While software may be developed by an outside organization, the responsibility for the software's quality...

The quality professional should not allow COTS or contracted software to be placed into operation without some acceptance testing. If the COTS software is acquired by the internet or from a business college its reliability is questionable, and it may contain viruses. Many organizations do not permit their employees to acquire software from unapproved sources such as the internet.

The quality professional may or may not be involved in the actual acceptance testing. However, the quality professional must determine that acceptance criteria are developed. It has been demonstrated extensively that the cost of not acceptance testing is normally much greater than the cost of acceptance testing. It only takes a few problems in acquired software to far exceed the cost of acceptance testing.

Acceptance testing of software will be dependant upon the risk associated with the use of that software. As the use and importance diminishes so does the amount of acceptance testing.

Likewise, the greater assurance the quality professional has in the ability of a contractor of software to produce high quality, defect-free software, the fewer acceptance testing that needs to be conducted.