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. This structure allowed QualiTest to work as a professional, independent entity without having to deal with internal political issues.

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:

• Understanding the current systems used by the customer
• Build and maintain a Quality Assurance Testing Strategy
• Building a Test environment to support the complex structure of the system and to simulate all the internal and external integrations to existing systems
• Avoiding internal political disputes and focusing on the QA and testing work at hand
• Bridging cultural differences between the end customer and the supplier (for example: lack of applicable documents)
• Introducing new and comprehensive test techniques and methodologies to the project and to the organizations involved

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

The project spanned 3 years. At the height of the project 120 people took part including 25 Qualitest employees. A new test center was established 10 minutes away from the client’s headquarters which allowed for good communications between the different teams and gave the client a leadership position over the entire QA and testing process.

Key Benefits

The benefits to the customers were:

• One centralized professional test team with full access to both the end-users and the supplier. This enhanced the understanding of the business and technical requirements and allowed full access to the supplier’s development resource
• Locating gaps and risks early in the process helped avoid bugs and project delays
• Independence from political pressures which usually come up as part of projects of this type
• Minimized testing cost and time
• Introducing new tools and techniques to both the customer and the supplier