A Better Way – Case Study 3 – Test Plan in a Hurry!
In our last several blogs we have discussed ‘A Better Way to Test”.
The issue is to apply this to actual situations. We have 5 Case Studies we plan to use over the next several weeks to address this. The fourth case study might be called “Caught between Vendor and Client”.
Although one could argue that Quality Assurance has always been caught between a Vendor or Vendors (developers) and possibly multiple clients (users), it has become a little more obvious and formal with the purchase of software from outside groups. This is not something that is going to go away. Assembly of a solution rather than building it has been around for quite a while and will probably become more frequent rather than less. The question is what Quality Assurance does to “Bridge the Gap” between what the client wants (‘perfection!’) and what the vendors are willing to supply in terms of proof given competitive secrets and possibly some Non-disclosure requirements.
In our case (as discussed here) we built a plan that provided the final client with what they wanted. We then mapped what was supplied by the vendors against what was required and filled in the rest. Not surprisingly, the main items that were missing were Integration testing between what the various suppliers had provided and the type of testing that needed the entire system to be there including Performance, Security and Usability (to name a few).
Bridging the gap in this fashion satisfied everyone and made use of everything that was already in place. That saved us a lot of time and allowed us to concentrate the tests that were critical to the client.
If you want to discuss this further contact us.