The need for QA outsourcing
The University of Cambridge estimated that “software errors cost the global economy almost $300 billion annually”. This challenge with other key performance drivers has led most companies to adopt the best Quality Engineering (QE) practices in their enterprises while optimizing the cost and improving quality with minimal or zero errors.
The way of testing has transformed with the rising usage of DevOps, cloud, and agile in new tech. Setting up, Scaling, or transforming your testing organization brings challenges concerning Agile/DevOps adoption, process, and test automation implementation, or even scaling the teams’ capacity.
According to Gartner, “88% of service leaders say their current quality assurance (QA) processes are ineffective and rarely match up to the customer view of quality”. Staying agile in your business for an unmatched connected customer experience requires robust, next-gen testing expertise and hand-in-hand support.
As Quality Engineering practice rapidly evolves by leveraging the latest technologies such as RPA and Intelligent Automation, small to big enterprises want to move away from inept QA practices to a customized testing engine as per business needs. QA outsourcing becomes an essential strategy for any organization to move in this direction.
Additionally, the growing demand for launching products at pace and scale push businesses towards ensuring that they are market-ready in shorter time frames. The prevalence of Agile/DevOps practices now requires testing to be carried out simultaneously with development. Continuous development, integration, testing, and deployment have become the norm. Testers are now a part of the development process, testing the features, releases, and updates in parallel as they develop.
The testing & deployment of a multi-platform product in a fast-paced environment requires expertise and complimenting infrastructure to deliver a unified experience. Add multiple product lines, constant updates for new features, a complex deployment, and a distributed user base into the mix, and your search for an outsourcing partner could become a daunting task.
Now that we have a strong imperative to outsource QA processes, how much of the Quality Engineering process should you outsource, and what are the best practices?
The Client-dedicated TCoE (Testing Center of Excellence) enables you to decide what to outsource and the various engagement scenarios built on specific customer requirements, as depicted in the diagram below. The TCoE’s new role derives from agile, providing tools for developing functional testing, supplementing agile functional teams with expert capabilities, driving reskilling, providing test support services, and, most importantly, creating a technology roadmap that works for you!
Software testing is at the core of exceptional digital experiences that every organization aspires to execute flawlessly for its customers. The risk of alienating is apparent if you can’t thoroughly validate your products before customers use them.
Strategies for your QA outsourcing
Software testing isn’t just a step before release; on the contrary, it is a multi-faceted, organization-wide, ongoing continuous testing endeavor. While outsourcing Quality Engineering services, it is mandatory to strategize what stages of STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle) are suitable for your organization. Some popular testing strategies that have adopted STLC phases before and during product development to maximize people, processes, and tools, in recent years are Test automation, Test-driven development, Crowdtesting, Shift-left testing, and Shift-right testing.
In the case of Enterprise applications across all stages of STLC, we have observed that some organizations aspire to look into QA strategy and, in some specific industries, the test design themselves. The below table (1.1) depicts our expert recommendation on QA outsourcing.
● 10-25% | ● 25-50% | ● 50-75% | ● 75-100%
| Strategy | Design | Execution | Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Next-Gen Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Accessibility Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Performance Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Security Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| E2E CX Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Test Data Management | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Test Environment Set up /Management | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Service Virtualization | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Testing Tools | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Test Automation | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| QA Support & Maintenance | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Enterprise Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Regression Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Mobile API Testing | ● | ● | ● | ● |
Strategize your QA outsourcing with informed decisions. Let’s talk
Some of the QA processes that are not suitable for end-to-end outsourcing or partial outsourcing
- Core business flows such as areas of specialized knowledge (e.g complex business rules, specialized computations)
- IP sensitive information
- Customer-sensitive information
- Workflows require access to multiple systems (some of which are sensitive)
Benefits of QA Outsourcing
The key benefits of QA outsourcing achieved in the above engagement models are:
The right test outsourcing strategy defines a customized QA outsourcing approach that meets your business objectives. It starts with establishing a business case for change, identifying the products, platforms, and applications, along with the services required for the entire duration of the outsourcing engagement. It provides you with the right shored model or approach to balance business risk, quality, speed, and cost.
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