EPiServer delivers Web content management, online social community, and e-commerce solutions to businesses worldwide. To improve product lifecycles through closer collaboration between developers and testers, the company’s development team deployed the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system, focusing on testing and lab management tools to improve development processes and overall code quality.
Business Needs
EPiServer, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner headquartered in Sweden, has more than 3,000 business customers around the world that rely on its flagship product—EPiServer CMS—to create compelling and collaborative Web sites.
 |
The testing and lab management tools in Visual Studio 2010 give our developers greater insight into what our test teams are doing. It is a distinct advantage to have developers and testers working within the same tool set.  |
|
|
Pelle Niklasson
Development Manager
EPiServer |
|
|
The EPiServer CMS platform is used daily by more than 130,000 Web editors and serves as the foundation for more than 9,000 Web sites. EPiServer also hosts Web sites from its EPiServer Hosting Center. EPiServer sells its solutions to a global network of more than 400 partners, who in turn sell the EPiServer technology to end customers.
The EPiServer software development team has about 60 people working in several countries, including Sweden, Ukraine, Vietnam, and India. Developers do unit testing and then hand over code to quality-assurance staff for manual, user interface, and regression testing. The team uses scrum methodology and operates in sprint cycles of between two and four weeks depending on the project. Throughout the EPiServer CMS lifecycle, the development team issues major releases at least once a year, two or three smaller releases during the year, and multiple service packs. The team also creates modules that support the basic platforms, such as online social community and e-commerce platforms.
The EPiServer team has traditionally used the Microsoft Visual Studio development system for its core development work and HP QuickTest Professional for testing and quality assurance. The use of two different platforms created inefficiencies in getting products to market.
“One of our major challenges was that the testing tool was in a completely different environment than the development tools, with test cases in different repositories. It was very difficult for developers to gain insights into how test cases were being managed,” says Per Bjurström, Senior Developer and Architect for EPiServer. The team faced other issues as well, such as the need to create its own testing tools and processes for nightly builds.
Solution
In late 2009, EPiServer decided to deploy beta versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and Visual Studio Lab Management 2010. The company wanted to focus first on testing and lab management tools, so it could enhance the software lifecycle using one environment for development and testing.
EPiServer adopted Microsoft Test Manager 2010, a new tool designed for creating, managing, and running manual tests associated with projects created in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. Test Manager 2010 is available with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Microsoft Visual Studio Test Professional 2010. It includes test plan management to help coordinate testing efforts as well as capabilities to file rich context bugs. With Test Manager, EPiServer can record the actions performed during a manual test and then play back the recording to locate specific steps. Additionally, the development team takes advantage of Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 to create and manage complex virtual environments for test execution and build automation.
As the team fully deploys the solution, it plans to take advantage of other new and enhanced features. These include the IntelliTrace debugging tool, which helps reduce the time needed for debugging processes, and the enhanced Visual Studio 2010 profiler, which helps to optimize software performance by delivering detailed information about a program’s behavior as it executes.
Benefits
EPiServer is using Visual Studio 2010 tools to streamline and consolidate the processes that go into producing a final product. With the integration of testing tools, EPiServer will eventually be able to phase out other testing tools and use a development environment that makes it easier to coordinate testing and development efforts. The company expects that testing improvements such as IntelliTrace and action recordings will reduce the time spent identifying bugs. And with the enhanced profiling tool, the team anticipates being able to increase quality while reducing costs associated with third-party tools.
Better Coordination of Development and Testing Processes
Test Manager 2010 and Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 are helping the EPiServer team improve coordination between development and testing efforts. “The testing and lab management tools in Visual Studio 2010 give our developers greater insight into what our test teams are doing,” says Niklasson. “It is a distinct advantage to have developers and testers working within the same tool set.”
Shorter Debugging Time with New Testing Tools
The EPiServer team expects IntelliTrace will be invaluable in streamlining debugging processes. Pelle Niklasson, Development Manager at EPiServer, says, “In the past, trying to find where a bug occurred could be time-consuming—it can be very hard to crash the system or re-create the state where the bug occurred. In the long run, IntelliTrace will help reduce the time needed to locate and fix bugs in our code.” He adds that with snapshots of the environment linked to the bug, developers can more quickly connect to the environment in which the bug was filed.
Increased Code Quality at a Lower Cost
By using the enhanced Visual Studio 2010 profiling tool, EPiServer developers can increase the quality of code while saving money. For example, after the nightly build workflow, the environment reverts to a clean snapshot. New builds are deployed and tests are run in this clean environment, improving overall build quality. The entire team also has access to profiling tools. “We could not give all developers access to a good profiler in the past,” says Niklasson. “We’ve had to use expensive third-party tools, so they could not be distributed across the entire team. With the enhanced profiling capability in Visual Studio 2010, we expect to produce much higher quality code at a lower cost and with better performance for our software.”
For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published March 2010
