Supplier Quality Management

Supplied software can be inherently risky to your business because of the lack of visibility and control you have over its design and development.

Key considerations include:

How do you select the best quality supplier?
What requirements should you articulate relating to quality and quality related deliverables from the supplier (e.g. test results)?
What acceptance criteria and acceptance process is needed?
How do you work with the supplier to develop an integrated test strategy to ensure risk is minimised and an efficient and effective test strategy is followed?
Which of the following four types of testing of supplier software should you perform?
- Acceptance testing (contractual) - ensuring supplier delivers working software to meet your needs,
- Non-functional system testing is best done in customer environment e.g. some aspects of performance testing - to ensure non-functional aspects not tested by supplier are covered by customer,
- System integration testing - to ensure supplied system works with your other systems,
- User acceptance testing - to ensure supplier system meets the users needs in the context of their business processes.

Insight is an independent services provider specialising in quality and test. We provide expertise to help you select and manage your software suppliers from a quality perspective. This incorporates:

Support for supplier selection including supplier auditing,
Contractual support including acceptance criteria definition,
Supplier monitoring and technical review of key deliverables such as test strategies/plans/cases/results.

In addition, as part of a managed test service and as determined by an integrated test strategy, we can also manage and perform the four stages of testing of supplied software outlined above.

Related Information

1. See also our Supplier Management training workshop.

1. See also our Vendor Quality Evaluation and Audit.

Software quality and qualityqualityqualityqualityqualitytestingg services provider UK and Ireland Insight Test Services, with offices in the UK and Ireland, is one of Europe largest full-service suppliers of specialist software quality assurance and test services.