Optimal performance is a key requirement for today’s mission-critical business applications, which have become more and more complex as trends like Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Enterprise Application Integrations (EAI) become more prevalent. However, load testing solutions alone have failed to ensure that applications will meet their performance goals in time before deployment. A primary reason is that while load testing tools are useful at identifying performance bottlenecks, they often fail to guide their users in exactly how to resolve them. As a result, time is wasted in what might be called a “blame game” between QA and system engineering about who is responsible to finally fix the issue, which results in excessive cost overruns and missed release schedules.

Borland Software Corporation is a market-leading independent software tools vendor. Our business is based on providing customers with effective solutions to their software development and testing problems. This paper describes our Quality Maturity Curve concept, which we believe will enhance the way software delivery organizations go about improving the quality of their development processes and delivered products.

More and more companies are moving to agile software delivery approaches. But agile delivery brings with it a new set of challenges; among them, functional test automation - opinion is divided in the Agile community on the value of automated testing. However the reality is that software teams must manage quality if they are to avoid operational risk. Businesses are encouraged to adopt an agile process that fits their unique needs. Nothing about agile is pre-determined or dictated so it’s no surprise that businesses find it challenging to implement agile as a trusted business process – using tools to automate their agile delivery process is yet another variable that complicates the decisions they must make.

This paper describes how you can use Borland’s Quality Maturity Curve™ (QMC) concept to achieve your quality objectives in an efficient, step-by-step manner. You’ll learn how Borland’s approach to lifecycle quality management (LQM) enables you to determine manageable, achievable, and affordable steps to improving the quality of your development processes and delivered products. Borland is the only vendor with integrated tools and process, a “whole lifecycle” approach to quality, and proven best practices to help you achieve all of your quality management goals.

Poor software quality carries with it tremendous costs to an organization. Today, virtually every business depends on software for the development, production, distribution and/or after-sales support of products and services. According to a 2002 study conducted by the United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), poor software quality in the United States alone results in a cost to the U.S. economy of $60 billion per year.