Original Software has announced the launch of Qualify which it says was designed from the ground up to answer the growing need for QA to be less siloed. The company says Qualify has brought effective Quality Management right into the heart of the software delivery process and comes off the back of a survey which highlighted discontent in the market, with 84 percent of users stating that current products do not meet their functional requirements.

Built with the purpose of directly answering these needs, Original says Qualify unites all aspects of the software development lifecycle from requirements through to release. It is also fully integrated with Original Software’s manual and automated test execution solutions for the user interface and database layers. Qualify encompasses requirements, planning, scheduling, resource management, test execution, defect management and reporting in one platform, ensuring collaboration and communication throughout. The methodology agnostic, entirely code-free Quality Management solution, even comes complete with a smart phone interface, allowing instant access to cross-project information from just about anywhere.

“With more complexity in IT projects and a need to respond faster to changing markets, development teams have had to adapt the way they work, requiring processes and technology to support the dynamic nature of their businesses. The absence of a holistic solution for ensuring quality when managing the Software Development Life Cycle has been a bone of contention with the customers we speak with,” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. “Products such as HP Quality Centre are too rigid and have a siloed approach, limited to test management. Research shows that such an approach is incapable of addressing current needs. Collaboration needs to happen not just within the QA team, but among the entire project team as well.”

A report about Qualify from independent analyst group Ovum, noted “Organisations gain a centralised view of all their quality processes and tasks from project inception through to release. The product is also configurable to a great extent enabling organisations to fit the solution to their processes and workflow. Qualify supports a range of development methodologies including Agile, waterfall, and hybrid processes as well.”

According to Original, Qualify’s workflow means that users don’t have to be straight-jacketed into a particular way of working. There are options to select one of the pre-existing templates based on popular methodologies or build their own models quickly and easily. And more importantly, there is no need to choose just one. They can run multiple projects each using different methodologies, something that, the survey proved, is becoming more commonplace in today’s market, with 72 percent stating that their development departments were using combined methodologies. 

www.origsoft.com/qualify