Twist 2.0 Aligns IT, Business Stakeholders for Agile, SOA 
ThoughtWorks Studios is shipping an upgrade to its agile test management solution, Twist 2.0, which aims to speed releases, updates and improve applications testing and quality – all by putting IT and business stakeholders on the same page.
ThoughtWorks Studios is shipping an upgrade to its agile test management solution, Twist 2.0, which aims to speed releases, updates and improve applications testing and quality – all by putting IT and business stakeholders on the same page.
Twist 2.0 aims to resolve complexity and confusion that may arise within a company with adoption of agile, SOA, RAD (rapid application development) practices, according to Clint Sprauve, who works in product strategy for ThoughtWorks Studios
“Implementing agile is not just SOA or services architectures, it is also about increasing the level of collaboration and visibility among stakeholders,” Sprauve, told IDN.
Twist 2.0 provides a common framework where IT and business stakeholders can more easily communicate. Further, Twists help automate testing and promotes more efficient and accurate test-driven development, Sprauve told IDN.
In a nod to the changing SOA-driven application lifecycle, Twist 2.0 also provides “continuous visibility into testing activities across distributed projects and teams,” ThoughtWorks managing director Cyndi Mitchell told IDN. This on-going visibility is particularly valuable where applications and services are more frequently updated and even reused elsewhere, she added.
Getting On the Same Page – Agile-Style
A major key to getting and keeping IT and business stakeholders on the same page is ThoughtWork’s adoption of Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Domain Specific Language (DSL). Using ‘English language,’ rather than computer languages or Visio diagrams, results is more accurate and more effective contact between IT and business, Sprauve told IDN.
In specific, Twist 2.0 blends BDD and DSL with a common framework tool that helps ensure initial IT specifications align with business requirements. Further, Twist allows technical and non-technical stakeholders to stay in touch throughout the entire development project lifecycle.
The result: quicker, more accurate and more business-responsive applications. Further, by unifying technical and non-technical workers, Twist 2.0 provides a common communications and review framework to enable more efficient updates and changes, as required.
“Many times, an application can actual pass all the tests IT puts into place, but actually fall short of what the business users had required. This approach avoids” that kind of disconnect, Sprauve said. Twist 2.0 also attacks these other common testing challenges, or what ThoughtWorks’ Mitchell described as ‘enemies of agility”
- Not enough time for test automation (Backlogs or can’t keep up).
- Inability to keep requirements in sync. (Requirements list added to, changed)
- Spending more time fixing ‘Test Harnesses’ than working on underlying application, code.
- Insufficient GUI testing
In specific, Twist 2.0 also sports these other feature upgrades:
Hybrid Test Execution – Allows for manual and automated test steps within the same scenario. This improves collaboration and execution efficiency of both automated and manual testing efforts.
Improved Workflow Reuse – Provides high-level test scenarios and steps (manual and automated) that can be reused and shared within and across multiple projects.
Data Driven Scenarios – Build data-driven tests on the fly for increased test coverage
Methodology-Independent -- Supports waterfall or agile
Groovy Scripting – Supports the Groovy dynamic Agile language for Java. It makes modern programming features available to Twist users with almost zero learning curve.
Support for Sahi – Testers have option of using Sahi or Selenium for web testing.
Twist 2.0, which uses an Eclipse plug-in to provide its testing IDE, also combines requirements and test specification management and creation and supports manual and test automation, to ensure quality throughout the application lifecycle.
Twist is a component of ThoughtWorks’ integrated Adaptive ALM solution, which also includes offerings for agile project management (Mingle) and a release management and CI tool (Cruise).
