Client Overview

World leader in mobile telecom.

Business Needs and Objectives

After establishing a web based email portal for the UK arm of their global mobile telecoms company, the client wanted to upgrade the functionality to include calendar and address book functions. This in turn would lead to the ability to synchronize data from handsets with the portal in a later project.

Typical Challenges

The challenges for Qualitest in undertaking this work were as follows:

  • To meet all the testing requirements for the project under a fixed price
    contract
  • To liaise with and control a third party system integrator based in France
  • To establish the ground rules with all suppliers in readiness for two further upgrades
  • To manage and control the testing activities from four business areas
  • To do so within a newly established testing process that was not fully
    accepted by either suppliers or across the client business areas
  • The project was important to the client that it established a level of functionality within the portal that would be utilized by a launch of new handsets. The emphasis on increasing revenues through alternatives to voice streams made this particularly time sensitive.

The Qualitest Solution

Qualitest provided a delivery focused quotation for the testing on the project under a fixed price contract. The contract formed the full scope of work and was used for both control and reporting purposes. Resources were provided to deliver each part of the testing project under a flexible arrangement working with the client to overcome problems as they arose.

When extra resources were required to meet tight deadlines, they were provided under pre-agreed ramp up and ramp down times and where possible this potentially additional cost was spread throughout the other areas of the delivery. Core elements of the Qualitest in-house methodology SMaRT were used to reduce the overall risk on the project and also to improve the existing test management process used by the client.

Key Benefits

The benefits of the Qualitest solution were:

  • Change requests were occasionally required but in general the ebbs and flows of the project were evened out by a collaborative management style with the client
  • Ground rules and expectations were established with the 3rd party systems integrator that were further used on the next two developments
  • Risks were managed away from the client environment to provide a more efficient route to completion of the project
  • The budget for the testing part of the project was not exceeded
  • Client processes and procedures were improved and updated
  • Language and cultural barriers were transcended by the introduction of fluent French speakers into the Qualitest team
  • Flexibility and pragmatism were demonstrated throughout the project which enabled the delivery to be the highest priority
  • The client was very happy with the delivery from Qualitest and has since engaged us to complete three further developments around.