Program testing software development services

Tender description

This tender is issued under the DPS for testing service MMU678 lot 4 managed test services. Manchester Metropolitan University (‘the University’) is seeking to appoint through a competitive tender process a suitably qualified and experienced supplier to provide managed test services. The University has an Information Systems Strategic Investment roadmap, which defines a number of large transformation projects and programmes, along with smaller BAU development changes and upgrades. Alongside this a new project management framework has also been developed. With this increased focus on the strategic delivery of software throughout the University, a need was identified to increase the University’s testing capabilities. The University is now beginning to undertake these larger scale transformation programs working with both agile and waterfall methodologies, both of which require dedicated, specialist testing resource that is currently not available within the University. There had previously been no central management or structure to the software testing activities within the University across both BAU and project implementations. In 2018, our test manager was employed to bring all testing activities within the University in line with best practice. Through the development of a University testing strategy and framework for projects and BAU activities to follow, the need for the introduction of test analyst and test lead roles within the University has been identified. Due to the number of projects that require testing resource, a decision has been made to appoint a supplier who can supply ad hoc resource and a range of service to meet the testing requirements of the University. By procuring these activities the University is looking to take advantage of the capabilities and level of experience from the successful supplier to fully meet the requirements of the test framework.