Just as writers need editors, software developers need testers to ensure their applications are bug-free and work as they should. This applies whether applications are bought off the shelf or developed in-house.
Not finding a potentially damaging software glitch is what keeps IT managers awake at night, mainly because existing testing systems are not as efficient as they could be, says Praveen Madire, founder of independent software testing company, Test Triangle. It is this gap in efficiency that Madire's company is addressing through its innovative Test Outsourcing Dashboard (TOD) platform launched last June.
"Companies will often use an outside contractor for testing but this is not without its challenges," Madire says. "From talking to clients we repeatedly heard concerns about offshore test teams being located in different time zones. This had a negative impact on collaboration and affected the client's ability to talk directly to the team to get up to date information on the project. The TOD platform was built to solve these types of challenges by integrating internal and external tools such as JIRA and Zephyr.
“Our single portal system works in real time and minimises the challenges and impact on companies using an outsourcing model.
“Our platform basically changes the manner in which the off-site team can communicate and work with the client,” Madire adds. “It provides an easy to navigate front-end web page that allows companies easy access to all of their current projects with us for testing. They can view the status of each project and open specific items to check on progress. The TOD also supports an easy exchange of project files with clients and contains collaborative features such as chat, video conferencing and email.”
Indian-born Madire came to Ireland in 2001 to pursue a postgraduate degree in IT at Dublin City University. He then joined IBM as a graduate engineer and stayed there until 2010 when he moved to US technology company, Avaya. He set up Test Triangle in 2012 and his company now employs seven people in Ireland and 10 in India.
Test Triangle provides quality assurance and testing services to a range of sectors including IT, banking, finance, manufacturing and healthcare. “When a client selects us they automatically get free access to our system and we base our testing charges on a per day rate,” Madire says.
Foreign Affairs
“A recent example of our Test Outsourcing Dashboard in action was the provision of testing services for the Department of Foreign Affairs’ webpage and the mobile phone applications that can be used to apply for a new passport card.
“Any bugs found in the application were uploaded to TOD so that they could be prioritised, resolved by the software programmers and then retested by Test Triangle. This ensured that the most important items were assigned the highest priority and that everyone was working from a single source of information. This in turn removes the risk of project members working with out of date information.”
Fingal Enterprise Office has supported the company with an employment grant valued at €40,000. The rest of the development costs for the Test Outsourcing Dashboard have been met internally. Madire says Test Triangle will create an additional 10 jobs in Ireland and 30 more in India by the end of next year.
“Our potential customers are IT managers, software development managers and testing managers in all sectors and they can be anywhere in the world as our system works seamlessly across multiple time zones,” says Madire.
"Of course there are other testing companies out there, but none of them have a smart platform like TOD. This certainly gives us the edge not least because it solves a lot of problems for those involved in software testing. We will market the platform using a combination of approaches including direct sales and social media campaigns on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. "
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