Ron WilsonIt is never easy having to make a decision to change a vendor. Those decisions have to be done carefully and it takes proper support from all sides to make it happen. However, it is necessary if you believe the current QA vendor is not getting the job done. All vendors start with well intentions. They bring in the best and brightest sales people to sell you on what can be accomplished. Initially all things are positive within the relationship as the best resources they have are on the account. Over a period of time, some of those resources get moved to other accounts and before you know it most of the “A Players” are gone. If your QA vendor has an offshore team the resources with 3-5 years of experience are replaced with 1-2 years of experience and before you know it you are getting “freshers” who are recently college graduates with little experience in QA. This doesn’t happen overnight, typically this occurs after 5-7 years.
You are then faced with a significant problem. Often this problem might be revealed when there is a change in QA leadership. This situation happened with me last year. So I wasn’t happy with what I was getting with the current vendor. We were embarking on a multi-year transformational program. I decided we needed a change so I started an RFP process to select the right QA vendor. After several months, I was able to select a new QA vendor. Once I communicated to my previous vendor that we were going in a different direction, I had a 2 month transition plan. That has been completed and I have had the new QA partner in place for 3 months. Things are going extremely well and things are now moving in the right direction.
The decision was a risky one. It required being willing to take a risk in order to move forward. The risk was well worth the reward.
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