The full outsourcing of testing

Quality assurance

The full outsourcing of testing

This approach suggests that the contracting authority entrusts the whole complex of testing works to the testing agency. It involves a sufficiently close integration of the production process in the customer and testing agency (the scheme of interaction between the companies is shown in figure

1). This kind of kind of cooperation suggests that the testing agency will try to take an active part in the production process, starting with the formulation of requirements for the software and ending with the testing itself. It is possible that the existing customer production process will (with assistance from testers) change to adapt to the new working conditions. To achieve the best results, the customer should be ready to let the software testing outsourcing companies participate in the process of development from the early stages of the production cycle, virtually to discuss the idea of the new product. If it seems impossible, keep in mind that the sooner the testing agency gets engaged in the production cycle, the more qualitative the final software product will be. Moreover, it will be received faster.

Two kinds of organization can get the greatest benefit from this type of outsourcing. The first kind includes the companies that don’t have their own quality assurance and testing service, but wish to create it. In this case, close collaboration with the testing agency will allow gaining experience in this area and preparing the ground for the creation of their own testing department and quality assurance service. The second kind includes start-up companies, quickly developing the brand-new product. Despite the fact that the experts of such companies can have the necessary knowledge and experience to carry out the qualitative testing, the start-up companies usually suffer from the lack of time and therefore have to resort to the outsourcing.

You shouldn’t think that, speaking of the full outsourcing of testing, the customer stops to independently test the software. Usually, the first tests and debugging are performed by the programmers. And only after passing the first test of “common sense” (i.e. you can at least run the built module and make sure that it performs some simplest operations), the ready software is transmitted to the testers.

You also shouldn’t get confused, thinking that the independent testing can ensure the product quality. That’s not true. The testers help to identify the maximum amount of errors in the code, produced by the customer. However, the testers (except from some individual cases) don’t fix the bugs. Therefore, the responsibility for the product quality will lie with the manager of IT department, dealing with the development.