Welcome to 2012 and the first edition of The Seapine View Bulletin!

We're kicking off the New Year with a revamped web site. We've loaded the site with new content and reworked the navigation to make it all easier to find. So, check it out and let us know what you think of the new layout and features.

This month, you'll get news on the upcoming Seapine ALM 2012 release, a sneak peek at some of the new features in TestTrack 2012, and a customer story that highlights our Agile Services training.

Happy Reading,

Sarah

The latest version of Seapine ALM 2012 is coming soon, and brings with it new features and enhancements to help you deliver quality software faster.

Some of the major enhancements to Seapine ALM include:

• A new native relational database, custom fields that calculate values, and draft and active custom fields in TestTrack.
• Improved offline support, more flexible mainline branches, and additional third-party integrations in Surround SCM.
• Stress testing, Google Chrome support, and integration enhancements in QA Wizard Pro.

Want to learn more? Join us for our What's New webinar on February 7 for a demonstration of Seapine ALM 2012. The webinar is being offered twice to accommodate European and North American attendees. The first webinar begins at 2:00 p.m. Western European Time, and the second will follow at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

How do you develop software for customers who aren't sure what they want at first? If you're Datastream Connexion, you use an iterative, Agile methodology.

"Often, our customers have a vague concept in mind that requires iterative refinement," said CEO Eric Hoffman, "and Agile is perfect for those types of projects."

Datastream Connexion delivers innovative software using web technologies, such as creating a secure collaboration and reporting portal to support national food emergency response laboratories. The company already practiced Scrum, but Hoffman felt they could benefit from formal training because there was a lack of mutual understanding of the day-to-day details of the practice among the team members. To help the team fine-tune their Agile processes and learn more about Agile concepts, Hoffman enrolled everyone in Seapine Software's Agile Essentials for Project Teams class.

Datastream Connexion anticipates that the two days spent in training will have an immediate impact on their Agile process and team communications. "One of our biggest issues was that many of us had differing understandings of the terminology and process, and we weren't working with the same information," said Hoffman. "We're not doing that now."

TestTrack 2012 includes calculated fields, which allow you to configure custom fields to automatically calculate numeric, text, date/time, pop-up item, and time span values based on other field values. This new feature will have a big influence on how TestTrack can be used in different organizations. For example, you can calculate key metrics that are important to your projects, manage risk with custom risk scores, or consolidate values into a single field for simpler reporting.

We've created a few videos that show how you can use calculated fields.

Using date functions with calculated fields - Learn how to create a field that calculates how long an item has been in its current workflow state.

Using workflow events with calculated fields - Learn how to create a field that calculates the number of times a workflow event has been executed.

Calculating risk scores - Learn how to set up risk score calculation in TestTrack.