A pioneering company in renewable energy management faced an ambitious schedule to release a next-generation version of their flagship software platform.
The firm had a core group of in-house developers that were balancing their work between their core software and auxiliary projects.
The client needed to develop custom testing and quality evaluation (QE) tools to accommodate the unique capabilities of its new technology.
Solution
The client engaged Brainspire to develop a custom testing application for their new platform as well as to develop custom User Interface components and a software installer for their new platform.
A custom application was written in .NET to allow for manual testing of the client’s new platform for both performance and accuracy. Scripting capabilities were built-in to the application to facilitate the creation of an automatable testing library. Test results are exportable to XML to allow for additional analysis and recordkeeping.
Brainspire customized and extended a third-party .NET UI chart component to allow it to display multiple streams of real-time data and to integrate it within the client’s software.
A custom installer was developed in .NET and PowerShell to deploy the client’s software to both local and remote servers. The installer queries a wide range of system information, provides exportable XML logs of its activities, features a customizable configuration and supports third-party dependencies such as application frameworks and database servers.
Brainspire coordinated with the client’s development team to synchronize the development of these projects with their rapidly evolving platform.
Brainspire also worked with the client’s QE team and other key personnel to insure that the testing application would address current and foreseeable requirements.
Knowledge transfer and ease of maintenance was emphasized throughout the project by integrating client and consultant staff and delivering onsite training and supporting documentation for all three projects.
Benefits
Improved productivity for the client’s development team who were able to focus on their core expertise while Brainspire worked on supporting projects.
Increased the involvement of the client’s QE team in the new platform by providing testing tools earlier in the development process than what would have been possible otherwise.
