Contemporary software development processes and tools have reinvented themselves to meet the pace and demands of modern Agile and DevOps practices. Yet, many organizations are still clinging on to legacy test management tools that create a bottleneck for your DevOps teams and are an infrastructure nightmare for the organization.
To put it simply, legacy test management tools have no place in today’s Agile-focused era. Many of these tools are clunky, bearing the weight of unnecessary features rather than practical, user-oriented functions.
When it comes to the larger automation suites, it hinders the speed and efficiency of DevOps teams. They can’t provide timely and enough coverage, thanks to the legacy.
The problems only compound as your software ages. From lack of support to high maintenance costs and inability to find resources that have expertise in the said legacy software. Problems are varied and acute. But not all old software or tools are legacy. Here are a few classic signs that your legacy software tool or Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution needs to be upgraded.
1. The True Cost of Legacy is Very Expensive
It is not just the prohibitive license costs. The maintenance and operational expenses keep piling up. Customizing your tool, building additional features, database expenses and consulting with industry experts – the real cost of running a legacy system is too high to be profitable.
2. When You Spend More Time Fixing Rather than Using the Tool
If you are investing more time and effort on fixing the tools and less time on test management and evolving your QA processes, then this is a sure sign of trouble.
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Dated interfaces, limited browser supports and a screen that often gets frozen, the legacy tool creates more trouble than it solves. Some classic symptoms of a tool that’s dragging its feet:
- Frequent software crashes
- Unmanageable navigation
- Unintuitive interface
- Poor visibility
3. Lack of Integrations and Support
The siloed architecture of legacy tools doesn’t allow for easy integration and support for your project management tools or CI/CD tools. To orchestrate the CI/CD pipeline, this interoperability is essential. Modern DevOps teams depend on various tools serving a unique purpose such as Selenium, Jira, Jenkins, Bamboo TestNG or Cucumber. If you can’t leverage the full potential of an integrated toolset, you are missing out on vital data points.
4. You cannot Scale Agile
In the recent past, as Agile and DevOps have become more mainstream, organizations need to deliver software at the speed of business. Legacy tools were designed for a different time and sometimes lack the modern approach to collaborative development and QA that is the cornerstone of Agile. This can slow your speed.
5. Poor Visibility and Lack of Real-time Insights
The very definition of agile demands fast-moving processes and preventing unnecessary delays. This means metrics that are available on-demand to show your progress and critical high-alert areas that need immediate attention.
Most modern test management tools offer high visibility with advanced analytics, dashboards and real-time reporting across projects. Using this data you can make informed quality decisions and avoid last-minute delays and setbacks.
Possible Solutions for having Modern Test Management Product
If any of these challenges sound familiar, then it is time to consider a change. When shopping for a modern test management tool, always look for someone with a proven migration process that enables easy transition of all data with minimum downtime.
Many companies such as QMetry offer productized migration solutions. Additionally, check for products that are DevOps-ready and integrated with issue tracking and automation tools.
Conclusion
With a DevOps-friendly solution, you will see benefits in terms of reusability, traceability, visibility, and extensive test coverage.