Software testing in Exigen Services - Testing as a standalone service

From mid 1990s Exigen Services has been a recognized expert in custom software testing. Testing is a
crucial step in any systems-development project. Incomplete testing that leads to a failure in a production
environment, causes unnecessary risk to the business. If the system doesn't work properly you could
damage your brand, lose revenue, or inadvertently send customers to competitors.

In the course of thousands of projects in industries where the cost of failure is exceptionally high, such as
the healthcare and banking sectors, Exigen Services has gained a great deal of experience in software
testing and quality assurance.

Our company employs more than 250 quality engineers globally, a significant portion of which have
certifications from well-respected authorities such as ISTQB, or testing tools ISV such as HP Quality
Assurance.

In addition to testing within the scope of software development projects, Exigen Services offers
standalone testing services.

In 2008, The “Black Book of Outsourcing” rated Exigen Services as a #1 outsourcing vendor for software
testing and quality assurance.

Exigen Services testing practices include a wide variety of collaboration forms with customer. Our testing
background includes both local testing projects with participation of third party vendors as well as lasting
complex projects implemented jointly with customer in-house team.

Our approach is to introduce qualified test engineers to the SDLC as soon as possible. Gaining a solid
understanding of the business needs the system should satisfy allows our test engineers to find
discrepancies between the specifications and software behavior, as well as identify fundamental
misalignments between the business processes and the software developed. Exigen Services test
engineers actively communicate with the development team and other project stakeholders while
remaining independent as quality assessors. Their deliverables are not limited to pure defect lists, but
also includes carefully developed metrics, both on the project-level (defect containment effectiveness,
mean time to defect resolution, etc) and the product level (defect density, test automation coverage, etc).

Girts Baltaisbrencis (Business Unit Manager, Exigen Services, Latvia) says: "We are not just offering
testing services, as so many other companies do. We are performing an assessment of the client's
current testing processes and coming up with proposals for enhancements. The client has the option of
accepting all of our proposals, just a selected package, or none. Working with the client, we agree on how
best to proceed. Exigen Services is part of the process from start to finish, not only ready to develop the
testing strategy, but also execute it." (Girts Baltaisbrencis is a president of LSTQB (Latvia software
testing qualifications board) which is a member of ISTQB (international testing qualifications
board)

Besides utilizing testing expertise as a part of regular software development services, we are successfully
providing it as a separate offerings for many of our customers. It includes (but not limited to):

• Manual and automated functional testing

• Performance and load testing
• Application security testing
• Usability testing

Exigen Services thorough testing approach will give you the confidence that your system will satisfy your
business requirements. Exigen Services does not try to impose a single methodology on the customer;
instead, it helps the customer organize the testing process and make it transparent. Being tightly
integrated into customer team our testing experts play a role of independent software controller
performing audit and optimization of testing projects both on and offsite. Our testing project teams can
vary from two-three engineers to several tens of experts.
Regarding Exigen Services testing methodology Girts Baltaisbrencis (Business Unit Manager, Exigen
Services, Latvia) said: "We are using different methodologies and adapting to particular client or project
requirements based on client experience and current processes and environments."

Strategic testing assessment and implementation

We have found that the most successful testing engagements have followed a rigourously phased
approach. To ensure success going forward, we have formalized this phased approach into 4
standardized steps:
• From testing assessment (understanding the current state to upgrading customer testing
environment and processes)
• Via applying our testing expertise by on-going testing partnership
• To long-term testing optimization), with clear go/no-go decision points at the end of each step.

The benefit of this approach is that it builds in decision-making points at the optimum times in the project
to ensure that Exigen and our clients are in agreement on what needs to be done, and the engagement
can the proceed at full speed. It also offers built-in logical re-evaluation points for clients, where clients
have received specific outcome, and can decide to proceed or not proceed, depending on their perceived
value and resources.

Our testing automation tools: HP LoadRunner, HP QuickTest Professional (functional testing), Segue
SilkTest, HP Quality Center (test management), IBM Rational Robot, AutomatedQA, TestComplete, MS
Application Center Test, Compuware TestPartner, PMD, Selenium, Grinder, Fortify.

Exigen Services testing projects

Ongoing testing for one of the biggest mobile operators in Europe and USA
One of the biggest testing projects is run since 2005 for one of the biggest mobile operators of EC and
USA. The team consisting of 70 software testing engineers performs testing activities for a wide range of
applications, in particular, eShop as well as concomitants, partner business portals, self-service portals,
IVR-based solutions (customer support voice menus and web-services), BI-applications for financial
accounting and business planning and billing system.

Apart from it in 2005 that customer has established an Application Security Group, which is responsible
for security analysis of all customer IT-projects at various development stages, incorporating security into
application life cycle. Unlike Black Box testing as a usual practice at security assessment our experts
practice White Box approach that considerably increases testing efficiency.

System testing for a big European energy company

In duration of that project Exigen Services (a group of five software test engineers) has performed a full
automation of regression testing for one of the biggest SAP-based billing system in the world. Besides
testing automation our team has rendered aid in migration of billing system to a new software that
included the following functional features:

• Invoice generation
• Gas and electricity meters monitoring
• Generation of reports for business analysis

Within that project Exigen Services experts have performed regression testing including development and
maintenance of automated scripts and testing results analysis. The size of the tested system was one of
the major project challenges – it means a huge amount of work to prepare an adequate testing
environment.

Testing of loyalty and customer management solution

Another serious test-only project is run for a customer from USA provider of innovative on-demand
loyalty and customer management solution for retailers, providing integrated campaign, promotion,
loyalty, and affinity marketing capabilities. The customer has contracted Exigen Services as custom
testing vendor to increase number of releases of end product yearly, to improve system stability and
automate testing process. Our team including 5 software test engineers performs testing for 99% of the
customer system, including functionality for bonus definition and calculation, email campaigns, and
shopper tracking of account information.

Testing of security processing and maintenance system

The next testing project is carried on ongoing basis for a USA-based affiliate of a big international bank.
Our team of 6 testers have performed unit, component, integration, regression, smoke, non-functional,
and acceptance tests for Real time security processing and maintenance system on ongoing basis.
Within the responsibilities of our team was test plan creation, execution, reporting, improvement
suggestion, test execution, and manual and automated testing.

Testing of integrated platform for the coordination and management of development activities
Besides a series of test-only projects involving from 3 to 8 testing experts were performed within the
contract for Zurich based company operating globally with offices in Europe (Germany, UK, Switzerland
and Czech Republic) and North America, one of market leading providers of Software Application
Lifecycle Management solutions. Our experts performed acceptance testing (functional, smoke, cross-
platform, regression testing) for the integrated product supporting all stages of integrated platform for the
coordination and management of development activities.

For a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation Software Division in 1997-2003 a
team of 10-15 software test engineers performed Functional, Performance, Stress testing for Device
Drivers for OS/2 to support new hardware components (Desktop based). Within that project our testing
team was responsible for Test plan creation, execution, reporting, improvement. Both manual and
automated testing was applied
Another testing project for a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation was
dedicated to the functional, integration testing for Java Bean framework (web-based testing). In 1997-
2000 a team of 3-4 testers performed manual and automated testing. Our responsibilities included Test
plan creation, execution, reporting, improvement.

Quote: Exigen Services Vice President, Professional Services, David Webb: "Exigen Services believes
that IT outsourcing should mitigate the risk clients are often exposed to from large-scale IT initiatives, and
that outsourcing only succeeds when applications are delivered on time having been fully reviewed and
fully tested. To that end, we integrate quality assurance and testing methods deeply into every phase of
our development and project management process."

About Exigen Services

Exigen Services is the leading application outsourcing services provider, combining world class skills,
recognized expertise in development methodologies, and industry experience to reduce risks, lower costs
and deliver results. Exigen Services has pioneered a new approach to global application outsourcing,
Outsourcing 2.0, which includes commercial terms that optimize financial alignment between the client
and vendor. As a result, Exigen Services makes IT outsourcing a much easier and more beneficial
undertaking for global enterprises.
Since 2000, Exigen Services has been the global leader in the use of distributed Agile methods for rapid
and precise systems development throughout the banking, insurance, brokerage, healthcare,
telecommunications, government and media industries. Exigen Services has achieved high honors in a
variety of independent lists and rankings, including Brown & Wilson's Black Book of Outsourcing in 2008,
Global Services 100 in 2009, and Inc Magazine’s 2008 Inc5000. Exigen Services is also a top 10 provider
of outsourced product development. Clients range from mid-sized growth companies to Fortune 500
organizations, and include Sun Microsystems, CSC, Universal Music Group, Standard & Poor's, T-Mobile,
Westpac Bank and many others.
For more information, visit www.exigenservices.com.

Contacts
CORPORATE
HEADQUARTERS
505 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA94111 USA
+1 415 402 2600
sales@exigenservices.ru
Phone: +7 812 327 9900
Anastasia Novoseltseva, marketing communications director, Exigen Services
For information on Exigen Services call your local worldwide sales, service and technical support offices:
www.ExigenServices.com
Exigen Services is a registered trademark of Exigen Services, Ltd.