News

SmartBear Releases ALM Tools

• By Michael Desmond
• November 2, 2010

Headlining today's launch is QAComplete, a test case management, requirements management and defect tracking tool based on SmartBear's SoftwarePlanner application lifecycle management (ALM) package, now known as ALMComplete. QAComplete extends the capabilities of the previous product and adds integration with third-party ALM products, including Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), HP Quality Center, IBM Rational Team Concert, as well as open source solutions like Subversion, according to Gottfried Sehringer, chief marketing officer at SmartBear Software.

"We do integrate with a large variety of applications, so if people have their own bug tracking tool already in place they can integrate with us," Sehringer said.

QAComplete includes bi-directional requirements tracking between QA and development teams, rich reporting and analytics, and the TestComplete automated testing tool for managing test cases.QAComplete is available both via SaaS delivery and as an on-premise application.

SmartBear also today launched DevComplete, a project management package that provides requirements management, defect tracking and other capabilities critical to software development managers. The software is optimized for both Agile and Waterfall programming methodologies, and allows managers to link issues and defects to source code and requirements. Like QAComplete, DevComplete can be either deployed on-premise or as a hosted service.

Sehringer said the SaaS offerings reflect SmartBear Software's focus on ease of deployment and use. "We've heard several things from our customers. One of them is that implementations take way too long," Sehringer said. "What really makes us unique as a company is that we are looking out for the developer, the tester and the team. We are not trying to sell million dollar solutions to the CEO. We are really trying to provide the right solution to the teams that really need it."

The DevComplete and QAComplete products are also available as part of a larger bundle, called ALMComplete, that also adds collaboration features.

Three in One
Today's release comes about four months after SmartBear Software merged with two other companies -- test automation provider AutomatedQA and project and test management vendor Pragmatic Software. Sehringer said that the quick integration between the various firms' products was possible because SmartBear had been partnering with both AutomatedQA and Pragmatic Software well in advance of the July 2010 merger.

In an effort to get the test and developer communities familiar with its products, SmartBear also announced two freely available, Web-based ALM offerings: QAPlanner and DevPlanner. QAPlanner tracks test cases using a Web-based interface, while DevPlanner does the same thing for managers needing to track tasks and manage projects.

Pricing for QAComplete and DevComplete both start at $399 per year per named user. Concurrent licenses are also available

Ultimately, said Sehringer, the goal is to create solutions that development and QA teams will actually use.

"If it's not used by a team it becomes shelfware," Sehringer said of ALM applications. "It's not only UI navigation. It's how easy is it to access, how many people do I have to check with before I use it? Those sorts of things."