Automated Debugging Steps Up Quality for Midwest Software Vendor

Bringing the "Power of Process" to American insurance companies isn't just a slogan at Image Process Design (IPD). It's a way of life. So when troubleshooting bugs manually began chipping away at development time, the manufacturer of business process technologies did what it knows best--automate--thanks to Compuware DevPartner Studio.

For more than a decade, the Michigan-based systems integrator and independent software vendor has provided imaging, workflow, process automation and content management software and strategies to the insurance industry to help agencies transform paper-based workplaces into more productive, efficient environments. The company's two flagship products, Ultera and Solutions Suite, streamline claims, underwriting and customer services operations at major insurance providers. Both product suites route documents such as insurance enrollment and claim forms through the appropriate business channels for proper approvals and documentation. Any software defects in the two tools, however, can bring service to a crawl for the software manufacturer's clients.

That's a scenario IPD works hard to prevent with a rigorous regime of debugging, testing and tuning. When its development team faced the complexity of a growing code base, the company knew it was time to replace its traditional manual methods of troubleshooting applications with more productive means. That's when IPD took a look at the automated capabilities of Compuware DevPartner Studio, a comprehensive suite of development, debugging and tuning tools. 

Opting for a Quick Return

Although several tool suites were up for consideration, IPD quickly narrowed it down to one. "We needed to have some type of automated tool to help with developer productivity and that's really when we decided to focus on the DevPartner tools. Soon after we implemented the tool, we saw significant gains," explains Jeff Gierlach, the company's director of product development. "Cost-wise, DevPartner was very competitive, and we could draw a quicker return on our investment with the DevPartner products than we could with any of the competitors."

DevPartner just saves us a ton of time. It would typically take us about a day to determine where the problem existed. The DevPartner capabilities help us pinpoint performance problems very rapidly, cutting our debugging time by 50 to 60 percent. —Jeff Gierlach, Director of Product Development, Image Process Design

Take, for instance, performance analysis. Typically when slow code, a bottleneck or another performance-related issue cropped up, pinpointing the problem required the company's developers to manually step through the code. DevPartner performance analysis changed all that. It collects information as a program runs, right down to the line of code. "DevPartner just saves us a ton of time," says Gierlach. "It would typically take us about a day to set up all the debug statements and determine where the problem existed. Now we run a piece of code through a debug session with DevPartner and we can locate those bottlenecks in a fraction of the time. The DevPartner capabilities help us pinpoint performance problems very rapidly, cutting our debugging time by 50 to 60 percent." 

And, according to Gierlach, capitalizing on that type of value didn't take long. Within the month after purchasing the tool, IPD had DevPartner Studio up and running in its development environment. "We had a quick training, hands-on session for a couple of days and then we were off and running with it. We got our payback in a short period," he says. "Being able to run a piece of code through DevPartner and have it pinpoint bottlenecks saved us. Within several months, we saw a return."

A Shift in Focus: Ensuring Quality Code and Performance

Using DevPartner has done more than save time for the software manufacturer. The automated capabilities of DevPartner Studio helps Gierlach's development team stay focused on the one thing that matters most to its customers: performance. With DevPartner, team members can concentrate on customer requirements because DevPartner reviews coding standards for them. DevPartner automatically scans Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET, C# and ASP .NET source code for hundreds of potential problems, based on industry-standard best practices. "We totally changed the focus of our code reviews," says Gierlach. "Where we used to spend time on the mundane tasks of checking syntax and standards, we now focus strictly on performance and quality, taking extra steps to make sure our software functions as it should."

The company's developers also are finding DevPartner code review a handy tool to use on .NET projects, and for a good reason. Because DevPartner is integrated with the Visual Studio .NET and Visual Studio 6 environments, it can provide recommendations on how to best apply the proper coding standards, making migration to .NET easy for developers. Gierlach and his team agree. "We're building our new .NET project from the ground up and DevPartner's code review is an intricate part of the project," he says. "The best thing about using code review is that we get tighter integration with our code analysis or coding standards tool, so we can easily incorporate .NET standards properly as we develop."

Highly efficient, incredibly productive processes have always been the goal behind the software programs of IPD. With DevPartner Studio in his development shop, Gierlach is assured his team can deliver. "We've incorporated DevPartner Studio as part of our development process, and it has made a significant impact," he says. "Before we put software out on the market, we must meet a very stringent level of quality. The Compuware DevPartner capabilities help us achieve that level of quality and confidence."

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