Re: Software Acceptance Criteria

Hi Jaakko,

Not sure if anyone has already posted a similar response (apologies if I am
duplicating someone else's advice), however you may wish to start with ...

http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/117-Testing (an article on CMS Acceptance
Testing by Lisa Welchman)

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/index.html (Evaluating a
Content Management System by James Robertson)

You may also want to visit (and join) the Content Management Professionals
Association (CM Pros) ... http://www.cmprofessionals.org/ and if you use
items such as the Content Management Lifecycle poster, you can determine
which components (areas) are critical to your business and where the key
risks (acceptance areas) are.

There is also a large amount of IT Project Management literature on general
IT project management (most of which include material on acceptance stages
and clues on criteria). These Project Management frameworks include ITIL,
Prince2, etc., etc.

In addition, can I suggest that you know what your organisation needs, base
you acceptance criteria on the most important deliverables for your business
and only use the theory as a guide. There is no point adding meaningless
items that aren't important to you. You should also have some level of trust
for your vendor if you are negotiating the contract, it doesn't hurt to get
them to recommend some criteria and then add your own business needs and
some educated research. The relationship will also be served if your
criteria are 'business issues' and you are not trying to tell your vendor
'what they should be providing in a CMS', if you are, then perhaps you have
the wrong product.

We have also posted some basic stuff on our own site, see ...
http://www.komodocms.com/FeaturesofCMSProducts
http://www.komodocms.com/WhatsImportant
You may also want to consider related services and needs, see ...
http://www.komodocms.com/OtherRelatedServices

Hope this is of assistance.

Kind regards,

David Warwick
Director
Komodo CMS Pty Ltd


On 30/10/06 9:01 PM, "Anttonen, Jaakko, VF-Group"
<Jaakko.Anttonen-ANTagKRnAhdWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> We are in contract negotiations with a CMS vendor and the next stage is to
> define the acceptance criteria for the base software. I'm struggling to come
> up with some basic items for the criteria.
> Anyone out there who could share a template with some generic items I could
> then customize?
> 
> Best Regards,
> Jaakko
> 
> 
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