Align all-in-one tool with corporate transformation initiative and introduce agile application testing environment for enhanced collaboration, reporting and management visibility.
Amdocs solutions and services help customers create the seamless digital experiences that improve lives across the globe. Over 28,000 employees work with customers to accelerate their cloud migration, differentiate in the 5G era, digitalize and automate their operations, and provide end users with next-generation communication and media experiences.
Amdocs Quality Engineering (AQE) has been part of Amdocs Services since 2005. AQE services integrates application testing into every step of the development process for faster time to market and enhanced overall quality. With a combination of quality of processes, quality of experience, quality of next-generation technology, and quality of operations, the organization delivers end-to-end quality engineering through a comprehensive DevSecOps approach.
For many years, Micro Focus ALM/Quality Center was a key part of the AQE framework, and Gidi Yaniv, Program Manager, Global IT at Amdocs, explains this further: “AQE provides various quality engineering services to the Amdocs traditional client base in the telecommunications, media and entertainment, banks and FinTech sectors. We include other network-based applications and 3rd party integration points in our testing cycle for them so that they have one process for all their testing requirements. This is a key selling point for us and an important benefit for our clients. As well as serving our AQE clients, we also use our framework for our own internal development teams, with Amdocs internal application testing. Although ALM/Quality Center is highly valued within AQE, Amdocs is in a digital transformation with cloud adoption and a ‘shift left’ in our DevOps cycle. When Micro Focus introduced ALM Octane, we were excited about the new opportunities this solution offers.”
Continuous improvement is a central theme within AQE. This fits ALM Octane well as it is designed to accelerate transformations from iterative application delivery to agile testing and DevOps practices. It uses built-in dashboards and real-time metrics for a visual, customizable display of testing progress and quality. The native integration capabilities provided through Micro Focus Connect eased the introduction of ALM Octane into the AQE framework. Micro Focus Connect is offered free of charge when data is synchronized between different Micro Focus solutions or between Micro Focus and third-party solutions. It replaces point-to-point integration with a single synchronization engine and connector framework. “Micro Focus Connect was really helpful and a selling point for us, as it provides ready-made integration plug-ins as an alternative to expensive and complex custom-made integration. We leveraged it when we integrated JIRA which we use for backlog and defect management,” says Gidi Yaniv. “It was also great to have the same Micro Focus support contacts as we already had for ALM/Quality Center, so any questions we had during the implementation were quickly answered.”
Thanks to the effective integration between ALM Octane and JIRA the team has established a clear end-to-end defect management process: an email is generated as soon as a defect is assigned so that progress is tracked within the ALM Octane platform, giving clear visibility to management on the status and the lifecycle of any reported defects.
With almost 8,000 ALM/Quality Center users, and up to 200 active projects, the team agreed on a phased migration to ALM Octane. The central AQE team took advantage of Micro Focus training and attended an ALM Octane admin course. To streamline the migration from ALM/Quality Center to ALM Octane, users are given a link to the ALM Octane Academy online training, but they can also choose to follow more targeted or in-person training, which the team can organize for them. Following the introduction, all new projects are now initiated in ALM Octane, and as time goes on more users are migrating, supported by the effective training materials to make the move to ALM Octane as smooth as possible.
Yaniv is excited that users can now experience the benefits which are so clear to him already: “The reporting capabilities in ALM Octane are superior to anything I’ve seen before in this field. We can leverage more than 45 built-in agile and DevOps metrics, but the user-friendly interface also makes it easy to customize and create our own reports. The ALM Octane user stories provide a graphical overview and when we share dashboards with our management, they can simply filter on the items important to them, giving them instant visibility into the status of the testing effort.”
Limor Gueta, Quality Business Partner, Group CTO, Amdocs Quality Engineering, recognizes the impact: “ALM Octane gives us a simple and clear single source of truth. It works with any type of development methodology, i.e., waterfall, agile, or hybrid and the user-friendly dashboard gives us an end-to-end view of any project status.”
Because the ALM Octane implementation was new, the team introduced a best practice framework which is more focused on user requirements and provides central monitoring control to reduce the dependency on other teams and save time. This includes a central server implementation, greatly simplifying maintenance and support activities. “From a central ALM Octane console, the team has end-to-end visibility of not only testing activities, but across the entire development cycle, with complex Single Sign-on integration providing seamless access for both internal and external users. This cross-vision of functionality gives insight in all ALM Octane modules from wherever you find yourself within the solution,” comments Yaniv.
The best practice approach also makes it easier to maintain and upgrade the system so that Amdocs clients and internal users can always enjoy the most up-to-date testing and reporting environment. ALM Octane also enabled Amdocs to adopt the scaled agile framework (SAFe) or Spotify methodology, both are most commonly used by AQE customers. This set of workflow patterns guides the organization in scaling lean and agile practices.
Pritesh Nagrale, Business Analyst at Amdocs, talks about the implementation process: “Instead of writing and maintaining code and scripts, which is time-consuming and expensive, any customization we needed was achieved with just a couple of clicks in ALM Octane. This is a great time saver when you consider the number of specific client requirements we receive on testing projects. We also love the fact that ALM Octane contains a user-friendly interface with wide browser support, so that any user can connect from anywhere. Because we have multiple clients working directly with our testing teams and collaborating within the ALM Octane environment, it is very important to us that ALM Octane securely supports both shared and isolated workspaces. A shared workspace allows us to share any customizations with other projects.”
Yaniv concludes: “ALM Octane gives us an open and secure collaboration, testing, and reporting environment that is fully aligned with our corporate goals of accelerating our digital journey with agile development.”
