With the increasing digital transformation, software companies should meet the demands of a dynamic market. But, in-house testing procedures are mostly surged because of tight deadlines and inexperienced software testers limits the scope of testing. Due to this, in-house teams ignores basic issues, in the beginning, that results in adverse effects later. Although the traditional way to deal with software development favors in-house teams, it is hard to find a software testing service that addresses your needs. So choosing the best QA testing service can be tricky. But you have the option of choosing between outsourcing, outstaffing or hiring QA teams. If you’re confused about these three terms, let’s have a look at- the difference between QA Outsourcing, QA Outstaffing and independent QA teams.
Outsourcing software testing means hiring a third-party testing service to handle software testing for a specific project. Outsourced testing team is a better choice for your business because you don’t need to invest more cost in infrastructure and operational costs and their services have lower cost overall. An outsourced testing service improves in terms of expertise also. Their technical experience in different fields helps them to solve issues efficiently and in less time.
Also, their knowledge about different fields can assure software quality and help you to meet the client expectations. It can also help businesses focus more on operations and business development instead of worrying about the software.
Lack of existing checks, balances and proper communication may fail teh delegating testing to an external service provider. So, at the beginning, you must carefully provide all the necessary requirements related to software testing. It helps third-party services to prioritize testing metrics and improve software quality. Also, you should remember that an outsourced software testing team may work in different time-zones. This becomes the reason of the communication gap and creates unnecessary hurdles in testing.
Advantages of QA Outsourcing –
Outsourcing testing service will take your work by handling full-cycle testing of project across each stage. So software teams invest more time to come up with innovative features instead of stressing about software quality.
Software outstaffing is similar to outsourcing as teams hire testing services from outside their company. But instead of working with teams having different time zones, QA service allows software testing teams to work with the in-house development team. In case of outstaffing, teams hire individual testers or testing teams from outside their company to do the work under their guidance.
Mostly this kind of technique is used by businesses that need faster and effective experts outside their field of knowledge. It is best for teams that already have a team of in-house experts. Software QA testing can immediately turn into an overwhelming process; having a dedicated team is not always sufficient to carry out testing. In such a case, software teams require some extra resources to complete software testing. Your experts will work with these teams, manage their workflow and productivity and assign them tasks.
Third-parties provides these kinds of testing services under an outstaffing contract, where external resources follow the customer’s employment schedule. So it includes detailed management from your end. Generally, outstaffing testing services are carried out in two ways according the length and complexity of testing in the project. One way is leasing staff, which is great for long term projects. Then again, temporary staffing is for short testing tasks. Outstaffed employees work for a period of 1 week to 3 months.
Outstaffing software testing need experts who are skilled in software testing methodologies. Managing external testing resources without them will be difficult, which results in unwarranted delays. Simultaneously, outstaffing needs consistent communication and collaboration with your dedicated testing team. So, if they’re remotely working, your testing experts cannot handle them effectively. In spite of the fact that outstaffing is great for teams who need more control over the testing process, it also demands extra effort from your team.
Advantages of QA Software Outstaffing-
Having dedicated software testers in your team allows you to have complete control over the testing process. It’s upon you how you want to proceed with testing or control costs. There is no need to define a complete set of requirements in the beginning and you scale the testing service throughout the project according to the need.
Sometimes, hosting an in-house QA testing team is not feasible. In such a situation, teams need to consider hiring a dedicated team of testers outside of their company. Despite the fact that using totally independent QA teams appears to be specific, it is a great technique to reduce the cost and risk related with an inflated number of employees. Independent QA testing service gives your team a fully functional and dedicated testing resource without costs of hiring, and retaining employees. This kind of testing service can be beneficial for a software team if testing resources are not involved in any other testing project. Independent QA testing service offers great collaboration and communication.
Allowing a high level of self-governance to testing services can be both rewarding and highly risky, contingent upon which services you trust. Although testing teams with extensive experience and expertise perform best with independent teams, inexperienced testing resources can fail without explicit guidance.
Advantages of Independent QA Testing-
Autonomous testing team can concentrate better as compared to testing teams with extensive cross-collaboration. So the testing service can transparently implement testing procedures and grant software teams with greater time to market for their product. As testing team operates independently,it has complete over project delivery. Meaning that they can work with minimal external pressures, uncover performance issues thoroughly and streamline the app’s workflow.
Agile software testing practices provide a well-documented and understood approach to software testing and quality into software delivery. So it is necessary to consider the adoption of Agile procedures during testing. Also, if your development team is following the Agile methodology, then testing service can fail at providing testing promptly.
Software teams should ask testing teams what unique intellectual property and best practices can they implement in your project. Unless a team has significant experience with resolving testing anomalies, using a set of best practices, methodologies, and tool kits, they can’t help you to improve the quality of the product while increasing time to market.
Mostly, testing services do not have the technical experience to back up their expertise. So it causes them to overlook certain issues. Eventually, trusting these services bears a greater risk of software failure. Software failure is detrimental to any business. It can interrupt the business workflow, cause downtime, or cause faulty transactions that hurt the business financially. So it is important to ensure that software testing service is proficient and has relevant experience. Simultaneously, you should consider the company’s portfolio and take a look at how they performed in a similar project. Looking at these factors can give you a clear idea of their experience in a given situation.
It is important to consider your business strategy and model before you consider third-party testing services. Both these things should be in-line with the third-party service you are going for. The third-party testing company may incrementally provide its services or perform testing collectively. You have to evaluate project requirements and select engagement strategy that can work in sync with your requirements. For instance, if your business need to deliver software components gradually, then the app testing must be implemented in the same way.
It’s enticing for software teams to choose testing services based on how low their service charges are compared to industry standards. But doing so without considering the testing service’s experience comes at the cost of the product’s quality. Rather than identifying and eliminating all errors and bugs in your product successfully, inexperienced testing can introduce new problems to the app. Depending on a testing service with relatively low technical experience defeats the point of selecting a third-party testing service. The initial cheaper cost won’t help you when the project is prolonged because of overlooked errors in the software. Rather, your costs will increase with time, and it can end up costing more than it should.
Selecting a third-party software testing service depends on your requirements about quality, budget and length of project.