Tasktop Launches Sync 3.6 With New Test, Requirements Support

Tasktop, a provider of DevOps integration technology, has announced Tasktop Sync 3.6, a new version of the company’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) synchronization solution that extends requirement and test synchronization to systems and product delivery.

Building on the Artifact Relationship Management capabilities in the previous release, Sync 3.6 supports the intricate requirements management needs of embedded software development, as well as the disparate models found in test management.

Moreover, Tasktop Sync 3.6 extends its ecosystem to support IBM Rational DOORS and Jama, two requirements management tools found in systems engineering organizations. By adding this support, organizations that define requirements in these tools can enable their software engineering teams to use Agile planning tools like JIRA, Rally and VersionOne, and test management tools like HP Quality Center without losing the traceability across requirements, defects or tests.

“Our mission is to create an integration platform that supports complex workflows, without requiring custom coding or professional services,” said Dave West, chief product officer at Tasktop, in a statement. “We believe organizations should be able to design DevOps processes to suit their business needs. For example, if Tasktop customers want to integrate a test management system with an Agile planning tool that doesn’t have the notion of test artifacts, it’s up to us to figure out how to enable them to do that. That was the thinking behind Sync 3.6.”

Tasktop Sync is often used to enhance collaboration among software delivery stakeholders. However end-to-end traceability from systems requirements to software requirements, through test and defect management, is a pressing need for delivering high-quality products, the company said.

“Over the past two years, Tasktop Sync has transformed from ALM integration technology to an end-to-end DevOps integration bus,” said Tasktop CEO Mik Kersten in a blog post on the new release. “We’ve watched in amazement as some of our largest manufacturing customers created DevOps environments for hardware. Service virtualization is replaced by hardware simulation, continuous integration spans to hardware testing, and new software can be deployed to things that we drive.”

Tasktop Sync 3.6 expands support for systems already in the Sync ecosystem adding: Visual Studio Online support (to existing support of TFS); support for HP ALM 12, IBM RTC 5, IBM RRC (DOORS NG) 5, VersionOne 14 and Rally 2014 (on-premise). In addition, Sync extends support of ServiceNow to all “task” artifacts such as features, requests, approvals, knowledge bases items and more. This improves an organization’s ability to integrate ServiceNow into its software delivery processes and establish traceability across all DevOps functions.

“DevOps is being extended to physical product delivery, and the lifecycle of hardware and software will become increasingly connected,” Kersten said. “For this to happen, we need to create a new software-centric backbone for the product lifecycle—one which supports the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) backbone while supporting the continuous delivery of software and firmware. The first infrastructure software for that backbone is the new release of Tasktop Sync.”