In the Global Engineering Center "Metran" the project of migration on a new development environment and testings is complete

Emerson Process Management completed migration on the new version of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 in one of the key Russian divisions – the Global Engineering Center based on Metran Industrial group.

Choice basis

To provide the highest quality of products, specialists of GITs hold careful testing of a metering equipment including using the software. Each new modification of a measuring device requires completion of software for carrying out tests. The wide range of the released sensors and their specificity led to complication of production processes. Besides, by a certain moment at the enterprise there were about 150 different testing programs.

The GITs programmers long time successfully used practically all functionality of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2005. These services perfectly corresponded to the development processes of information systems which settled in the company and allowed to solve the most part of the existing problems. However over time it became clear that this functionality is not enough. For example, the lack of management tools requirements, possibilities of testing of the user interface and insufficient support of UML was mentioned. Improvement of testing approaches of a program code stood a separate task: it was carried out manually without maintaining the single database of errors and corrections. For increase in efficiency the big transparency of process was required.

"2 years ago we considered the possibility of transition to Team Foundation Server 2008, but did not implement it as advantages of this version over TFS 2005 to us were not basic. While Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 contains those opportunities which were necessary for us. Unlike the similar TFS 2010 systems allows to save not just competently files and to take the necessary data, but also to leave comments on errors of the previous versions of the developed software. Also we were attracted by close integration of TFS 2010 with other products of development tools the Visual Studio. This integration is very important for development and testing of systems as it allows to perform quickly information search", – Sergey Kolody, the head of department of software development of the Global Engineering Center notes.

Solution

At the beginning of 2011 the company started a full-scale implementation project of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. Project implementation was completely enabled by specialists of the Engineering Center.

Results

Thanks to TFS 2010 specialists could solve successfully assigned tasks among which there is a management of workflow (planning, problem definition and tracking of their accomplishment), statistical analysis of the code, a possibility of testing of the user interface and ensuring high-quality support of UML. At the same time high-speed performance of a system considerably improved, and control of versions became more transparent.

The main advantage which was got by GITs developers, – a possibility of the effective distributed software development. Thanks to the HTTP protocol which is used for data transmission in TFS 2010 idle time and easy access to project data is possible from any place in the world.

Opinion

"Microsoft Visual Studios and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 give to modern developers ample opportunities on work performance improvement, and testers receive modern tools for debugging and testing of a program code. Thanks to integrated solutions for creation of the most modern applications and solutions Microsoft helps IT specialists to make the contribution to business development of the companies", – Alexander Lozhechkin, the director of the department of strategic technologies, Microsoft in Russia noted.