The SQA2 Blog: General
Six Questions to Ask Your QA Vendor Before You Renew
Most renewal meetings with a QA vendor cover rate, headcount, and what’s on the roadmap for next year. Those are fair things to discuss, but none of them tell you what happens to your account when people on the vendor’s team leave. Over a twelve-month contract, some of them will.
This is a meeting you can run in 30 minutes. Bring in your vendor’s account lead, the person who answers for staffing on your account. Give them one scenario before you ask anything:
Assume you lose a fifth of the team on our account over the next six months. Some people quit, some get moved to other clients, and some go on leave.
Then ask these six questions and listen to how specific the answers get.
1. Which of our releases slip first?
A strong answer names the releases. The account lead knows your roadmap well enough to tell you which ones depend on people who are hard to replace, and what they would do to protect those dates.
A weak answer is that nothing would slip. Every account has releases that depend on specific people, and a vendor who can’t name them hasn’t looked.
2. Who picks up what the departing people knew, and how?
A strong answer describes where your system knowledge lives today and who else on the vendor’s side has worked on your platform. It should sound like a process they have used before.
A weak answer is that the replacement will shadow the person leaving. That only works if there is time for it, and in most departures there isn’t.
3. How long until replacements are productive on our system, not just assigned to it?
A strong answer gives you a number in days or weeks, and explains what makes that number possible, such as documentation that is kept current or people who already know your platform.
A weak answer only gives you how fast they can put someone on the account. Getting a person assigned is easy. Getting them productive on your system is what costs you.
4. Who on our account has access to our systems and data right now, including any subcontractors?
A strong answer is a list. The vendor knows every person with access, which of them are direct employees, and how access gets removed when someone leaves.
A weak answer is that they would need to check. In a regulated environment, your compliance team will want that list, and you should know whether your vendor can produce it.
5. Who is accountable, by name, if a release slips because of a staffing change?
A strong answer is one person’s name. That person owns the outcome and will be in the room when you review what went wrong.
A weak answer spreads it across the team or points to the account manager without tying them to quality outcomes. When everyone is accountable, nobody is.
6. What did you do the last time someone left our account?
A strong answer is a real example from your account, with what happened, who stepped in, and how long it took. This is the most useful question on the list because it asks about something that already happened.
A weak answer describes what they would do instead of what they did. If they can’t point to a time it went well, ask why.
After the meeting
Write down what the vendor committed to, and bring it to your next review. Confident answers only protect you if someone holds the vendor to them.
If you want a quicker read before the meeting, take the QA Vendor Continuity Score. It takes about two minutes and shows you which of these questions to press on first.
Taking this into a meeting? Download the one-page version with the scenario, the six questions, and space to write down what your vendor commits to.
This is part of our work on QA continuity.
