Online Self-Assessment Tool from Micro Focus Helps Organisations Identify Critical Improvement Opportunities in Software Development Lifecycle

London, UK, August 30, 2011 - A lack of pragmatic software development lifecycle (SDLC) project models is often identified as the root cause of IT project failures in organisations across industries and geographies. To address this, Micro Focus® (LSE: MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernisation, testing and management solutions, today announced the launch of its Online Application Value Profile (AVP) – an online self-assessment tool which helps software organisations begin the process of making strategic and continuous improvements to the SDLC.

As pressures mount on organisations to increase productivity and understand potential return on investment for a project, software development teams are caught between pressures to produce more software, increase quality and meet rigid schedules, while controlling or even reducing costs. The implications of these constraints on process and efficiency present formidable challenges for teams, as evidenced by a recent report from The Standish Group which found that in spite of the methodologies and tools thrown at the problem, 63 percent of projects are late, over budget or fail completely.

The AVP’s unique methodology for profiling and analysing an organisation’s software development lifecycle relative to the business expectations facing the software development group provides an opportunity to examine all potential improvement opportunities and then prioritise and isolate a few practices to focus on initially. After completing the online profile, users are presented with a PDF report free-of-charge which details peer comparisons around technology maturity, a profile of critical performance indicators and recommendations for next steps to help continue the application value path.

The complimentary Application Value Profile from Micro Focus is an objective analysis that helps organisations identify improvement opportunities to ensure maximum return from their software development and testing investments. It probes into an organisation’s business issues and processes in Project Management, Requirements Management, Change and Configuration Management and Quality Management. The AVP provides a strategy for improving development and testing capability and estimating the potential business value of change. Compared with other models, the AVP’s pragmatic approach is transparent and its insights provide a basis for developing a concrete, achievable plan for improvement.

Richard Novak, President of Micro Focus, North America, said: “Leaders in organisations typically have little issue making decisions; however, we often find that they lack the data they need to make informed decisions. With the output of the AVP, we work with organisations to make intelligent, informed decisions regarding where to invest in improvements – based on optimising business impact.”

Drawing on Micro Focus’ 35 years in application assessment, development and modernisation expertise, the industry and geographically agnostic online AVP uses a set of targeted questions to evaluate three key IT disciplines of an organisation – requirements, change processes, and quality – against industry trends. Results are customised and illustrated graphically to provide an easy to read representation of an organisation’s agility, productivity and business alignment. Based on this evaluation, users can then receive recommendations from Micro Focus on initial steps for improving agility, productivity and alignment between disparate lines of business and IT – moving beyond the standard improvement roadmap to provide a quantitative business value profile and the basis for developing the potential ROI associated with development and testing processes and technology improvement opportunities.

Novak added, “Businesses of every size and in every industry are looking for new ways to reduce the cost of operations, while continuing to attract, serve and satisfy valuable customers. As a result, CIOs are more dependant than ever on IT departments and software developers to ensure that their business-critical applications are supporting strategic growth objectives in a cost-effective manner. The Micro Focus Online Application Value Profile empowers users to see how their application practices stack up against competition and provides the opportunity to go one step further to determine specific return on investment and recommend immediate steps towards achieving agility and efficiency.”

For more information on Micro Focus’ Application Value Profile, visit: http://bit.ly/paiaUA.

Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernisation, Testing and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com

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This release was published on openPR.