Challenges: Hindrances to smooth outsourced testing process

Outsourcing of QA & Testing is one of the biggest growing Businesses these days. According to the Gartner Research Report, ‘Market Trends: Application Development, Worldwide, 2008-2013’, the global software testing market equals $13 billion and the global market size of outsourced QA & Testing services is around $6.1 billion. While outsourcing software testing one should keep in mind that the successful completion of the software depends on a lot of factors.

Let’s talk about the “C’s” (Challenges) of outsourced testing: Communication, Collaboration, Consistency, Control, Change Management and how they impact adversely if not managed properly.

Communication :
There can be circumstances when the project goes haywire if one does not properly track it. Communication with offshore team is required to know the status of project. It helps not only to keep track of the project but also avoids unnecessary hassles later on. An effective communication will help in bringing about a lot of effective changes in an outsourcing project; especially when it comes to monitoring the work flow and also the way these tasks are done through outsourcing and off shoring, this was the reason why the term "remote communication" was introduced.

Collaboration :
Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to meet and achieve common goals. Thus, it is beneficial for both the sides to work towards achieving the common goal. The need to coexist and the need for symbiosis gave a rise to the need where the Client as well as the Service Provider had to be on the same level. This gave rise to the need for ‘Collaborative software’ (also referred to as groupware or workgroup support systems) is software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work.

Consistency :
Humans by nature are not 100% consistent and tend to make mistakes. A lot of outside factors affect the Consistency of the output of the work which has to be delivered with the Client- Service Provider relationship. There can never be consistency until and unless there is a set method or a structure which has to be followed.

Control :
A Very Strong and Project Centric Approach. As far as the quality of the project is concerned, one should know what the exact and latest artifacts are. Test execution progress, testcases, requirements, and defect tracking charts should all be at the tips of one’s fingers at any given point. Testers should spend less time answering questions such as what percentage of tests are completed, where are we in the testing cycle, and how many critical bugs are there? Moreover, they can get back to doing what they do best, testing!

Change Management :
Keeping track of changes in requirements, testcases and defects is very vital to the success of any project. All modifications, additions, or deletions should be recorded and should be available by selecting the respective version. So, the team never has to worry about trying to figure out when and why a certain change was made or who did it.

QMetry as a Solution :
A test management tool like Qmetry can help the teams to integrate, collaborate and co-ordinate the entire testing process to increase testing effectiveness and efficiencies. Qmetry improves consistency, organization, and control throughout the testing process. QMetry stores all the test assets in a version controlled centralized repository. Information is available to different users based on the access privileges. Version Control on the centralized repository allows you to track updates & changes from anywhere. QMetry also keeps track of change history with date/time stamps, users, and machine details for most of the testing assets.

Quality is never an accident it is always a result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent deduction and skillful execution. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives. In a nutshell, taking all these factors into consideration, one can easily make the best out of outsourcing testing projects.