By Rich Ptak
Compuware continues its quarterly cadence of delivering
product innovations, updates to classic offerings, integrations and partnerships
aimed at helping large enterprises increase software delivery quality, velocity
and efficiency.
Compuware’s 22nd consecutive quarterly delivery includes
a new Jenkins plugin along with a REST API for Strobe, Compuware’s application
performance management and analysis solution. The integration points enable development
teams to automate performance tests early in the development lifecycle as part
of a CI/CD pipeline. Shift-left performance testing helps teams get products
and solutions to market faster while improving quality, increasing customer
satisfaction and reducing costs.
There are many other product updates mentioned in Compuware’s
announcement. These include zAdviser[1], a
powerful machine learning based learning tool, Topaz for Total Test, Topaz
Workbench, ThruPut Manager, support for pervasive encryption, DASD and tape
resources, etc. We highly recommend checking the Compuware website or
consulting with the Compuware sales rep to learn more. Let’s look at some
details we especially like.
What’s the issue?
As long as products have existed, there has been tension
between development (product creation) and operations (delivery) as they pursue
complementary, sometimes competing goals. Development wants products moved out in
volume to operations as rapidly as possible at low cost. Operations wants high
quality, innovative, defect-free products that delight (price-sensitive) customers.
However, excessive speed can lead to defects that threaten quality,
raising costs. Testing reveals defects and problematic products, which will be reworked,
discarded, and/or redesigned. Effective quality control is time-consuming and
frustrating to both development and operations goals. As it diverts time, money and resources from
more productive activities, such as product innovation, development and a steady
flow of new products.
Testing has been a separate department dedicated to eliminating
defective products and processes. Over time, experience revealed early testing as the most
cost-effective way to catch defective products and eliminate problematic
designs/processes. Each step of the development/production life cycle increases
product value. Early testing minimizes resources expended on ultimately
defective products and helps to identify inefficient designs/processes needing
corrective action. Still, waterfall
application development models with last-step testing remained the norm in
mainframe shops, even as more integrated testing models emerged.
Eventually,
evolving technologies, escalating competition and closer connection to
demanding customers drove new agile application development and operational
models into mainframe shops. Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) meant
radical changes were needed to adjust to new roles and responsibilities of IT
itself, as well as DevOps staffs.
Previously isolated and remote from operations and
customers, developers were being forced into closer, more intense interactions
with operations staff and more connected to the customer experience. Developers
had to be aware of and take account of how their efforts affect operations and the
impact on the customer experience. This meant more frequent, closer
collaboration with operations. It escalated the necessity of frequent testing
earlier in the process stream, i.e. “shifting left[2]”. It
also was driving efforts toward full integration of DevOps with end-to-end product
life-cycle processes.
Mainframe shops have been slow to embrace automated testing
even as the pressure mounts to increase the pace of delivery. As mainframe
operations began adopting agile development, traditional in-line, late-process
flow testing became ever more untenable as it was exposed as the most
significant bottleneck to modernization and performance improvement. A 2019
Compuware-commissioned survey[3] of
application development managers shows just how serious the situation was:
- 53%
identified the time required to thoroughly test code as the biggest
barrier to integrating mainframe into Agile and DevOps.
- 77%
had difficulty meeting business innovation goals, while
simultaneously attempting to increase quality, velocity and efficiency.
-
85%
said they found it harder to deliver innovation faster
without compromising quality and increasing risk of bugs in production.
Mainframe DevOps staff lacked fully integrated and automated
solutions able to address these problems. Building on its past successes at
developing and delivering solutions that resolve such significant challenges
facing mainframe DevOps, Compuware addresses the challenge.
What is Compuware
delivering?
Compuware previously released Topaz for Total Test to make
it easier for mainframe DevOps teams to automate unit, functional and
integration tests and perform them earlier in the development lifecycle.
Specifically:
- A Jenkins plugin for Strobe helps manage automated testing throughout the DevOps process.
- A Strobe REST API easily integrates automated test routines to that detect performance problems as part of a Jenkins CI/CD (or other CI/CD tools) pipeline.
- Development teams can easily automate running customized performance measurements as part of their daily development activities.
- Compuware ISPW, Topaz for Total Test and Strobe can be leveraged together within a CI/CD pipeline.
In short, by using common shared APIs and selective
integration, Compuware makes it easy to collect a performance measurement as
part of a CI/CD pipeline. This is in keeping with their extensive efforts to
provide easy access (and frequently) full integration with popular non-Compuware
DevOps tools and solutions.
What’s the benefit?
Shift-left
performance testing allows teams to improve their agility, deliver
higher-quality applications, reduce development costs and deliver better
customer experiences. Integration ensures applications are thoroughly
performance-tested before being released as production ready. The increased
integration and access to more comprehensive data collection, analysis and
shared communications facilitates development and operations team interaction.
This leads
to more profitable and efficient exchange of useful insightful information.
Teams can be alerted to broken or inefficient processes, poor code that wastes
resources, low performance applications that need tuning, etc. Actionable data
and information communications lead to closer collaboration which means fewer,
shorter disruptive interruptions that decrease efficiency and productivity.
Both operations and development learn from each other and become more
effective, efficient and productive at producing solutions that provide
exceptional customer experiences.
The Final Word
This marks the 22nd consecutive quarter that
Compuware has delivered on its commitment to provide solutions, services and
partnerships that will improve overall agility, deliver higher-quality
applications, lower development costs and result in a better experience for
customers.
They have proven their ability to deliver enhanced product
integration and automation to the task of creating and implementing innovative
IT solutions and services. This time their efforts have significantly extended
performance testing, which will directly lead to improved application
development agility and increased productivity, thereby reducing time-to-market.
Early defect detection, exposure and correction of inefficient code and processes
leads to better product quality with accelerated innovation which then leads to
an exceptional customer experience.
[1]
The service is free for Compuware’s maintenance-current customers.
[2]
Flowchart illustrations
showing processes flowing from left to right. Moving a task earlier in the
process flow was a “shift left”. The term was coined in the 1950’s.
[3]
Research conducted by Vanson Bourne. Based on a global survey of 400 senior IT
leaders responsible for application development in organizations with a
mainframe.
