Borland unveiled a 'release readiness' system earlier this week called TeamInspector, which gathers and reveals key metrics used in software development, in order to counter the 'appalling reputation' of IT projects and to make sure new applications work properly and are fit for purpose.
The company says that TeamInspector can analyse code, test coverage and the build trends, and make sure that the new software application is standards compliance. All this is designed to give the development manager factual evidence that the software they deliver is ready for customer use.
The product presents metrics in a dashboard displaying real-time and trend information across projects. This information is apparently gathered by TeamInspector's automated inspectors and aggregate key readiness metrics from an array of developer test utilities, static code analysis and build tools.
Borland said that TeamInspector will be part of Borland Management Solutions, the software delivery management platform that enables companies to track, measure, predict and improve delivery performance and quality.
But isn't this just a typical software testing application then? Well, it is part of the software testing remit, Borland admitted.
"Borland views 'release readiness' as one element within the larger scope of software testing and our differentiation lies in our open, management level and metric driven approach," the company told Techworld via email.
"TeamInspector has the capability to inspect various third party tools related to code analysis, standards compliance, test coverage and build trends; the results (risk indicators and trends) are then revealed to management in a single cross-project dashboard ensuring visibility across your entire software project portfolio."
"TeamInspector works both in Java and .Net shops," the company added. "Specifically, TeamInspector has inspectors for several developer test coverage, test success, code analysis and build tools, including: Ant, NAnt, Checkstyle, Emma, JUnit and NUnit. Borland has plans to continue to add to this inspector library and to provide interfaces for generic inspector connections."
Borland said that "IT projects in general have an appalling reputation for being over budget, delayed and failing to fulfil the requirements of the business. However, it is very rare that software is given specifically as the reason for these problems. One notable exception was the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco, where a lack of testing was blamed on a software systems failure," the company said.