Overview Convergent’s vision is a world where com-posites manufacturing is a low risk activity in all phases, from initial design to production. It provides software and associated technologies to make this a reality. Convergent’s products include sophisticated software and hardware used for computer simulation and evaluation of manufacturing risk in producing complex com-posite structures used in the aerospace industry.

Challenge Thousands of aerospace manufacturing, re-search, and education clients use Convergent’s RAVEN Simulation Software to quickly evaluate

how critical material properties evolve during the cure cycle. RAVEN helps shorten cycle times and can trouble-shoot problems with ex-isting processes.

RAVEN is a solution under constant develop-ment, as Mike Zobac, Software Developer at Convergent, explains: “We are constantly add-ing features to our software in response to customer requests, and new developments in composite manufacturing technologies. With so many moving parts in the solution, software test-ing is important for us and this was done manu-ally. After developing a new feature or a bug fix, the development team would test this before committing the code. The problem with this is that there was never quite enough time for test-ing and the manual testing effort took our de-velopers away from core product enhancement work. And, as is inevitable in a manual process, mistakes would be made and faulty code would be issued. Thankfully this never led to any se-rious customer issues, but it made us realize that test automation could help us build a more robust and reliable testing process.”

SolutionConvergent is committed to open source soft-ware and tried an open source testing solution first. However, RAVEN is very graphics-heavy and Convergent needed a testing solution which could support this. When Zobac came

Convergent Manufacturing Technologies, Inc. (Convergent)Structured testing process with Silk solutions delivers development productivity improvement and complete code quality confidence.

At a Glance

Industry

Software & Technology

Location

Canada

Challenge

Replace a manual software testing process which was time-consuming and error-prone. The automated solution needed to be graphics-compatible and able to test custom controls.

Solution

Use Silk Test and Silk Central to introduce a streamlined and robust automated testing process.

Results

+ 15% development productivity improvement+ Increased confidence in delivered code quality+ Comprehensive functional and regression testing+ Clear reporting capabilities

Customer Success StorySilk TestSilk Central

“For an urgent customer request, we can implement, test, and release a feature the same day, using the Silk processes. When we commit the code we trigger the testing process and watch the results dashboard real-time. This gives us confidence that we are delivering quality code to our customers.“

MIKE ZOBACSoftware DeveloperConvergent Manufacturing Technologies, Inc.

Micro FocusUK HeadquartersUnited Kingdom+44 (0) 1635 565200

U.S. HeadquartersRockville, Maryland301 838 5000877 772 4450

Additional contact information and office locations: www.microfocus.com

across Silk Test™ he realized this could be the answer: “Silk Test is built around screenshot comparisons which is exactly what we needed for our graphical solution. We conducted a proof-of-concept in which we tested all our sce-narios and Silk came through with flying colors.”

Silk Test was implemented in-house and when help was needed Micro Focus® was on hand. Zobac comments: “The Silk documentation is excellent and any minor issues were solved very quickly through customer support. We had some quite unusual testing requirements and custom controls. However, Silk is so easily scriptable I have yet to come across something that I haven’t been able to make work.”

It became clear that the partnership between Silk Test and Silk Central™ could be beneficial to Convergent, using Silk Test to create the test cases and Silk Central to organize the testing schedule and reporting. Convergent created around 70 test cases. Now, close to 40 stan-dard tests are automatically run to test any new features. These exercise the UI and regression testing ensures the test results are consistent between different code builds. All code is in-cluded in the tests to determine if new code changes have had an adverse effect on exist-ing code. Tests are routinely run overnight and in the morning Silk Central will email the test results in an at-a-glance dashboard format so that it is instantly clear if tests have failed and corrective action needs to be taken.

The key-word driven integration between Silk Test and Silk Central means that tests can now be created and run from within Silk Central helping the Convergent team be more efficient.

Silk is also used for instant testing feedback, as Zobac explains: “For an urgent customer request, we can implement, test, and release a feature the same day, using the Silk processes. When we commit the code we trigger the test-ing process and watch the results dashboard real-time. This gives us confidence that we are delivering quality code to our customers.“

ResultsThe rigorous and more streamlined testing process has instilled a deep confidence in the Convergent development team. The code it delivers to its customers is reliable and of high quality.

Zobac concludes: “Using Silk to automate our test effort, we estimate a development produc-tivity improvement of at least 15%, which en-ables our developers to focus on core features and enhancing the solution for our customers. We are confident in the quality of our solution. The number of products we deliver is increasing all the time and our use of Silk tools will expand accordingly. It is now a vital part of our develop-ment life cycle.”

“The Silk documentation is excellent and any minor issues were solved very quickly through customer support.

We had some quite unusual testing requirements and custom controls. However, Silk is so easily scriptable I

have yet to come across something that I haven’t been able to make work.”

MIKE ZOBACSoftware Developer

Convergent Manufacturing Technologies, Inc.

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