Tasktop connects Tricentis and Micro Focus test management

Tasktop Technologies, the Vancouver-based value stream management platform specialist, has announced an enhancement that will allow its users to synchronise test data for testing both with Tricentis Tosca and with Micro Focus ALM. The ALM tool, in its multiple versions, remains one of the most popular test tools in use by financial firms, while Tricentis Tosca has been gaining market share. Mik Kersten, CEO and founder of Tasktop, which partners with 57 different software development and quality assurance tool providers, said this new functionality in its Integration Hub platform will help users centralise test design and execution data and ultimately achieve “Agile at scale”. Before he launched Tasktop in 2007, Kersten was the leader of the Eclipse Mylyn open-source technology interface project. “I spent a decade as an open-source software developer,” Kersten explained  “And I came to realise that what was preventing organisations from producing software at scale was not the different programming languages but their disconnected value streams.” “In financial firms in particular, things tend to be organised in silos. But you cannot organise software at scale in silos because you end up needing twice as many developers.” The European Central Bank, Nasdaq and Coast Capital Savings, the Vancouver credit union, are among Tasktop’s financial clients. Five years ago when Tasktop earned that one of its major US banking customers was using its platform  to connect developers and testers working in different teams, Kersten said. “It was a pivot point for our business, and the story of Tasktop since then has been about how we can add a new layer of infrastructure that enables firms to build software at scale.  And the big trend I see now is that large financial firms are coming up with new ways of identifying IT risks and they want to connect that to their Agile teams.” “In the past, banks have  invested heavily in security and risk systems and they’ve been good at identifying what needs to be fixed in their software. But they have not been so good in connecting that with teams across the enterprise.” One software challenge faced by large financial firms have is that some teams are more advanced than others. “The investment bank developers may be moving fast and they might be using more advanced tools,” Kersten explained, “But maybe the wealth management part of the business might be more conservative, maybe using more basic development tools. But they need to be connected somehow on the same platform.” And Kersten believes regulators will increasingly encourage banks to build  enterprise technology risk platforms – platforms that employ value stream management as a key technology.   “Compliance is going to be a major driver here,” he said. In addition to the software tool vendors connected on the Tasktop platform, the firm works with 13 resellers of its platform, including IBM and Broadcom. Asked whether Tasktop might at some point sell itself to one of those larger partners, Kersten said:  “We’ve always been a Switzerland in this industry, and we plan to stay that way.”