Qualitest Independent Test Center Helps Telecom Operator to Enhance Triple-Play Infrastructure

Client Overview

The Client is a Fortune 500 technology company which provides solutions that enable Telecom service providers, enterprises, and governments to deliver voice, data, and video communication services to worldwide end-users.

The 3-year project enabled this company to provide multi-vendor network integration services for the customer’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network. The scope of the project included end-to-end network integration and security services, including network design, engineering, deployment maintenance and the overall integration of operations, support and billing systems.

Business Needs and Objectives

In order to reduce the total cost of testing and in order to improve the communication between all parties, Qualitest was chosen as a QA and testing third party trustee to manage and control the entire Testing and Quality Assurance process. Qualitest needed to act as the glue bringing together all the vendors in the interest of quality and business assurance for the customer.

The objectives were to validate the system compliance to the functional design, to insure that all parties understand the needs of each side and to verify the system’s integrity.

Testing Challenges

Kicking-off operations at different locations led to various challenges including:

• Lack of agreed understanding the current systems used by the customer
• Building and maintain a common Quality Assurance Testing Strategy which could be adopted universally
• Building a single Test environment to support the complex structure of the system and to simulate all the internal and external integrations to existing systems
• Internal disputes and frictions between the various vendors in terms of common processes and communication which impacted quality outcomes
• Cultural and process differences between the end customer and the supplier (for example: lack of applicable documents, differenced in communication style and approaches)
• Difficulties in introducing change to techniques and methodologies to the project and across the organizations involved, and ensuring wide understanding and compliance

The Qualitest Solution

Qualitest established and maintained 3 different QA and testing teams:

• OSS team to validate the OSS, Mediation and Provisioning
• BSS Team to validate the Billing, CRM and other BSS applications
• System Test team to perform end-to-end testing

Qualitest focused on:

• Establishing good relations across the vendor ecosystem, and hosting workshops to establish common understanding and alignment of vision and goals
• Developing a common QA and Testing Strategy which encompassed all quality activities and was agreed with all parties, and established common foundational requirements around documentation and quality gates
• Defining the requirements for the establishment of a common test environment, and the methods of maintaining and controlling it
• Focusing on establishing regular and effective communication methods and channels, backed up be transparent reporting
• Implemented educational activities as changes were introduced as well as reference material, so that everyone was able to adopt change effectively.

The project spanned 3 years. At the height of the project 120 people took part. A new test center was established 10 minutes away from the client’s headquarters which facilitated good communications and good working relationships between the different teams, and provided the client excellent visibility and control over the entire QA and testing process.

Key Benefits

The benefits to the customers were:

• Centralization of QA, both physically and in terms of strategy and approach
• Alignment of all parties on the project goals and vision, streamlined processes and less friction
• Integration of QA throughout the project lifecycle by applying QA processes earlier – leading to earlier identification and mitigation of risks, avoiding bugs and project delays
• Improvement in tooling and techniques driving cost reduction and velocity and quality improvements