Quality is an evolving trend at the pace of technology. In the current range of app engineering solutions (low-code & no-code development, rapid development, API-first development, and so on), QA is a compatible drift in the dev cycle.
With banks becoming fintech companies, telecom entering IT services and media, OTT exploring games, and so on, the convergence of products, engineering and domain calls for flexible software testing.
An intriguing thought at the crossroads of matured app development and changing skill needs: What is the effective distribution of a flexible QA team?
How do you evaluate the benefits and capacity of an extended QA team alongside the dev team and outsourcing QA as a managed service?
Outsourcing QA Teams for flexible testing projects
Outsourcing QA brings in a range of testing skills and fulfils the entire cycle of Testing with standard practices, documentation, and reporting. The emphasis is on a flexible engagement model, providing on-demand QA services, without compromising the standard testing priorities
Test Engineers who can shuffle functional validations at the pace of product management
Integrated testing: Domain, User Experience, Unit Testing, Performance, Workflows/rule-based testing and so on
Recommend and use the right Tech & Tools for Test Automation
Implement agile and adaptive testing methods
Continuous testing (DevOps model)
Real-time reporting and transparent communication of defects
Why Outsource QA
A talent pool of Test Engineers: Outsourcing provides access to a testing centre of excellence, trained on comprehensive skills in test design, tools, methods & test coverage, and agile methodologies. The greatest advantage of employing an expert is to jumpstart testing 3x faster with focused testing recommendations.
Dynamic ramp up/down: QA resources can be engaged on-demand and ramp up/down as suitable in the phase of development, providing control over costs at every stage of the project. This allows agile effort estimates and can be reviewed after each milestone delivery or during strategic and operational planning.
Availability: Outsourcing cuts down the overhead of hiring a team, training & onboarding resources, which make up 30% of a typical project engagement. The team can be formed to be available in overlapping time zones based on the client's development needs.
Quality Perspectives: QA team offers feedback on applications from a global development perspective and industry experience. The differentiating insights from specialists can be discovered in the quality of bugs raised, designing custom test framework, expertise in categorising defects by priority and impact on releases.
Specialist testing requirements: An external QA team can complement specialist skills and parallel testing requirements into a core testing team with shared knowledge and processes. Test Tool Consulting, test data generation framework, domain-based test planning, accessibility, and static source code review, are some of the niche QA activities that can be carried out by an integrated QA vendor team. The outcomes can typically be handed over to the core team with training, documentation and less dependency on releases.
Focus on Business Outcomes: For projects that are transformational, typically involving high risks, outsourced QA teams will augment the innovation process with quick release and go-to-market. Business teams can offload quality and focus on product management, strategic launch, and core outcomes.
Knowledge Management: Professional QA vendors approach testing from a business standpoint and design test strategies in line with the problems to be solved for end users. This approach mandates a thorough understanding of business requirements and product knowledge before jumping into test execution.
An important process checkpoint at this stage is that knowledge does not stagnate with the vendor. QA standards will follow a shared knowledge repository and a transition plan.
Best Practices: QA deliverables like Documentation, Test Design plan, and Test Summary Report, are considered tedious and often discounted in the case of lean teams that are concentrated on faster prototype releases. Outsourced QA maintains tight processes in documentation and deliverables that enable test requirement traceability, reference for bug reports and transparency into test metrics at all times.
QA team organisation decisions depend on the project charter, skills, and the degree of control over the product/app timelines. The expectation in outsourcing QA to go through detailed testing approaches and the many moving parts - functional, exploratory tests, smoke and sanity, experience, user acceptance, performance, and so on, appears to be an operational nightmare. Choosing the right software testing partner is key to successfully delivering a bug-free application.
Check out the comprehensive testing solutions at CalibreCode and the flexible engagement models for any stage of your development cycle.
define a QA roadmap for your next digital transformation project,
develop an extensive testing plan for your new product release,
upgrade your testing methodologies to CI/CD, or
extend a data quality validations team to your digital engineering squad
CalibreCode will have you covered for the entire range of testing solutions with a priority that does not change: Quality.
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