Blackboard Inc. NASDAQ: BBBB , headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia., is a leading provider of enterprise software applications and related services to the education industry. In 2003, as Blackboard s business was burgeoning, the company was under mounting pressure to develop new e-learning products to satisfy its increasingly mature customer base. Blackboard s principle aim was to get these new products out to market quickly to meet demand.

However, adhering to this unrelenting product release schedule caused problems. One of the major inhibitors of speed to market was the testing and quality assurance element. Blackboard faced many bottlenecks in the release schedule, the release deadlines were often missed or products were released with a higher than acceptable level of defects.

Considering the volume of testing, Blackboard chose two quality assurance consultancies, but this worsened the condition, many complications crept in terms of managing multiple testing partners, hence Blackboard opted for a single supplier. Marc said, AppLabs was selected based on its responsiveness, its high quality of work and its offshore capability,
AppLabs initial involvement was on a relatively small scale, but the team has now grown to over 100 people based in Hyderabad, India; the offshore team acts as a global extension to the Blackboard team based in Washington DC. The size of the team attests to the huge volume of testing work that Blackboard requires, in addition to its commitment to partnering with AppLabs, to produce software of the highest quality.

AppLabs is focused on the implementation and execution of the test execution strategy. Its remit covers the basic maintenance of test cases, manual regression testing, performance testing and testing on agile development methodology projects. Marc says, Blackboard has the domain expertise in-house, but we rely on AppLabs testing process knowledge and its ability and proficiency as an independent verification specialist.

Blackboard has seen a substantial decline in the issues raised about the quality of its products. Software defects causing problems for users have fallen by 30 percent year on year. There is also a high success rate in terms of completing the testing on schedule. As Marc explains, The testing and quality assurance element is the most predictable part of the software life cycle, due to AppLabs rigorous approach. It has become a model project for other parts of the organization to follow.

This distinct improvement in the quality of Blackboard s products has had a profound effect on the company s business. Following the investment in testing resources, there was a steep adoption in new products. Marc concludes, 90 percent of our clients renew annually, and we have seen a significant increase in the number of clients that adopt our product immediately after release. We attribute much of this to the solidity of the testing and quality assurance program. The success of our testing program and our partnership with AppLabs has had a direct impact on our bottom line.

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