The Seapine View

Dr. Dobbs announced QA Wizard Pro 2011 won a Jolt Productivity Award in the Testing and Debugging category. For those of you new to Seapine, QA Wizard Pro is our automated functional testing and web load testing solution. Here is what Dr. Dobbs had to say about QA Wizard Pro 2011:

“Seapine Software’s QA Wizard Pro 2011 shines as a Jolt Productivity Award winner with features to make even the most experienced testing teams reach new levels of productivity. Web testing often presents challenges not found in other types of testing. QA Wizard Pro not only gives testers features, but also options. Scripting is open to third party tools, so teams can continue to leverage existing editors. Multi-language testing is also included as Unicode is supported.

Errors encountered during testing typically bring the testing effort to a halt — not so with this product. Continuous playback lets you essentially create “try-catch” blocks to handle errors — a familiar programming construct for developers. Comments can be added at test execution time and helps remove the guess-work from interpreting test results.

Validation is not limited to pixels and named components. Using QA Wizard’s powerful OCR feature, one can validate data from graphs, charts, and even Flash data, among others.

QA Wizard Pro is designed to integrate with Seapine’s suite of testing tools providing additional value not found in many standalone testing tools.”

Thank you Dr. Dobbs and congratulations to everyone at Seapine involved with making QA Wizard Pro an award-winning product!

TestTrack product manager, Paula Rome, was recently interviewed on the topic of Agile Development by Mike Lippis for the Outlook Series. Listen to the interview.

In this interview, Paula shares her perspective with Mike on how tenets of Agile and traditional methodologies can, and often should, coexist to efficiently develop software. As described on the Outlooks Series web site:

“Agile development can boost the productivity of developers, QA testers, product owners—and ultimately, increase the value of what is delivered to customers. Agile also enables development teams to collaborate better, and shortens release cycles. So, even if your team is not completely immersed into agile development, you are probably seeking to make parts of your process more Agile. To meet that challenge, you need the flexibility to run Agile and traditional software development projects in parallel without different teams having to use different tools. Whether your organization is using iterative waterfall, scrum, or another development methodology, you need a solution that adapts to the way your team works. We interview Paula Rome to gain Seapine Software’s perspective on Agile Development.”

Along the way, you’ll also learn a bit about how the various products in Seapine’s ALM solution work together to facilitate Agile development. For an even more in-depth discussion of Agile, join our Agile Expedition.

SD Times recognized Seapine in the application lifecycle management platforms category of their annual SD Times 100. According to SD Times, “as we review the year past, the editors of SD Times hereby recognize the top leaders and innovators of our glorious industry. The 100 companies and projects listed herein have ably demonstrated their ability to set the agenda and advance the state of the art.”

Thank you Seapine customers for helping us achieve seven consecutive years of success in the SD Times 100!

Jeff Amfahr, our director of product management, was interviewed by CMC Media’s Patrick Egan for their Agile Journal. Watch as Jeff talks about Seapine ALM 2010.1′s new features, including Agile support, and what’s next for Seapine.

TestTrack 2010, our biggest TestTrack update in recent memory, shipped yesterday. There is something for everyone in TestTrack 2010, including the introduction of our new requirements management tool called TestTrack RM.

Take a look at what’s new in TestTrack 2010 and learn more about TestTrack RM. From requirements management through development, testing, delivery, and customer feedback, TestTrack 2010 provides unparalleled management and traceability of development artifacts. Said another way, TestTrack 2010 is sure to become your best friend if you’re involved in the management of software product development.

We recently released an upgrade to our software configuration management solution, Surround SCM. A few of the more notable new features in Surround SCM 2009.1 are the following:

• Support for storing all data in Oracle databases. Surround SCM now supports Oracle, MS SQL Server, and PostgreSQL as data storage options.
• Windows Explorer and Mac Finder integration, which lets you access Surround SCM commands directly from the operating system without launching the Surround client.
• Microsoft Office 2007 integration so you can manage documents in Surround SCM directly from Office 2007.
• Dreamweaver CS4 integration lets you manage Web site and Web application assets in Surround SCM without leaving the Dreamweaver CS4 IDE.

Here is a more complete list of the new features in Surround SCM 2009.1.

Today is an exciting day at Seapine. TestTrack 2010 is entering public beta, and with it TestTrack RM. The TestTrack 2010 product family includes TestTrack Pro for issue management, TestTrack TCM for test case management, and TestTrack RM for requirements management. For cradle-to-grave traceability, you’ll find the TestTrack product family is a unique and complete solution.

So what can you do with TestTrack RM? Here are some of the key features:

Requirements Management

• Whether you use functional requirements, technical specifications, or user stories, you can configure requirement types to match your methodology.
• Ensure the information you need to properly define, evaluate, and prioritize your requirements is captured with custom fields.
• Organize requirements by release, by functional area, by project, by team. You get to decide.
• Reuse requirements by sharing them between requirement documents.
• Get started quickly with the ability to import existing requirement documents from Microsoft Word. You can also export to Microsoft Word to share requirements with users who will not or should not log in.
• View traceability information, status information, project volatility, and more with built-in reports.

Continue reading…

SD Times recognized Seapine in the application lifecycle management and software configuration management categories of their annual SD Times 100. Of 78 vendors spread across 14 categories, we were one of only 12 vendors recognized in more than one category.

Thank you Seapine customers for helping us achieve six consecutive years of success in the SD Times 100!

Today we released QA Wizard Pro 2009.1, a major update to our automated software testing solution. While only receiving a .1 increment in the version number, QA Wizard Pro gains a number of significant new features, the coolest of which is drag-and-drop scripting. In QA Wizard Pro 2009.1, you can drag controls onto scripts, statements onto scripts, statements onto controls, controls onto statements, and even scripts onto scripts to build tests. So, whether you think in action-object or object-action constructs, we’ve got you covered.

There are many other new features and enhancements in QA Wizard Pro. Check it out.

A little know fact, even within Seapine, is that the digital tree is not our original logo. I recently copied files off an old Macintosh Quadra 700 and came across some of our early logo designs. Looking at those designs took me through the evolution of the Seapine logo we use today. Here’s the back story.

When working on the design of our logo in June of 1995, the engineer in me took the logical approach—the logo must consist of the sea and a pine tree. It was so obvious! So we fired up Illustrator and Canvas and went to work.

Continue reading…