Software development companies are well aware that innovation is the keyword to retain a competitive edge in the market. However, with in-house teams focusing on developing innovative applications, at times, quality takes a back seat.
The problem gets further compounded when appropriate technology is not used to conduct a quality analysis. A defective product can ruin a company’s reputation and affect revenues in the long-term. Therefore, a thorough Quality Assurance (QA) testing is vital to the success of a product.
The most effective way to ensure the quality of code is to separate software development from QA. Independence of quality is key here. An effective way to do this is to allow the in-house software development team to focus on development (restricting themselves only to unit testing) and outsource QA to a company that has the relevant skills, knowledge, expertise and experience to troubleshoot problems and ensures quality.
While your in-house testing team may provide you basic, functional testing, domain experts would be able to identify all critical issues in your product’s architecture. Having worked on similar projects, these external domain experts have intensive knowledge of common bugs, their functionality, where you look for them and how best to fix them.
Also, the independent quality team will have the unique advantage of understanding the product/application requirements directly from the Product Manager, unlike the in-house testing team which might get influenced by the development team’s understanding.
Here are some excellent reasons to outsource QA services to an experienced partner.
- Gain access to domain expertise:Bugs in a software application can have far-reaching implications, especially when critical data is shared, for example, financial, healthcare and legal data. Whether it is a banking app or hospital software, each app requires a domain expert to ensure that the app is safe to use and meets regulatory compliance. Your outsourced QA partner can support you with the necessary domain experts to evaluate your software critically and provide direct value to your product, your company, and your customers.
- Scale your business: In a bid to scale, companies make a common error of focusing on hiring technical engineers to code new applications or add innovative features to the existing ones. However, scaling a business can sometimes be accompanied by growing-up pains, and if these pains are in the form of bugs or incorrect code, they take a toll on the health of a company. The rush to innovate and push a product into the market without adequate QA can result in post-launch data vulnerability and loss in revenue and reputation. As your development team grows, your QA team should grow too. Instead of putting resources into hiring, training and retaining new talent for each new product, one can concentrate on development and outsource QA to a testing partner.
- Engagement models: One of the most important decisions to make when developing an outsourcing plan is selecting an engagement model. Several factors go into this consideration, including ‘aspects of international business strategy, selecting the geographical location, understanding the landscape and deciding on the outsourcing strategy.’ The main aspect of this decision is whether you will implement incremental outsourcing or total outsourcing. Incremental outsourcing allows you to mitigate your risk by dividing work into smaller, more manageable projects. Total outsourcing involves outsourcing multiple projects and programs to a service provider. Typical models are 20-30 percent on-site to 70-80 percent off-site.
- Protect your source code: When you outsource your software for QA, you are not actually sharing the source code of the product to your outsourcing partner. The testing team of the company would be analyzing the software app from the end-user’s perspective and not touching the code. So, if sharing of code is a concern, be assured that when you outsource your QA requirements, your knowledge is in safe hands and that your intellectual property rights will not be in any way compromised.
- Objective analysis: There is also a psychological dimension at play when you outsource QA services. A third-party can view your product dispassionately and provide a more accurate analysis than an in-house team that has developed the product. With an in-house team performing both development and testing, objectivity would be lost, increasing the risk of bugs and errors left undiscovered in the pilot runs. Test centre of Excellence (TCoE) brings many benefits to an organization in terms of improved quality, speed to market and lower cost of ownership. Today, enterprises need robust applications and quality, but at speed. Outsourcing is an important function and an expert testing advisory can work wonders for your project, product, brand and organization.
- Overall 360-degree quality improvement: It is important that quality is significantly improved through outsourcing. To achieve this, the specialist outsourcing service providers have the wherewithal to assess testing requirements, identify gaps in test processes and implement positive changes. Product companies need an affordable QA services partner to scale. As a software development company, you may hire an in-house team of testing engineers. However, a limited number of resources can be restrictive, especially when you have a diversified product portfolio. Domain experts can provide you the much needed support to put your products on the path to success and grow them in new markets.
- Configuration and change management: Another vital aspect of QA and testing outsourcing providers that comes as an advantage for companies is that they maintain a comprehensive change and configuration management system. This provides agility.
- Mitigation of risk and cost: Risk assessment needs extensive experience and team of experts across fields and domains to ensure the final approved hits high on quality benchmarks. Through outsourced testing, your product can be fine-tuned so that its performance upon deployment is of the highest standard. Maintenance costs will also be reduced with a well-tested product
Hurix - Your one-stop partner for QA services
We at HurixDigital, offer you all the benefits of automated testing: greater test coverage, improved accuracy, real-world testing, improved team productivity, faster market time, and finally, happy and satisfied clients. Our team of engineers and domain experts functions as an extension of your in-house team to resolve any problem in your software. Above all, ‘independence of quality’ is ingrained in our DNA and applies this philosophy even on our internal projects.
