Planning to test what you buy

One of the advantages of writing down your requirements for a website or system is that you can then use that specification as the basis for testing what you’ve commissioned or bought.

For example, if your specification says “if a user makes an error when completing a form, the error shall be indicated to them clearly and none of the information they have already provided shall be lost”, then you can make sure you test this. It’s surprising how many web sites don’t respect their users and casually erase all the information they have just typed!

The specification can be used to create a test checklist, so that each item can be checked, ticked as ok or logged separately in a problem log to be sent to the supplier or developers. That way, you definitely reduce the chances of unpleasant surprises later on when web customers or your staff are using the system.

Rather than just test each item in isolation, it can be useful (and often illuminating) to create scenarios (or scripts) which you or others can test. For example, if you have commissioned an online shopping site, you may have scenarios to cover such things as:

• buying a single item, checking delivery options and altering quantities, before then abandoning the shopping cart
• buying more than one item, arranging for them to be delivered to a different address and paying by card
• finding out how to return an item and contacting customer service to complain about the quality of an item

This will let you see how well a series of actions work together. You can then tick off all the items in the testing checklist that performed as specified.

The more you spend & the more complex your new or updated system, the more time you’ll need to allow for testing in your plans. And it’s worth making sure that the contract you have with your developer ensures they have to fix everything before you accept the system or website and make the final payment.

Buying the right IT

In my previous blog (“Buying IT: How to end up with the wrong IT”), I picked out some of the most common mistakes that people make when they are buying IT. This article lists the ways to avoid these mistakes. They may look over-the-top, but the steps can be simplified to suit the purchase.

The seven steps to success

If you want to avoid disaster or failure, then there are some basic steps you can take:

For example, if you’re just buying a printer, you still need to think about what you want it for and the capabilities it has to have (such as how fast it prints), but you can do the research and buy online. Don’t forget to consider the costs of printing though, not just the initial cost of the printer – some inkjets can be very cheap to buy but VERY expensive to run.

1. think about your business needs as a whole, as well as the needs of your users, and write down a structured specification of what you want – that specification provides the basis of requesting quotations from a number of different suppliers
2. set your budget and timescales (realistically) and define what the investment has to achieve, e.g. the time to process an order reduces from 2 weeks to 2 hours
3. research and/or ask around for recommended suppliers – make sure that the suppliers are familiar with the type of technology or development that you want
4. ask at least 3 suppliers for quotes AND for references for similar work, and contact all of the references to ask about the supplier – remember to ask your potential suppliers to sign a confidentiality agreement if you have intellectual property or commercially sensitive information to protect
5. assess the responses, then interview at least 2 suppliers to make sure that they understand your needs, that you are comfortable working with them and that you understand what will be delivered when
6. agree a price, deliverables, timescales and payment schedule and encapsulate that in a contract between you and your chosen supplier
7. monitor progress against the plan and build a good working relationship with your supplier

You can find more detailed help on choosing IT suppliers from the Business Link site.