Idealoutcome
Idealoutcome, a reverse auction company, focused on a new breed of software testing with Agitar to offer a better web-based trading experience to customers.
Fast Facts
| Industry: | Online Ecommerce |
| Challenge: | To improve the crucial software development phase of Idealoutcome’s web auction interface and to enhance supplier and purchaser satisfaction within the online trading environment |
| Solution: | Agitar’s combined Agitator and Dashboard enterprise developer testing product |
| Benefits: | Robust, healthy software. Higher degree of standardization in the software development lifecycle, faster software development time, greater quality assurance, and value-add to the business through possibilities to enable future change |
UK-based Idealoutcome is an online reverse auction trading service providing a highly effective, quick, easy-to-use, low cost e-auction service for a range of products. Suppliers bid against each other in real-time to win business from clients, enabling purchasers to achieve best-price supply solutions for their requirements. Software constitutes the heart of Idealoutcome’s business proposition. Idealoutcome recognized that increased attention on its core software was the best way in which to improve auction performance.
"We saw testing as a way to fortify the processes involved in the ongoing development of our auction software. The certainty it gives us about the behaviour of our code gives us confidence to promote our software as a trusted trading tool," said Michael Joyce, Lead Developer at Idealoutcome.
Idealoutcome’s standard tool JUnit did not provide the company with satisfactory results. The task of deciding which tests to run is done by the very person being tested. As Michael Joyce said, "It is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop."
The Solution: Agitar’s Software Quality Initiative with Business Benefits
Originally using a JUnit testing solution, it was not until an Agitar product demonstration in London that the company realized how much potential to improve existed. Understanding the immediate and long-terms benefits of a testing solution that "agitates" the code with multiple tests as it is being written, Idealoutcome purchased permanent access to Agitar’s combined Agitator and Dashboard developer testing solution.
Implemented instantly, the developer now has the ability to verify the quality of a software unit before it is integrated with the rest of the system, ensuring that any bugs in the code are discovered and fixed immediately, when it’s easiest and cheapest to do so. Idealoutcome software is now continuously subject to 30,000 daily tests run automatically by Agitator.
"Looking forward, having the Agitar tool in place will assist us in bringing new people on board to help with development work as the industry evolves," Joyce said. "The long-term benefit for us lies in being able to modify the risky areas of our code to become less so. Agitator already provides us with a complete database of understanding about our own software and with time, the quality assurance process will become increasingly demonstrable in other areas."