challenge: A large software development house was tasked by a US-based multinational financial firm to develop software that would enable the firm’s financial system to communicate with an Enterprise Resource Planning system. With their reputation on the line and only four months to deliver, the software developers turned to CheQ’s Virtual Quality Assurance team to create and implement project quality assurance and testing plans for review and enhancement of software.

solution: Quickly establishing a good working relationship with the development team, we determined that the most crucial aspect of the unusual project was verification and validation of backend processes. This involved a massive amount of database checking, tracing data from a string of messages to the database to another string of messages and back. Before the project was finally delivered, 147 defects were found—approximately 50% of high severity or above—and software design was revised no less nine times in light of our findings.

result: Commended by the financial firm for the quality of work delivered and the systematic procedures demonstrated in quality assurance and test documentation, our software development client was awarded a two-year contract with their customer within days after delivery. Our client has since been named the financial firm’s official development team.