Final Candidate

Final Candidate certification by QA means that the software is usable by customers under the normal workflow environment of the features described in the Requirements.

Phase: Final Candidate

Purpose: Ship the software to the customers.

Entry Criteria
• All Showstopper, Alpha, Beta and FC defects thrashed till specified number of days prior to the publication of the build must be fixed.
• All defects fixed in the prior build of FC candidate should have appropriate action taken on them.
• All pre-release customers reported defects thrashed till specified number of days prior to the publication of the build must be fixed.
• The user documentation except for known issues and issues resolved must be reviewed and signed off by Legal, PM, R &D and QA.
• Configuration Documents are defined and reviewed by the stakeholders prior to the publication of the build.
• All test plans and DITs must be updated on iport with all the execution results.
• QA must be able to replicate the documented customer workflow on the candidate build.
• All 3rd party licenses are reviewed and approved by Legal.
• QA has verified that all legal requirements have been met.
• Product has final icons, splash screens and other artwork.
• All localization and UI defects should be fixed and localizable resources frozen in the weekly build prior to the FC build.
•The MTBF (Mean Time Between failure) of the application should be more than specified number of hours.
•The Final candidate build delivered to QA should be installable by the final product installation process from CD.

Activities
• Acceptance according to following criteria:
• Successful execution of Build Acceptance tests.
• Acceptance results shall be published within 1 working day after receiving the Final
Candidate build.
• Regress all OpenForQA bugs fixed for the Accepted Final Candidate build after publishing the
Acceptance test results.
• Regress all Fixed/NLI defects.
• Execute all the identified workflows.
• Execute one round of structured tests and update the results on iport.
• QA must execute Shortcut Key tests on the candidate build.
• Localized testing must be done on the candidate build.
• Performance testing is to be done on candidate build.

Exit Criteria
• The Activities described above are completed.
• If any new defect is logged or existing defect is found to reoccur, it needs to be approved by the Triage team with the justification or the build cannot be certified as GM.
• Documented Training Tutorials are complete.
• All deliverables like Sales Kit, Printed Manuals, Boxes, BOM, Mercury Setup, QLA and XDK should be ready for distribution.
• Older validation codes do not work. Installer has no built in time bomb.
• Build is published on product server.

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