Controlling Quality

Track 3.5 involves the enterprise in error tracking

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By Rich Levin
Issue date: March 25, 1996

Soffront Software Inc., a small Silicon Valley company, intends to change the way global corporations man-age enterprise application development.

Soffront will release Track version 3.5, its defect management system, at the Software Development '96 trade show in San Francisco on March 25. The Milpitas, Calif., company's product, which will consist of Track Client and Track Server, will look beyond the application development phase to deployment, and allow corporations to involve help desk, trainers, technical support specialists, and users in project life-cycle management.

Track promises to pick up where version control and change management systems leave off. "[Life- cycle] information is most commonly kept in a disjunct fashion," says Rory Roybal, director of engineering development for software developer Phoenix Technologies Ltd. in Irvine, Calif. "A lot of administrative time is wasted and efficiency lost as a result of not having that information integrated and available."

Track will monitor, document, and improve the software development process. It will also isolate weaknesses and identify patterns. This will result in shorter development cycles and fewer program defects, say users. "We're able to look at exactly what happened [on a project] and, based on previous releases and their different requirements, we're able to come up with accurate time estimate s for future releases," says Kirsten Thompson, quality assurance analyst with Pepsi International in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Moving defect management out of the lab and onto the enterprise network seems to have resonated with IS buyers. Since Soffront introduced Track in January 1993, it has sold more than 10,000 licenses worldwide, according to company officials.

After Pepsi deployed Track eight months ago, its development forecasting improved exponentially, Thompson says. "It's great to be able to go into planning sessions with hard statistics."
Track Client will require Microsoft Windows, Windows 95, or Windows NT. Track Server can be installed on a LAN or a standalone PC.

A single-user license is expected to cost $595, with site licenses and multiuser discounts available. Soffront Software can be reached at http://www.soffront.com

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