Technical Validation Service
This service is aimed at customers with an existing supplier of software development services.
When you take delivery of a bespoke developed application you will obviously validate the solution from a functional requirements perspective. But how will you validate the technical aspects under the bonnet? As long as the application functions then why should you be bothered about how well it's been written?
There are a number of reasons why you should really care about the quality of the code that's been written by your supplier. The main one is simply because you don't pay your supplier to deliver bad quality! If you want to make any enhancements to the application in the future it'll cost you more than it should due to the increased complexity of making changes to it. With a badly written application, your suppliers' risk of introducing regression issues when future enhancements or bug fixes are made increases dramatically. You may not see the effects of badly written code when you first take delivery of the system. Issues may surface later if demand for your application increases and the application starts to "creek" as you've probably heard it referred to.
Through our own experiences of taking on the support and maintenance of 3rd party applications we've seen some shocking code. We use objective assessment techniques to assess the quality of source code. Using these techniques we generate a report detailing the following:
- Cyclomatic complexity assessment of the code
- Code maintainability assessment
- Code readability / documentation
- Risk analysis and breakdown (simple traffic light system)
- Pragmatic recommendations for corrective action
The aim of this service is not to disrupt or frustrate any existing relationship you have with your supplier. It's intention is to firstly protect your interests and secondly to help your supplier to deliver a better solution. We are happy to discuss our findings with your supplier and we always recommend the most pragmatic corrective action.