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German Federal Employment Agency

High software quality of IT applications ensures good service

The Federal Employment Agency has 100,000 employees throughout Germany, providing a wide range of services to the labour and training market. The services provided by Germany’s largest agency are underpinned by a multitude of IT applications. Their smooth running is crucial to the Agency's ability to function and provide a quality service. But how can the IT applications be guaranteed to remain efficient and high quality over the long term?

Whether the task be to provide access to job vacancies, or pay child benefits or job seekers’ allowances, T-Systems MMS is ensuring that the Federal Employment Agency's software is high quality and effective. Its Test and Integration Center, the only accredited software test lab for the online sector, is providing the Federal Employment Agency's IT systems house with standardised, automated test processes and continuous performance monitoring. In this way, weaknesses are detected and corrected at an early stage during software development.


  • Grafik: IT-Anwendungen bei der Bundesagentur für Arbeit

    Requirements

    Maximum performance for minimal resources

    The Federal Employment Agency operates many IT applications which are critical to its services and need to be extremely stable. At the same time, there is a constant need to upgrade and optimise the applications. Increasingly complex requirements with ever shorter development cycles had generated a need for a new level of quality in the testing processes.

    T-Systems MMS was tasked with maintaining performance and stability at the highest possible level over the long term and with detecting weaknesses during the development stage.

  • Grafik: Beratungsgespräch bei der Bundesagentur für Arbeit

    Solution

    Continuous performance measurement throughout the software development phase

    Following a detailed needs analysis, T-Systems MMS helped the Federal Employment Agency to draw up a detailed ”Continuous Application Performance Engineering” (CAPE) strategy. Its input ranged from designing specific test processes through providing the tool support required for an automated solution, to piloting the process.

    The strategy aimed to measure the performance of the software systems in parallel with the ongoing development processes so that predictions about performance could be made at an early stage and, where needed, action could be taken to correct things quickly. The measurements were also standardised and automated to ensure consistent test quality.

Implementation

Automation guarantees consistent test processes and unburdens IT

The dynatrace application performance management solution was used to measure software performance automatically and continuously during development, and to identify any weaknesses in the application, down to code level. The ”Performance Signature” plug-in developed by T-Systems MMS enabled the software quality to be monitored throughout the entire life cycle. Standardised, automated testing is the reason that the resources deployed in the Federal Employment Agency's IT systems house have been kept at a reasonable, affordable level.

T-Systems MMS also helped the staff at the Federal Employment Agency's IT systems house test factory to use the application. After a successful pilot, the CAPE strategy is to be rolled out throughout the Federal Employment Agency's IT systems house. This will considerably reduce the resources required for software testing. At the same time, the quality of the software can be guaranteed immediately when it is developed.


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