Service testing is a new development pushed by the rapid increase of the number of services offered by telecom operators. This paper defines a framework for the test process related to the operation of new services. First an overview is presented of tenns and concepts in the service life cycle. Then a procedure is defined that covers all testing activities that should be considered before and during service operation.

This paper describes the development of a systems engineering (SE) approach to enable the application of SE and systems thinking in a new product development (NPD) process in an organization that is unfamiliar with the application of SE. The application of SE is enabled by using a tailored A3 architecture overview (A3AO) template. By using this template, a mechanism is presented to start the application of systems engineering in an organization that has limited experience with SE. By using A3AOs directly a way to capture and communicate the system architecture among stakeholders is provided. This approach is implemented and evaluated in a small‐scale case‐study.