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Extreme Networks

How Extreme Networks accelerated their cloud-based Agile transformation

Company overview

In response to growing demand for more cloud offerings faster, Aerohive (later acquired by Extreme Networks) committed to an Agile transformation. The organization had been adopting Agile principles here and there, but the lack of an enterprise vision held back their success. Then, in 2018, a new VP of engineering made it his mission to truly adopt Agile to deliver innovation faster and more efficiently.

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    Industry: Technology
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    Organization size: 1,001-5,000
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    Location: United States
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Challenges

Jira quickly became the source of truth for each development cycle. However, their legacy test case management tool lacked key integrations to Jira. This slowed the “fail fast” mentality critical for high-velocity Agile releases. Engineers and managers had to manually look up daily test runs and report on progress. This process not only required 30+ minutes per report per day, but also created a testing bottleneck that delayed feedback. Engineers lacked visibility into the testing process, including test coverage for critical features.

Recognizing that Jira was not built for test management, they sought out a tool with best-in-class Jira integration. According to Kevin Lin, Director of Cloud and Wireless QA, “At the end of the day, it’s all about efficiency and saving the engineers’ time.”

Core obstacles:

  • Legacy test management tool didn’t integrate with Jira, which is central to the Agile approach
  • Test information was siloed in different test frameworks
  • Manual effort to report on testing by engineers and managers – 30 minutes per report per day
  • Limited visibility from requirements to test coverage and results
  • Testing spans both products, wired and cloud wireless products, that interoperate
  • Extensive manual work was required to identify, execute, and interpret tests for each new or modified feature

Solution

The company selected Tricentis qTest for its ability to help testers and developers alike. Their first step was to tie test cases to Jira user stories through the webhook integration. This visibility allowed developers to see the results of test runs instantly.

Over the course of four to six months, the team reduced release times from quarterly to monthly by defining bite-sized releases and tracking them in qTest. Their approach was to start with a few features and products, then over time add more features while still reducing cycle times within an efficient feedback loop. Traceability and visibility were critical in achieving that incremental speed.

“I think having the right tools and the right process has been critical when it comes to our ability to increase the scope and speed of each release. We started with a framework for doing the right things and then just built on top of that. qTest makes it much easier for team members to expand on the current process to deliver more.”

 

“We need to get as many platforms working in the cloud wireless environment as quickly as possible. Tricentis qTest has been an extremely critical tool for us to be able to achieve that—certainly from a test perspective, and also from an organizational program perspective.”

Kevin Lin — Director, Cloud & Wireless QA

  • Arrow IconTricentis helped network infrastructure giant, Extreme Networks, accelerate their cloud-based Agile transformation with significantly fewer resources.

A new phase

In 2019, Aerohive was acquired by Extreme Networks and the new leadership noted these efficiencies within the development team. Extreme Networks’ Executive Vice President of Products, Nabil Bukhari, publicly remarked how “Aerohive’s Agile development methodologies and high-performing teams will dramatically increase our speed of innovation, driving enhancements to existing solutions and development of new use cases as we continue to invest in the platform.”

Extreme Networks is now adopting qTest enterprise-wide for all products and is swiftly working towards 80% faster release times across all products and features. According to Grant Hundertmark, Principal Automation Engineer, “Six months from now, we plan to have the quickest full-speed Agile transformation in the history of the company and our release cycles will have dropped tremendously. qTest is going to be the center of that—and pretty much everything that we do.”

“By launching regression tests out of Tricentis qTest, we have visibility all the way back through Jira. Even the product line managers who requested a feature can see the results in real time as a test automation run completes.”

Grant Hundertmark,
Principal Automation Engineer Wired Products

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