PLANNING THE VENDOR RUN-OFF
Define Incremental Test Cases. Both the vendor run-off and your in-house tests will be time constrained. To maximize the time, define tests cases that can be built out incrementally, to demonstrate product capabilities. For example, start with a simple integration scenario that exposes a back-end customer database through a customer lookup service. Next, incorporate the customer lookup service in an orchestration, perhaps open customer account. Finally, add the open customer account orchestration to a process, such as loan approval, which could also include logging and notifications. Describe Your Test Cases in Business Terms. The test case requirements you send to the vendors should be described in terms of “what,” not “how.” That way, you can see and evaluate the vendor’s recommendation for “how.” For example, your description of the customer lookup case might be: The customer lookup service accepts customer ID, name or telephone number as input, and returns customer ID, name, address, phone, and status. The customer database is stored in an Oracle DBMS, and is accessible through a plain old Java object (POJO).
