Service Readiness

When is a service considered ready for launch? Here are a few criteria that can help you to evaluate whether your service is ready for launch:

• Service has been formally tested

• Service has been formally reviewed with stakeholders

• Service has passed an accessibility evaluation

• Change management plan is in place

Formal testing

Formal testing is used to ensure that no bugs reside in the service. While testing cannot prove with a 100% certainty there are no bugs, formal testing employs a wide array of techniques to ensure that common usage scenarios will not fail when the service goes live. Typically formal testing is performed by quality assurance specialists through the use of a rigid test plan. Bugs are captured in a tracking system to ensure development staff are aware of the conditions when the bug occurs. Typically a service cannot be released until the test plan has been fully executed and bugs remain below an agreed upon threshold.

Formal review

Formal review is used to showcase a service to the stakeholders. Stakeholders are given the opportunity to make suggestions, and comments about the service. Recommended changes, and updates are captured in the backlog and prioritized.

Accessibility evaluation

All services at Transport Canada must comply with WCAG 2.0 standards at AA compliance level. Services that cannot meet this minimum compliance level require sign-off (at what level) and have a compliance plan in place so that a schedule is available to indicate when full compliance will occur.

Change management plan

• Communication with users, stakeholders

• Canada.ca service initiation (launch) pages

• Timelines

Usability evaluation

Good practice is to use usability testing to evaluate whether the service offers sufficient usability to it’s users. Usability testing is typically performed by a user experience practitioner by inviting real users of the service, to perform a structured set of task using semi-functional prototype or actual production code of a system. Usability testing can help to identify issues with a services design prior to its release. Any issues found during usability testing can be captured into the product backlog.