For those moving all test assets to Visual Studio 2010 the main challenge will be to migrate those assets while servicing their ongoing change programme. Those organisations that are unable to completely migrate to Visual Studio 2010 will have to understand how to maximise the features supplied by the Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 to provide a consistent view of status and progress across all their development projects.

Other than migration of test assets these organisations will also have to implement a mixture of synchronisation between tools and cross platform reporting. There are strong arguments for and against each of these approaches: migration, synchronisation and cross platform reporting.

Migration is the cleanest solution because it drives a single development and testing platform using Visual Studio 2010. As discussed earlier many organisations have made significant investment in their development and test assets to make this leap in the short to medium term.

Synchronisation has often been looked at as a solution for integrating tools in corporate environments. An instance of this we have often met in the past is the synchronisation of defects between JIRA and HP Quality Centre. While this has been achieved in some cases it has failed in others due to trying to impose change of process on teams in order to make the tools synchronise. If organisations are to succeed with synchronisation when implementing Visual Studio 2010 it will be necessary to understand the impact on teams and the amount of rework to existing business processes.

One of the biggest challenges faced by organisations with multiple testing tools is to get a single view of testing across the organisation. Using Microsoft Excel is probably one of the most widely used tools to extract and present data. However it often proves to be arduous and time consuming and in reality is not really best media for reporting information to senior stakeholders. Using a common portal for reporting status and progress across all testing tools will provide some significant advantages. Cross platform reporting will enable stakeholders to get a single common view of test status and results. It will also allow teams to

continue to work without the impact of change and this approach reduces the complexity associated with moving data between systems whilst minimising the impact of change.

Conclusion

When using Visual Studio 2010 as a development and testing platform, it is essential to have a strategy for adoption and deployment. The strategy must address how to manage an existing change programme to ensure that the system delivery is not affected by any tools changes. It is also important to consider whether data migration is appropriate, or whether it would be better to retain multiple testing tools and use a global reporting tool, like QAView, to view test reports and project status without impacting projects.

Finally, to ensure deployment success, it is important to find the right blend of skills and knowledge to set up and implement any software testing tools transition. Ultimately the goal is to maximise the potential to unleash the full power of Visual Studio 2010 to unlock business processes and to drive down costs.

About GreenMango

GreenMango is a Microsoft Inner Circle partner and is the leading supplier of testing specialist services and software focused on the Visual Studio 2010 platform. The company focuses on using the power of Microsoft technologies to help companies improve systems and process to drive down costs and improve the quality of software developed. Their portfolio consists of technical and business testing specialist services to help companies increase quality, reduce costs, and deliver projects successfully.

They also develop software to enable clients to achieve more for less. GreenMango’s QAView provides an integrated real-time view of testing progress and software quality across multiple testing tools and platforms. The software provides reports through Microsoft SharePoint to consolidate data from tools such as HP Quality Center and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Test Manager.