Professional Services Delivery QA and UAT Processes

A large financial services firm was experiencing consistently poor quality in the application code provided by a solution vendor’s professional services team. The quality issues were causing implementation delays and user community frustration.

Approach

Markets Technology & Compliance led an effort to introduce improved, client-managed QA and User Acceptance processes and procedures. In-depth requirements review was performed by QA staff early in each development cycle. Dedicated QA and UAT environments were introduced. Distinct cycles for QA and UAT were implemented, enabling increased defect correction and verification prior to UAT. An automated regression test facility was implemented, and the team worked with the solution vendor to refine functional specification review and code delivery processes.

Results

Application release quality improved significantly. A six month defect backlog was eliminated. The occurrence of user accepted defects was steadily reduced, eventually getting to zero defects. And, satisfaction was improved as new features were more in-line with user expectations.