Compuware Introduces Quality Governance™ in CARS 5.0

CARS 5.0 Provides Maximum Business Value to QA Organizations Through the Implementation of Effective Governance Models to Deliver Reliable Business Applications

DETROIT--March 1, 2005--Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ: CPWR) today announced the general availability of version 5.0 of the Compuware Application Reliability Solution (CARS), its comprehensive quality management solution. CARS 5.0 introduces Quality Governance™, which optimizes a quality assurance organization’s ability to deliver reliable business applications that provide maximum business value through the implementation of effective governance models and delivers integration with Compuware IT Governance by Changepoint.

One of the major challenges facing CIOs today is maximizing the business value of IT investments. CIOs know that business value means shareholder value, and increased shareholder value means revenue growth and/or improved operating margins. Previously, these types of goals were left up to the business managers to accomplish through business initiatives. Now business is increasingly looking towards IT to not only be linked with these initiatives, but also to be an enabler to accomplish these goals.

With CARS 5.0, Quality Governance™ enables IT organizations to deliver the processes, systems and metrics to accurately assess the value, cost, risk and performance of the services they provide. By integrating with Compuware IT Governance by Changepoint, project portfolios that contain development projects will benefit from new metrics that communicate a software quality index. This integration not only increases the accuracy of tracking and evaluating a project’s health and risk, it also reduces the administrative burden of collecting and entering data into multiple systems for reporting. CARS provides CIOs with more detailed metrics about the quality of the application portfolio. This improves decision-making, and allows for better alignment with the business.

Forrester Research estimates that a defect found post-production costs at least 50 percent more to fix than one found early in the project. "Investing in quality is imperative," noted Margo Visitacion, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. "With more than half of all software projects considered failed or challenged and with support costs for defective software running as high as 50 percent of the total development cost, companies must invest in quality." *

Quality Governance™ is the method of ensuring that business commitments and expectations are adequately managed and satisfied by IT. The processes and practices that are an integral part of Quality Governance™ optimize an IT organization’s ability to deliver reliable business applications that provide maximum value.

In CARS 5.0, Quality Governance™ closely aligns the QA function with the overall governance and management structures for IT. Processes and information are in place to provide a seamless flow of critical information from the QA function to the CIO. New features in CARS 5.0 include:

Enterprise-Wide Quality Management--Development and QA teams from multiple geographic locations can use CARS 5.0, simplifying the complexities involved in dispersed teams. CARS 5.0 improves the ability to communicate regardless of where the team members may be located.
Testing Trends Reports--Testing Trends Reports enable decision-making support at different organizational levels by providing a way to demonstrate whether software quality processes are working, by looking at metrics over a defined period of time. Defect discovery is tracked and metrics are generated to show an upward or downward slope indicating your level of effectiveness.
Cost of Quality Executive Report:The Cost of Quality Report provides insight into which phases of the application development life cycle warrant the most investment to improve quality and reduce cost. The report lets the user know where to focus improvement efforts for the best return on investment.
Customized Reporting: CARS provides additional reporting options through a new User Defined Export component, which allows users to define their views of the data and then export the data into their existing data analysis tool or report writer for use.

"Quality is traditionally measured by metrics such as defect density and defect origin. These valuable metrics become part of more meaningful measures of success for the CIO when a Quality Governance™ strategy is implemented," said Gery Plourde, CARS Director at Compuware Corporation. "With CARS 5.0, Quality Governance™ provides a means to deploy best practices, a way to measure progress and the opportunity to make continuous improvement."

Compuware Corporation

Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ: CPWR) maximizes the value IT brings to the business by helping CIOs more effectively manage the business of IT. Compuware solutions accelerate the development, improve the quality and enhance the performance of critical business systems while enabling CIOs to align and govern the entire IT portfolio, increasing efficiency, cost control and employee productivity throughout the IT organization. Founded in 1973, Compuware serves the world's leading IT organizations, including more than 90 percent of the Fortune 100 companies. Learn more about Compuware at http://www.compuware.com/.