Director

Virtualization and
Software Development
Opportunities to improve outcomes

Jack Alexander
CA Technologies

2015

The lifecycle of an application project

Whether traditional development SDLC such as waterfall or Agile
is adopted, the fundamental components of a project do not
change.

The lifecycle of an application project

Requirements & Analysis

Design

Development

Integration & Test

Deployment

Maintenance & Operations

5

These core phases are common to all

SDLC models, although they may
have slightly different names.
Each has numerous components, and
some bleeding between the
phases.
Within these lurk factors that
normally pose huge risk to project
schedule and budget, and application
quality.

The lifecycle of an application project

Requirements & Analysis

Design

Development

Integration & Test

Deployment

Maintenance & Operations

6

These core phases are common to all

SDLC models, although they may
have slightly different names.
Each has numerous components, and
some bleeding between the
phases.
Several phases where opportunities
exist for maximum benefit to the
project with low risk:

Low risk / High reward

Opportunity to improve: Testing

Requirements & Analysis

Design

Development

Integration & Test

Deployment

Maintenance & Operations

7

Testing
Testing is done throughout an applications
lifecycle:
Test definition (how we will test)
By developers as they test the
modules they are building
Unit test
Integration test
System test
UAT
Performance test
Regression test

Opportunity to improve : Testing

Requirements & Analysis

Design

Development

Integration & Test

Deployment

Maintenance & Operations

8

Testing challenges
Testing is not a sexy issue. Its
boring, and it doesnt get the
respect it deserves.

Reality: Inadequate or poor

testing is the root of most
problems when trying to roll out
a new application or a changes
to existing applications in M&O.

Opportunity to improve : Testing

Requirements & Analysis

Design

Development

Integration & Test

Deployment

Maintenance & Operations

9

Testing challenges
Enough environments to satisfy the
demands of the project
Enough test data scenarios to do robust
testing
Coordination of all required interfaces
and data can make end-to-end testing
virtually impossible
Cost of environments and associated
licenses means that theres usually
never enough
Waiting for databases to be reset,
waiting for external systems to be
available, waiting for a component
to be completed before testing can
begin

Challenges
Testing can be difficult & very costly:
Systems under test need to interface to other systems,
so our ability to test can be dependent on many things

System A needs to talk to system B. System B is not available until tomorrow.

Testing of System A must wait until tomorrow.
10

Developers will create artificial versions of the interfaces to test against during
development these are simple versions that dont really mimic reality
10

Challenges
Testing can be difficult & very costly:
Often many separate testing environments are needed

Test environments are expensive: hardware, and a complete set of software to

replicate a complete system: database, applications, etc.
11

11

Challenges
Testing can be difficult & very costly:
Making sure that tests are of high quality (test coverage)

Tests need to reflect the real world: test for every possible scenario, with test
data that is robust and realistic.
12

Test data gets burned once its used, it needs to be reset. Multiple teams
testing at the same time can stomp on other peoples test data scenarios.

Test data can be very sensitive to time. Sometimes a test case for an infant must
always be an infant. A five-year-old test scenario yields a five-year-old child. A
teenagers test scenario turns into an adult test scenario. Dates are critical!

12

Project readiness

12

Challenges
Testing can be difficult & very costly:
Insuring realistic test scenarios are used, and that we do
not test with production data

Ideally, test scenarios will look like production, with high-quality realistic
data, but with de-sensitized versions, data that has been thoroughly cleansed.
13

13

Project readiness

Challenges
Testing can be difficult & very costly:
Often, developers must wait for the ability to test

System A needs to talk to system B. System B is not available until tomorrow.

Testing of System A must wait until tomorrow.

A large percentage of developers time is spent waiting to test.

Testing delays are a major contributor to overall project delays.

14

Project readiness

14

Testing can be difficult & very costly:

Risk of too many defects making it into production

Schedule pressure and constraints on the ability to test can result in

systems that have not been adequately tested making it into production.
15

Poor system performance.

Crashes
15

Incorrect results

15

Project readiness

Unhappy users

15

DHCS and Service Virtualization

Reduce Risk, Increase the Pace of Innovation and

Reduce Cost with Service Virtualization

Presented by Chris Cruz

Chief Information Officer

Deputy Director, Enterprise Innovation Technology Services Division
16

About DHCS
The largest Health and Human Services Department in the
US outside of the Federal government
Overseeing the development of the largest MMIS program in

the United States, CAMMIS

Developed Enterprise Architecture
Developed Strategic Plan, outlining key capabilities, goals,

and objectives.

17

DHCS Vision
One of the key elements of DHCS strategic plan is:

Identify, test and incorporate radical innovations to enhance

DHCS delivery

Service Virtualization is just the type of innovation needed to

dramatically improve DHCS ability to deliver its development

projects, and those of its programs and partners.

18

Challenges
Improve/increase capacity for work
DHCS maintains a key data hub (MEDS) that most,
if not all health-related programs in California rely
upon
DHCS is responsible to provide access to test
environments to core DHCS systems to many
different partners:

CA-MMIS
CalWIN, C-IV, LEADER
Health Exchange (Covered California & CalHEERS)
Internal applications / groups.
19

Application SDLC Challenges

Must keep existing system up-to-date while
replacement system is being developed
Many interfaces and complexities
Both existing and new system uses the same
backend system
Large number of development and test
environments to support both existing and new
systems is needed

20

CAMMIS Challenges
Tight schedule avoid penalties and change
orders
Critical system system quality is paramount, as
these are core systems to the State and the
agency.
High profile. No room for error.

21

DHCS
Goals for Service Virtualization
Reduce Infrastructure Cost
Less mainframe LPARs
Less physical servers

Control Labor Cost

Maintain Infrastructure
Manage, replicate and refresh test data

Minimize Contention for Resources

Reduce likelihood of CAMMIS modernization effort
interfere with the maintenance effort needed to keep
the existing CAMMIS current
22

DHCS
Goals for Service Virtualization
Remove Development Constraints
Shorten test data creation time from weeks to days/hours
Remove legacy constraints - Allow CAMMIS development
to begin while the DHCS modernize and SOA-enable the
backend

Improve Test Scenario Development

No longer rely only on existing test data
Create and build new test data to support enhanced
testing processes

23

DHCS
Goals for Service Virtualization
Improve Quality of Existing and New Systems
Allow testing earlier in the system development
process
Allow more frequent regression testing
Allow mini-UAT to minimize last minute surprises

Increase Project Success

Reduce project risks

Reduce potentials of penalties and change orders
Meet project schedule
Deliver a stable and quality system that meets
expectation
24

DHCS
Goals for Service Virtualization
Revolutionize how DHCS builds new applications and
maintains existing applications
Become a model for the State on how to do IT legacy
system modernization & testing
Enable broader collaboration / support to build key
citizen services. Create a virtual catalog of shared
services to test against throughout DHCS: (e.g.
MEDS-in-a-box, Covered California-in-a-box,
etc)
25

Director