Expert consultancy services to manage your software test environments
Building a test environment is a critical element in the assurance and testing of new software, but there are a number of common problems:
- A test environment is expensive to build, especially if it’s built from scratch each time
- It needs to be controlled before, during and after the testing period, to minimise delays and duplications, and to optimise the use of costly resources
- It requires specialist skills and also strong stakeholder management.
Creating and managing a test environment is often a specialist job but a key finding in the World Quality Report 2021 was the lack of professional testing expertise across the software quality assurance sector, particularly for Agile. Our research shows that 21% of a test team’s effort is spent on test environment configuration and yet 35% of test environments are underutilised.
In other words, a test environment is vital to the final quality of the software, and yet there are significant costs associated with the lack of its effective management and there is a global scarcity of expertise. iTEM – our test environment management and provisioning service – is designed to address exactly this problem.
A Test Environment Management Team
Led by experienced consultants, the iTEM service builds and manages test environments, based on a proven collection of processes for test environment management. The service is driven by dedicated specialist consultants who will help you to deploy a curated collection of powerful tools and information in the context of your project.
iTEM acts as one coherent and coordinated management service providing an efficient way to manage communications between the test organisation, vendors, IT operations and technical teams. We also manage the stakeholders, so you can focus on delivering value elsewhere .
The service is tailored to meet the needs of the program, project and client and our portal for Environment Management can be configured to service any project and environment landscape. We will fit around your existing project management framework.
Environment design and build out is conducted through direct engagement of vendors, architects and engineering disciplines. It provides for environment configuration and software release management, enforcing software change management processes while assuring compliance. iTEM also helps you to manage environment access and conflict management between test programs and other engineering work, such as major release, demos, etc.
Our work with Thompson Reuters on their test environments improved their utilisation from 60% to over 200%, allowing testing to happen on time and to cost. Find out more in our case study.
The iTEM service can be tailored to your needs so if your software team is spending too much time and money on their test environments or you are simply not able to recruit the right kind of staff, contact us for an initial consultation to find out how we can assist you.
