I have two question regarding the validation of a hosted system .
Q1. I am curious to know how to perform full validation for a hosted system. I will appreciate if any one can tell me step by step process to do the same and the documentation required (vendor may not provide any design document).
Q2. This hosted system will only have one single environment where in testing will be performed (No separate environment for testing) and then it will be promoted to production. Any future changes or customization will directly be implemented into Production , now my question is how one can validate the changes if there is no testing environment and any changes to the system will directly be implemented into production environment.
Well, I’ve never done it but I’m interested in the topic so I’ll toss in my thoughts. Hopefully this will stimulate some discussion.
It’s indeed unlikely you would be able to validate such aspects as how well the software was developed and internally controlled.
You should certainly ask for a known bugs list and assess impact (and possibly test around them).
I’m quite surprised they wouldn’t support a test environment. I would try to push back on this. I would not want to try to manage a system with test and production data included.
As with other validations, I would take a risk-based approach. I think the biggest risks with a hosted system would be data integrity (can the host lose or corrupt your data and what controls do you / they have in place to mitigate any possibilities) and security (access).
You should be able to write some user requirements around those - and of course, the functionality of the system - and at least perform OQ testing on it.