster remediation time, reduction in number of defects, and reduction in staff cost. A properly stated value proposition should clearly connect an IT management process with a business objective and a measurable benefit. For example: Micro Focus solutions automate the test management process, creating a trail of documentation behind the testing. This simplifies compliance reporting, minimizing audit costs. The Value propositions stated in this way can be transformed into ROI-benefit scenarios, the Micro Focus term for the most granular building blocks of IT or business value. ROI-benefit scenarios provide a consistent way to quantify value propositions. Taken together, a set of ROI-benefit scenarios can be aggregated to represent the value of existing or planned Quality Center oriented investments. ROI-benefit scenarios provide a consistent way to characterize value and incrementally quantify solution benefits. They can also be combined to look at higher-level ROI-benefit scenarios, such as IT service quality improvement or visibility for decision making. The ROI result, or the total benefit to the business, can be calculated by quantifying the value and the investment associated with all of the relevant ROI-benefit scenarios. By breaking the problem down into smaller, more manageable ROI-benefit scenarios, the Micro Focus ROI approach simplifies ROI measurement and removes some of the uncertainty associated with collecting and analyzing ROI data. Key Component Description Example Pain Point A customer challenge that can be Manual application testing is labor intensive addressed by a Micro Focus solution and costly. Value Proposition Solution Benefit Summary Calculation A specific statement of business or IT value that links a specific Micro Focus function with a business objective and a measurable benefit A description of the Micro Focus solution that explains how the value proposition claim is achieved The specific metrics, assumptions, and data values used to quantify the value proposition Table 3. Value Key components of an ROI-benefit scenario Micro Focus solutions enable automated quality testing of legacy and modern applications. These solutions minimize the tester effort spent in activities such as test creation, data management, test maintenance, defect reporting, etc. This improves efficiency, reduces labor costs, and frees up IT staff for more productive development work. Micro Focus solutions help QA teams emulate business processes and run tests unattended during off-peak times, define and share test cases, and execute testing with integrated results. This lessens the time spent testing the application, resulting in lower costs. Number of Application releases per year, Average hourly burdened salary rate of IT staff, Total cost of quality testing. 5

8 Dynamic Value Brief Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Customer Data and Results After discovering and assessing the current environment, the next step is to align how the Micro Focus solution can strengthen both IT and business processes to reduce costs, mitigate risks, improve time to value, or increase revenue. Quantifiable benefits from effective application delivery and lifecycle management can be estimated using ROI-benefit scenarios that transform high-level value propositions into benefits that can be measured. The following real-world customer examples explain how to build ROI-benefit scenarios for Quality Center quality-oriented solutions. In each scenario, annualized savings values are calculated for three levels of projected improvement: conservative, probable, and optimistic. Using a range of projected improvement values empowers each company to customize results to best fit their business situation and expectations. Company profile For these scenarios, the company profile is a health insurance company. The company recently posted annual revenue of $250 million. The IT organization supports approximately 7500 IT users. Each year, on average, IT introduces 50 major application releases. Example A: Automated Quality Testing Define, manage, and track all test script types (functional, performance, and security) in one place. Coupled with risk-based test management, stakeholders can assign business risk to requirements and calculate where to apply testing resources. Advanced test planning capabilities allow functional, regression, load, unit, and integration testing each with its own set of requirements, schedules, and procedures. QA teams can emulate business processes, run tests unattended, define and share test cases and business process test components, and execute manual and automated testing with integrated results. 6

9 Healthcare Insurance service provider: Lack of automation makes application testing labor intensive and costly. Value Proposition Solution Benefit Applications Micro Focus solutions enable automated functional, business process, regression, and performance testing of legacy and modern applications. These solutions minimize the effort spent in activities such as test creation, data management, test maintenance, defect reporting, etc., minimizing tester efforts. This improves efficiency, reduces labor costs, and frees up IT staff for more productive development work. The Micro Focus solution helps QA teams emulate business processes and run tests unattended during off-peak times, define and share test cases, and execute testing with integrated results. This reduces the time spent testing the application, resulting in lower costs. Business-critical applications ROI Example Metrics Assumptions Before Micro Expected Improvement with Quality Center Focus Software Conservative Probable Optimistic Number of application releases Person hours spent on quality testing per release Projected person hours spent on quality testing per release Average burdened salary rate of IT staff Total Cost of Quality Testing for Applications Total projected annual benefit Table 4. ROI example Automated quality testing Example B: Automated Test Management With the capability to catch application defects as early as possible in the application development lifecycle, the likelihood of business-critical risks and the associated IT costs are reduced. Quality Center enables teams to manage defects across the entire lifecycle. Defects are prioritizes based on business impact and key stakeholders are alerted through automated s. This not only enhances communication and collaboration across the team, but also minimizes rework. Defects found after an application is in production cost over 100 percent more to fix. Quality Center defect management identifies, manages, tracks, and enforces defect resolution across the application lifecycle. Testers can create functional, performance, and application security defects manually or directly from the execution of manual and automated tests, and then communicate them to developers with context from linked requirements and test execution results. 7

10 Dynamic Value Brief Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Healthcare Insurance service provider: Lack of integrated test management across the business increases costs. Value Proposition Solution Benefit Summary Applications Micro Focus solutions help to set up a centralized and integrated application delivery management platform. This helps to reduce the effort for requirements management, test planning, project management, and release management. This improves efficiency, reduces errors, and duplication of work and labor cost. Quality Center defect management identifies, manages, tracks, and enforces defect resolution across the application lifecycle. Testers can create functional, performance, and application security defects manually or directly from the execution of manual and automated tests, and communicate them to developers with context from linked requirements and test execution results. This ensures faster resolution of defects and reduces rework. Business-critical applications ROI Example Metrics Assumptions Before Micro Expected Improvement with Quality Center Focus Software Conservative Probable Optimistic Number of application releases Person hours spent on quality test management per release Projected person hours spent on quality test management per release Average burdened salary rate of IT staff Total Cost of Quality Test Management Total projected annual benefit Table 5. ROI example Automated Test Management Example C: Automated Reporting Quality Center has an integrated dashboard module to centralize IT quality management reporting so you can make real-time decisions based on application status across projects and QA initiatives. Quality Center can also export a report source into Microsoft Excel, enabling your end users to perform flexible data manipulation. In addition, the document generator within Quality Center allows you to push requirements, tests, defects, and their associated data to a Microsoft Word document. 8

11 Healthcare Insurance service provider: Manual preparation of reports is time consuming. Value Proposition Solution Benefit Summary Applications Micro Focus solutions enable automated report generation, along with customizable reporting templates. This reduces the effort needed and labor cost. Quality Center cross-project reporting, including aggregated project status metrics, application quality metrics, requirements coverage, and defect trends across projects. You gain the visibility and complete picture needed to understand release status, reduce risk, and deliver on-time, quality applications to the business. Business-critical applications ROI Example Metrics Assumptions Before Micro Expected Improvement with Quality Center Focus Software Conservative Probable Optimistic Number of application releases Person hours spent on reporting per release Projected person hours spent on reporting per release Average burdened salary rate of IT staff Total Cost of Reporting Total projected annual benefit Table 6. ROI example Automated Reporting Consolidating Results ROI-benefit scenarios, such as those shown in the above examples, can be combined to provide on overall ROI analysis for a specific customer implementation, merging the specific aspects of an inclusive Micro Focus solution. In this case, the solution is Quality Center. The total savings from multiple ROI-benefit scenarios are aggregated to give a cumulative view of the benefits provided by the full implementation. For example, in this case, the savings from our several ROI-benefit scenarios can be summarized to show a combined business and IT benefit over a period of three years. The table below illustrates how the company could summarize the financial analysis of the three ROIbenefit scenarios. For each ROI-benefit scenario, the cash flows over a three-year period were consolidated into a Net Present Value (NPV) using the following rates. Discount rate Increase in annual benefits 9

12 Dynamic Value Brief Quantifying the Value of Investments in Micro Focus Quality Center Solutions Consolidated ROI benefits from the Micro Focus Quality Center Solution Scenario Value category Value proposition 1 Automated Micro Focus solutions Quality Testing enable automated functional, business process, regression, and performance testing of legacy and modern applications. These solutions minimize the effort spent in activities such as test creation, data management, and test maintenance. 2 Automated Test Management 3 Automated Reporting Micro Focus solutions help to set up a centralized management platform. This helps to reduce the effort for requirements management, test planning, project management, and release management. This improves efficiency and reduces errors, duplication of work, and labor cost. Micro Focus solutions enable automated report generation, along with customizable reporting templates. This reduces the effort needed and labor cost. Cumulative benefits total NPV (three years) Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Table 7. Consolidating results from ROI-benefit scenarios for Micro Focus Quality Center Summary Quality Center is a comprehensive, unified, and extensible application software quality platform. It manages and automates delivery of secure, reliable, and high-quality applications. With Quality Center, you can implement complete IT quality management and establish consistent, repeatable processes for managing requirements, tests, and business components. Quality Center is a unified quality management platform that efficiently scales from a single project to multiple, enterprise-wide projects and releases. It enables you to manage application quality with consistent, repeatable processes regardless of your methodology 10

13 of choice, from Waterfall to iterative methodologies such as Agile. Quality Center supports requirements definition and management, release and cycle management, test management (including planning and scheduling), defects management, and reporting within a single platform and with complete traceability, driving collaboration across business analysts, QA, and development teams. Quantifying the benefits of Quality Center can be done systematically, using an approach and methodology that Micro Focus has designed and refined over the years with your peers. The examples presented in this paper can serve as a starting point, but Quality Center is not limited to these benefits. This paper provides an order of magnitude estimate of the potential benefits offered by the Quality Center software. To build a comprehensive business case (including ROI, payback, and other financial metrics) and for more information on the Micro Focus ROI approach or the Quality Center solution, contact your local Micro Focus representative. Learn More At /qualitycenter 11

14 Additional contact information and office locations: AA H 09/ Micro Focus or one of its affiliates. Micro Focus and the Micro Focus logo, among others, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Micro Focus or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies in the United Kingdom, United States and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.