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A test automation framework defines a set of rules or best practices which you can follow in a systematic way to achieve the desired results in test automation. The success of automated testing highly lies in choosing the right type of test automation framework. Unfortunately, different automation projects come with separate requirements and challenges, making it hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution to go.

So, let’s learn how to choose a suitable automation framework for your project.

How to choose the right test automation framework?

 

Selenium is among the most popular test automation frameworks

Step 1: Clarify the project requirements

Every effective automation test project starts with the right requirements set. First and foremost, you need to have a clear understanding of the project characteristics as well as the target testing outcome.

For example, when we designed test automation frameworks for our client’s F&B applications, we listed out the following:

• Test scope: 20 web & mobile applications with 5 – 6 releases per year for each application.
• Client’s needs: UI automation testing & APIs for backend testing; Cross browsers and operating systems testing.
• Target outcome: Reduced time for regression test.

• Challenges: End-2-end test flow is complicated and the data set is huge for API tests.
• Solution: Develop API test program (using Java), support data-driven to test a huge dataset.

Step 2: Define the budget

To set a budget for your test automation project, you have to calculate the effort for developing and maintaining scripts, plus the budget for automation testing tools and infrastructure. Types of test automation framework include:

• Open-source frameworks

• Commercial frameworks
• Customized frameworks

Then, decide whether you will use a free, open-source framework or pay for a commercial tool. There are pros and cons to each option:

• Open-source tools: They are free tools with an active community, free tutorials, and meetups. However, open-source tools may become outdated, become too slow, not 100% fit your project, and require high-tech capacity to customize.
• Commercial tools: Also called paid tools, offering a lot of features outside of the box. Still, with high costs, they’re unpopular and hard to find tutorials and support from the community. They should provide users with prompt customer support for all technical issues.

Although the commercial tools come with high initial investments, they help increase productivity and benefit us much better in the long term. If you’re ready to spend money on a commercial tool, it’s better to start a free trial and experiment on a small project before buying the full package.

Step 3: Consider the tech stack

An ideal framework for test automation should be compliant with the programming language used for the project as well as familiar with your team.

Firstly, you should see if your test automation engineers are well versed in a particular language and framework, then, compare it with the programming language that your project was developed on. If there’s a difference, take into account the effort spent on getting familiar with the language and the effect of using it. Maybe it will decrease your team’s productivity, but it won’t expand the required tech stack and allows you to ease into the process while helping to avoid unexpected issues.

In case you work with mobile apps, you’ll also have to consider the supported platforms. If you target various platforms, you should choose a tool that supports all. For instance, Selenium and Appium support both IOS and Android.

Step 4: Evaluate the test automation framework

There are some aspects that you need to consider before choosing a framework for the automation project.

Maintenance and reusability

A significant factor that escalates the total cost for test automation is script maintenance. Even a small change of application can cause the script to fail. So, if debugging is easy, it could reduce the effort.

On the other hand, script reusability saves you and the team a great deal of time for similar test cases as you can reuse test scripts.

Integration capabilities

CI/CD is now becoming quite popular in software development. The chosen framework should be able to integrate into the CI/CD pipeline to ensure full automation.

Nice-to-have features

• Report: A well-categorized, easy to read, easy to understand report display will be a bonus for an automation framework. Because the ability to analyze errors when reading reports will help reduce debugging effort for the project.

• Behavior Driven Development Framework: If you are not a techie, using BDD frameworks with Gherkin syntax will be an advantage to help you better understand the project. The BDD framework also gives a fairly readable report with the steps written in human languages (English, Vietnamese…)

Step 5: Verify the selection

When you come up with your selection among automated test frameworks, don’t implement it immediately. Proof of concept (POC) may be very useful for conformity checks or in case you still have some doubts about the tool.

This POC can help you identify:

• How the framework is maintained

• How easy it is to use
• Whether it meets your requirements
• If it addresses some of the high-priority edge cases you have, as well as different scenarios and controls in the application.

Step 6: Make the final decision

You now have all the necessary information to decide the right framework for your automation test project. You should have a strong awareness of the test automation tool, understand all the strong and weak points of the solution and keep the balance between cost and benefits.

Let LQA helps you choose the right test automation framework

Although choosing between different types of test automation framework will take some time and effort, it is a prerequisite to ensure effective automation tests in the long term.

At LQA, we have 6 years of providing custom testing and QA solutions to global clients. We implement both manual and automated tests to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your project. Don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation regarding selecting the test automation framework or figuring out the plan for your next steps!

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lqa/

 

Automation testing has emerged as a new destination for quality assurance, resulting in consistently high demand for automation testing labor. But amid the tech talent war, companies do need an effective test automation engineer hiring process to attract quality automation candidates.

So, in this article, we will guide you through 5 steps to hire a test automation engineer. This guide comes from real recruitment experience at our company as well as consulting some experts in the industry. Let’s take a look first:

• Clarification of requirements
• Write a job description
• Source and shortlist candidates
• Interview
• Final step

How To Hire A Test Automation Engineer?

1. Clarification of requirements

Clarifying the role should be the first step to hiring a true Test Automation Engineer. To do that, you need to define whom you want to hire, their contribution and the skills needed. At LQA, we divide automation test workers into three main groups which are junior, middle, and senior. Also, this article will focus more on a senior automation tester interview as it requires more aspects to consider.

Generally, a senior tester engineer will take part in the planning phase, make decisions, handle complicated tasks, and lead a small team. He/she can also be the bridge between the team and other stakeholders if needed. Therefore, we often require as follows:

• Manual test experience
• Automation test experience
• Test scripts creation ability
• Understanding of test automation technique
• Language ability
• Management skills

As automation tests differ from manual tests in the way that they use code-based test scripts to automate processes, a senior automation test worker should be able to define, develop, execute, and maintain test scripts. He/she also possesses manual test experience and understands test cases, hence can decide when to use manual tests and when to apply automation tests to optimize the QA process. Besides, he/she ideally understands various kinds of test automation frameworks to select the best suit.

2. Write a proper automation test engineer job description 

A smart JD is a key to an effective test automation engineer hiring process. This is when the hiring department understands the above requirements and builds an ideal candidate profile on paper. As we are seeking a senior role, the job description (JD) should be custom and specific. We recommend you include the following aspects.

Company summary

Talk about the employer branding, working environment, and whatever makes your company stand out. Especially, employer branding is an important part of a good job description. According to Glassdoor statistics, 75% of active job seekers are more likely to apply if an organization manages its employer brand. So, don’t forget to briefly convey your company’s reputation in your JD.

Job responsibilities

Here, let talk about the role’s duties and contribution to the company. Senior automation engineers also care about their effect on the company as well as their career path. Thus, they wish to see more impactful activities in the responsibility section, such as planning, managing, optimizing, and innovating, instead of raw tasks only.

Requirements

This is the section for must-have and nice-to-have skills and expectations for this role. Here, clearly mention what you expect from the applicant. For example, bachelor’s degree in computer science, Python language knowledge, mobile or web application automation test experience, Selenium WebDriver framework ability, etc. Plus, they ideally have equivalent certificates in software testing like the ISTQB and in languages such as IELTS certificates.

Benefits

And last but not least, don’t forget to include details of the salary and other compensation that he/she will get. According to Glassdoor, money is the biggest motivator for 67% of candidates. Meanwhile, Zety statistics showed that 74% of job seekers expect to find salary information right in the JD.

3. Source test automation candidates and pre-screen

In this step, the HR department seeks candidates through various sources, including active and passive candidates. Remember to post the job as soon as possible to increase the chance of receiving more applications as well as for the selected candidate to get ready. Particularly, when you source passive candidates who are employed, it may take a month or more for them to be ready.

Here, we recommend two effective ways to source automation engineers as follows.

Find them in forums and groups for automation engineers, such as:

• The largest communities of testers in the world like uTest.
• Top-performed automation test groups on Facebook like Automation testing – Seleniums.
• The top recruitment sites for IT talents, e.g. Dice and Linkedin.
• Place where tech engineers are the most active such as Github and StackOverflow.

Partner with companies that provide hiring support, including:

• Headhunting like McDermott + Bull.
• Employee referral programs like Boon and Jobvite.
• Staff Augmentation or B-O-T services such as LQA.

Recruiters then come up with a list of potential candidates, do pre-screening and brief telephone interviews, and return to the automation department with a list of ideal profiles. The person in charge of the test department will screen again to find out the top potential candidates for the interview phase.

At LQA, the automation leader is responsible for screening and evaluating the candidates. For such high-level positions, apart from reviewing the information provided by this person, he also refers to the references of previous colleagues and checks the candidate’s social networking profile.

4. Conduct automation test engineer interviews

After several steps to find out the most potential applicants for a test automation expert, we now come to an in-person automation test interview. But first, do you know what our CTO and automation leaders advise the most when it comes to an interview in tech? They are:

• Make it a comfortable and practical talk instead of police interrogation (obviously, right?).
• Focus on effect, as experience is not always the number of working years.

• Don’t bring a big technical test into the interview that takes 5-6 hours of your candidates, unless you are hiring employees for Google and Microsoft.

Why should you focus on effect?

At LQA, we concentrate on the impact when hiring a senior automation test engineer. E.g., if a candidate has generated 100 test scripts for UI automation tests but none of them work efficiently, or he has executed a small number of similar tasks during his previous 3 years of working, then we won’t prioritize him.

Conversely, once an applicant with less working time proves his ability via the effect, such as in a previous automation project, he was able to lower the time for executing a regression cycle from this time to that time and reduce time-to-market for new releases, then we highly value this.

Why shouldn’t you ask for a big test? 

Because we already have an overview of the candidate’s ability from step 3, plus there are various questions that the interviewer can ask to deeper check if this person is proficient in automation testing techniques. At LQA, we prefer to bring an actual project to the interview and ask related questions to know if they have the practical knowledge and skills that we need.

Here are some test automation interview questions to more accurately assess an automation engineer’s ability.

Define the scope of automation:

1. How would you define the test cases for automation?
2. Please select the test scenarios to be automated from this QA process and say why or why not for a scenario to be automated.

Select automation testing tool:

1. How would you decide on the tools and frameworks?
2. Please choose automation testing tools and framework for this QA process and explain why.

Management skills:

1. What is your principle to avoid and handle conflicts between testers and developers?
2. Please tell us about your previous challenges in test automation and how you dealt with them.

Others:

1. Any other examples that you want to show to demonstrate your abilities?
2. Do you have any questions for us?

Lastly, remember to check if the candidate fits your organization’s culture and working environment, as he/she as a senior member will have a relative effect on other employees. Don’t hesitate to ask why he/she wants to be part of your company, their working methodology, management style, etc., and observe the way he/she behaves.

5. The final step to optimize future recruitment

The final step is when you make decisions and inform both selected and non-selected candidates about the test automation interview results. We have only one piece of advice here – do get back to all the candidates.

What we’ve noticed is that some companies just don’t get back to all interviewed applicants. Still, carefully informing them of the results will give the candidates a better feel for the company, help you extend the candidate pool for the future, and avoid bad reviews that lower the company’s reputation.

Final words

This article has come to an end! Above is what we want to share with you about how to hire a test automation engineer. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for companies to attract tech talent, but we’ve seen this Test Automation Engineer hiring process works for our company as well as our partners so we give it to you as an additional reference source.

About LQA

LQA has been a trusted Quality Assurance partner in the global IT market with clients in 9 different countries including Japan, Korea, the U.S., Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. We have implemented the best QA engineer hiring practices to build a qualified tech talent pool with over 50 testing staff. Hence, don’t hesitate to contact us if you need a trusted QA vendor for your business!

The matter of how to ensure quality in software development outsourcing is one of the most important features that project managers need to address. As you work with an external party in software development outsourcing, you lose complete control over your project. In this case, several measures need to be taken into consideration to ensure the quality of the said project.

From a service provider’s perspective, Lotus Group has its own way of ensuring quality, which you might find useful in your project.

1. Have control over our human resources

Software development outsourcing, or IT outsourcing in general, is an emerging service as the world is shifting towards digital transformation. In this new field, the most famous service providers are those from the less-developed countries which have lower labor costs. 

However, soon their sources of IT workers become limited, as it is getting harder and harder to hire competent tech staff. To deal with this universal problem, Lotus Group plans to change our stance in the hiring markets. Instead of recruitment only, we want to be more proactive in providing IT talents to our clients. To do this, we have founded Lotus Academy – a training institution specializing in backend and frontend technologies for freshers/newbies in the IT industry. 

With the foundation of Lotus Academy, Lotus now can take advantage of the resourceful talent pool, hence providing the most competent and reasonably-priced tech staff. 

Technology training is in high demand, and the number of students in Lotus Academy will only rise in the future. And with the high number of students rolling in, Lotus can train them and let them take part in our projects. With careful observation and guidance from our experienced trainers, your project will be well-tended with care.

Besides the source from Lotus Academy, Lotus Group also has our connection with many other universities and colleges in Vietnam. These training institutions have a thorough training course with actual projects for the students to practice, which can be of great benefit for you.

2. Implement manual and automation test early

Technically speaking, the quality of one product/project relies on how you implement the testing process. If you follow the method of waterfall or even V-model, you leave the testing till the last minute, making the time-to-market longer than ever.

Instead of developing and testing at different times, you should combine regular testing and structured QA strategy in your software development life cycle to make sure that everything will be tested and fixed quickly.

In your testing process, manual testing and automation testing should be combined to catch the bugs that thinner testing strategies may have missed.

According to a study by Capers Jones, 85% of the bugs are made during the design and build stages of an SDLC, and some are even there before the first line of code is written.

By implementing manual and automation test early, you can work on how to fix these bugs before they can make their way to your releases, which will in turn ensure software quality and save you a lot of time.

3. Have clear communication methods and channels 

The first and most important question that every manager has about remote work communication best practices is about management. Management used to entail task allocation, monitoring, and administration, among other things. Managers can easily track cues to indicate communication issues and get involved in fixing them with a co-located team. A remote team, on the other hand, works off the screen, posing difficulties for managers.

Managers used to have physical and emotional contact with their employees, but now have little to no direct interaction with them. Managers are required to implement some of the tools and approaches to achieve remote work communication best practices from a place of easy-to-manage work platforms such as Skype or Excel spreadsheets.

For seamless communication, you have to set out clear communication methods and channels. How should reports be handled, how often should you call in for a meeting? These are the kinds of questions that you need to answer when you want to tackle the communication aspects of a software outsourcing project.

4. Use agile methodology (incremental and iterative)

Agile methodology has always been praised as one of the most effective software development methods there are in the field. Indeed, in agile project management, everything moves at a high speed, and testing is an integrated part of the project execution phase. 

This means that instead of processing the quality of different features separately, agile works with the overall quality of the final product. 

In Agile methodology, you will always be involved in the development process and can easily make changes if you wish to. To put in other words, Agile allows a greater level of flexibility which many businesses now want for their projects.

In addition, agile is an iterative process, and the team will inevitably have to learn to grow and improve their work overtime. And this can be of great advantage for you to ensure the highest quality on your project.

All of the above is what Lotus Group is applying to ensure a high-quality project for our clients. Besides all these, we also have other methods for different kinds of service. If you want to hear more about this, contact us:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

A successful software QA outsourcing project requires not only a thorough understanding of your objectives but also in-depth knowledge of the testing market around the world. In this article, let’s find out more about the top countries for software quality assurance services to choose the most suitable destination for your outsourced test center.

 

A Quick Review of Top Countries for Software quality assurance services

To make a favorable destination for outsourcing software quality assurance services, it takes the compilation of many features, including the average salary, Education in IT, Policies for foreign clients, the current number of QA engineers and technical skills. Take a look at this simplified table to gain an overview of the countries with the top software quality assurance services.

 

	Average yearly salary	Number of annual IT graduates	Focused segments of software testing
India	$4,334	1,500,000 (engineering and technology)	AI for automation Automation testing End-to-end testing Cloud Testing
Vietnam	$7,631	50,000	Application testing Automation testing Manual testing API testing Full Cycle testing
The U.S.	$75,242	2,170,000	Application testing Cloud testing IoT testing Security testing DevOps testing AI testing
Ukraine	$8,000	130,000	Full Cycle testing API testing Agile testing Automation testing Game testing
Poland	$17,148	98,250	Manual Test Design and Execution Automated Testing Test Automation Framework Design Functional Testing Load & Performance Testing End-to-End Software Testing API Testing
The Philippines	$8,724	171,960	Application testing Automation testing Manual testing

 

1. India

Currently, India reigns as the most renowned destination for software testing outsourcing in particular. The deciding factor making India the top software quality assurance services country is the reasonable costs for hiring a software tester. With a large pool of low-cost software test engineers, India offers the lowest price for testing services.

In terms of technology, test engineers from India tend to go for the latest and upcoming technical features. In fact, TopCoder has rated India as the 10th most advanced country in terms of Programming skill rankings across the popular outsourcing locations.

 

Software quality assurance services in India

According to research from Deloitte, in terms of governmental policies, India also favors foreign investors, especially in the technology sector. Moreover, the longtime experience in delivering IT services and the undeniable reputation of India in the global IT market have led the government to offer incentives in the best way they can. Besides the policies for the growth of technology in general, India has always boosted education in technology with multiple incentives and many more technology institutions. Such supports from the government has granted India the opportunity to thrive with the largest talent pool.

Also read: Essential QA Metrics to Navigate Software Success

2. Vietnam

Vietnam is the “rising star” in the global software quality assurance services market. Although Vietnam has only gained its reputation recently, the country turns out to be a small but vibrant destination for top-quality software testing services. Every year, there are about 50,000 tech junior graduates from technology institutes, providing an abundant source for Vietnam’s talent pool. About 20% of these graduates will work in the software testing industry.

 

 

What’s so special about the testing services from Vietnamese vendors is the high-quality human resources. According to the A.T. Kearney GSLI, from the early education on Information Technology to the resource availability and financial attractiveness, Vietnam always works towards to best quality in our IT workforce. In this chart, Vietnam ranks alongside India and The Philippines – two popular IT Outsourcing countries. Plus, Tholons Global Innovation COUNTRY INDEX – 2020 ranked Vietnam in the 9th place for talent, skill and quality, proving the country’s capability to ensure high-quality testing services and catch up with the latest testing trends.

The workforce for software testing in Vietnam is well-trained of the required skills in QA processes. For example, the automation testers in Vietnam will sure know the automation tools and frameworks such as Selenium, Appium, Cypress, Ranorex, Eggplant, Katalon, etc.

In terms of government policies, there have been some decisions and laws to protect intellectual property development and cybersecurity, all of which are of great benefit to businesses planning to outsource their software quality assurance services in Vietnam.

Read more: Why you should choose Vietnam as your IT Outsourcing destination

 

3. The U.S.

Despite the rising positions of many other test hubs in the world, the U.S. remains a trustworthy destination for outsourcing testing services. Among tech nations, the U.S. has always been one of the leading places for the most ground-breaking technologies. The application of the latest technologies in the U.S. is the most advanced. Unconsciously, the work quality in the U.S is the standard for every other country to follow as this country has a high level of professionalism.

 

When working with software testing vendors from the U.S., the obvious benefit for you is the language. Since the U.S. has a wide variety of cultures, it is very easy for you to get people with the same cultural background as yours.

Also, America is the home to many famous software testing outsourcing companies in the world, namely Mindful QA, ScienceSoft, QA Mentor, etc. These companies have already made their names in the global testing market, and are trusted destinations for business from all around the world.

 

4. Ukraine

Information Technology is one of the key strategic industries in Ukraine. The value of Ukrainian software outsourcing exceeded $5B in 2020. Also, Ukraine was named the “Offshoring Destination of the Year” by Global Sourcing Association (GSA) in 2017 and ranks 20th the GSLI.

 

According to a popular vendor in Ukraine, the country has more than 1,600 IT service providers, and about 90% of them offer testing services. What’s more, 24% of IT specialists in Ukraine are QA/testers, and 19% of them have 7+ years of experience. There are a little over 48,000 QA experts, and around 16,000 ICT graduates enter the market annually.

The country organizes a wide range of QA conferences such as BAQ Conference, QA Fest, Security Testing Marathon, IT Weekend Lviv: Software Testing & Big Data, etc.

 

5. Poland

The country’s IT services market reached $4.6B in 2019. Around 32% of Polish IT experts work for IT outsourcing (others are working for BPO and GBS companies). Around 29,000 QA professionals are involved in the IT sector in Poland. There are also 500+ IT companies that offer outsourced software testing services.

 

 

Moreover, Poland was ranked 15th in Tholons’ Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations. Poland was also listed 16th in the world for English skills in the EF English Proficiency Index.

 

6. The Philippines

The Philippines is one of the biggest names for IT Outsourcing and software quality assurance services in Southeast Asia. The BPO and outsourcing industry, in general, has been in The Philippines since the mid-1990s, making this country a favorable and professional environment for IT outsourcing operations.

 

 

Besides the fairly reasonable price for the high-quality work, The Philippines can also provide you with the following:

• Effective communication as English is one of the national languages in the country. Almost every tech engineer in The Philippines can speak fluent English. This also leads to cultural fit and compatibility with western countries, bridging the gap in the communication process.
• Famous IT Outsourcing destination with favorable investment policies. Since The Philippines has been in the market longer than any Southeast Asia country, it has long developed a friendly environment for foreign companies to cooperate with domestic IT service providers.
• At present, Outsourcing companies in the Philippines employ more than 2 million people. Therefore, you will have access to a very large talent pool.

 

 

Consult IT outsourcing Strategy with Lotus QA

Lotus QA has the expertise and experience with testing services in many domains such as retail, food and beverage, healthcare, etc., making us one trustworthy and professional service provider for businesses wanting to implement testing. When working with us, you will get access to:

• High Security: LQA not only follows stringent procedures of ISO 27000:01 for optimal security and international standardized process but also flexibly adapts to clients’ requirements
• Quality Human Resource: we ensure staff competency through strict rounds of interviews, on-job orientations, continuous learning & development for the most suitable QA staff.
• Flexibility: We provide different working models to allow clients to choose or change the plan at any time.

Contact us for more support with testing services:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

Software QA Outsourcing has been a feasible solution for elevated QA outcomes, but it also received controversial opinions from many businesses. To gain a proper understanding of this matter and decide the trajectory for your companies, it is advisable that you acknowledge the following pros and cons of software QA Outsourcing.

 

Advantages of Software QA Outsourcing

IT Outsourcing in general and Software QA Outsourcing, in particular, have some significant advantages to bring about for your business if they are applied properly and orderly. These advantages include:

 

1. Cost-effectiveness

The financial impact always has paramount importance to the assessment of one successful software testing project. Regularly, after the software development process or software launch, business owners test software functions to ensure the highest quality. By outsourcing your QA processes, your business can avoid making major investments in infrastructure, software and personnel. But simultaneously, you are spoilt for choices with many outsourcing QA vendors competing over you.

 

 

Besides the differences in salary range between building an in-house software testing team and hiring an external QA team (which can be 31 – 33%, according to a report from ISO), software QA outsourcing can also help you reduce infrastructure costs and increase testing expertise.

 

2. Time-Saving

Instead of investing a huge amount of money for a long time with the hope to gain something back from your investments, you can start your testing project right away with an outsourced QA team.

This QA outsourced team has already had what it takes to have a fully functioning and experienced QA staff to work on your project. No additional time will be needed for training, onboarding, nurturing staff, as these are all taken care of by the vendors.

 

 

Moreover, the outsourced QA team will have the resources to fill in the positions of QA experts, helping your business have the experience and expertise to speed up the testing process. With such speed, your development life cycle is shortened, hence the faster time-to-market. Needless to say, faster time-to-market can bring you numerous other advantages such as the edge of competition, improved margins, etc. to your business.

 

3. Test Expertise

Expertise is perhaps one of the most important features that one business leader seeks when working with QA outsourcing vendors. With digital transformation acting as the major drive for businesses to change, the need for significant technical expertise is higher than ever. Even for a non-tech company, technology is still an imperative part for them to evolve and adapt to the tech-infused world.

 

 

But getting access to the testing expertise is not easy at all. Especially for medium-sized and small-sized businesses, their reputation falls short to attract talent, plus the limited resources. For a technical project, or a testing project in this case to succeed, a viable option is to get the expertise through an outsourced team. This outsourced team not only hires you the senior-level staff but also helps you gain subject-matter expertise of any kind. You can choose from a variety of manual testers, automation testers, test leaders, test managers, etc.

 

4. Flexibility

Outsource software testing offers you the benefit of a fast team scaling and quick adaptation to project changes. Put it simply, an outsourced QA team can be scaled upon requirements within a short amount of time.

Whether you want to scale up or down, the vendors can still adjust the team members that you want in no time. In case of changes in business trajectory or testing objectives, an outsourced team can also quickly adapt to your requirements in terms of technical skills.

To look further into this, you can consider more ways to maximize your flexibility in this detailed article from HBR.

 

Disadvantages of Software QA Outsourcing

Despite some of the major benefits of software QA outsourcing, there are still big bottlenecks that you need to gain clarity of to avoid the failure of outsourcing testing functions.

 

1. Low Security and Confidentiality

The issue of low security and confidentiality has always been the biggest problem that one business has to deal with when outsourcing their QA functions. Even for the most secured system, cybersecurity attacks can always find multiple loopholes to illegally exploit. And this risk is even heightened when you outsource your testing processes to an external party.

 

 

To be more specific, you share your source codes, customer data, reference models and workflows with the outsourced team. Without proper documentation and preparation for potential security risks, you are at greater risk of being copied, plagiarised and leaked.

Of course, this case only happens when you accidentally partner up with shady vendors, but the risk of low security and low confidentiality is still there. The one viable solution for this may be signing an NDA or reviewing the security processes before starting the project.

 

2. Lack of control

When you outsource your testing project to a third party, you are effectively signing over management control and decision-making to that party. Even though you receive the reports from the project manager or the team leader, you are still blind-sided to some extent.

There are still things unseen, words unheard and actions unsupervised. This lack of control can derail the whole project and waste your time if you don’t have the timely and actionable information for fix-up whenever problems come up.

To fix this, you need to come for those vendors that have a clear communication and working process in which daily and weekly reports are carefully delivered. In these reports, a clear checklist of what to be included is a must so that you can have clarity over your project. Meeting schedules, video-conferencing are also very useful and direct ways for communication and control.

 

3. Challenges with remote work communication

Remote work communication is inevitable when you outsource your IT functions, and it can create many communication challenges. In many cases, you even have to contact an overseas team, causing many additional problems. These issues that remote teams may stumble on include:

• Limited direct and face-to-face communication
• Different timezone and cultural traits (for those offshore testing centers)
• Technical limitations such as poor internet and lack of a common communication tool
• Late replies due to lack of physical engagement

 

 

With these problems greatly impacting the quality of a outsource testing center, businesses now need to take serious actions to improve their remote communication to ensure a smooth workflow.

However, for some businesses that are new to all this outsourcing thing, they tend to lack awareness and preparation for the communication process. Without a proper one, the vendor and the client are prone to failure and isolation, which are the last things you want from an outsourced testing project.

On how to deal with the aforementioned problems, Lotus QA recommends you follow the guide for Remote Work Communication Best Practices, which included the strategic features to cover for effective communication.

 

QA Outsourcing with Lotus QA

By partnering with Lotus QA, we strive for the enhancement of the benefits you can get from QA outsourcing and the minimization of the potential risks. At Lotus QA, we have a well-written testing process and communication process to put you through smooth and effortless operations and simultaneously give you close management of your project.

 

 

Lotus QA with one of our focuses on quality assurance can provide you with the best outsource software testing service. At Lotus QA, we can ensure you of:

• High Security: LQA not only follows stringent procedures of ISO 27000:01 for optimal security and international standardized process but also flexibly adapts to clients’ requirements
• Quality Human Resource: we ensure staff competency through strict rounds of interviews, on-job orientations, continuous learning & development for the most suitable QA staff.
• Flexibility: We provide different working models to allow clients to choose or change the plan at any time.

Contact us for more guidance on this:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

Software QA Outsourcing can be a great enabler for the success of your tech products or your digital transformation journey. However, if not done properly, it can cause malfunctions and derail your project to failure. So here are some do’s and don’ts for you when doing businesses with software QA companies.

 

What you should do with Software QA Outsourcing

1. Define your objectives and testing scopes

The first and foremost thing you need for a successful software QA outsourcing project is to define what you want from this operation. For example, some companies prioritize overall cost reduction when they outsource their QA functions, some emphasize the QA experts that they get to work with. For different business objectives there come different objectives for your QA outsourcing project. You should know this beforehand to look for the vendors that can offer you what you want.

 

 

When you’re done with the ultimate goal for outsourcing, you go for the testing scopes. It can be the whole testing department, a product line, a single product, a product release or just a function. Knowing this kind of information can help you ramp up preparations for outsourcing planning and have timely and actionable steps to further execute the software QA outsourcing project.

 

2. Have a security system for software testing

At any time and in any situation, no matter what the scope of your business is, always remain vigilant, especially when you outsource your project/product for an external party to test.

The current situation of the global IT market has raised many concerns about security threats its consequences and these heightened risks are even bigger when you outsource your IT functions. To prevent the severe strains on security operations and prepare for your process, one thing you need to do with the vendor is to review the security process and determine what gap may exist. Risk prevention and necessary acts need to be prepared for any threats in the future.

 

 

Ideally, you should consider vendors which have multiple measures to ensure security, including:

• International standards on how to manage information security such as ISO/IEC 27001
• Physical security layers and biometric authentication
• Legal documents and agreement for legal bound
• Network security with access control, antivirus software, application security, firewalls, VPN encryption, etc.

 

3. Strictly follow test process

The test process is perhaps not the deciding factor for a successful software QA outsourcing project, but without a strictly followed test process, it is very hard to put in place an effective operation.

The test process is like the spine of the whole testing project which keeps everything running smoothly. It not only chops down the whole project into smaller parts for easier management but also offers the overall sense of consistency of your software product.

 

 

With every small step of the testing process being monitored and managed, you and the outsourced team can always have a quick undertaking for any derailing detail.

A test process can be customized flexibly, but once a process is determined, you should always stick to it. For a well-oiled testing project, the process needs to work all the way down to details. For example, “what inputs are expected from you?” and “what outputs do you expect from the vendors?” are the questions to be answered. These kinds of information will clear the fog and make your software QA outsourcing operation easier than ever.

Read more: 7 Tips for Effective IT Outsourcing Management

 

What you should not do

1. Let the price decide

For some companies, the price reduction is their priority. But don’t let the price be the sole reason for you to choose a vendor. When choosing a service provider for your business, always bear in mind that the ultimate goal is to get the services with a lower price and equivalent quality.

By saying this, we want to emphasize the balance between the price and the quality. A reasonable offer is a good offer is when you don’t have to compromise the overall quality of your project. If you blindly choose whichever vendor can offer the lowest possible price, the consequences will be severe. These consequences may include:

• Poor-quality services and personnel
• Insufficient infrastructure and resources
• Lack of security and legal assurance

 

 

Of course, you want to choose the most reasonable price offer, but the smart thing to do is to consider other factors as well. These factors can be individual certificates, company certificates, security processes, communication processes, etc.

 

2. Use too many platforms for communication

The concerns over communication and integration between the vendor and the client have been one of the biggest reasons why businesses are reluctant with IT Outsourcing in general. But when you break it down to smaller problems, the most obvious issue lies in the channel for communication. For one party, it might be more convenient to use this platform, but for the other party, it might be a different one.

 

 

The right answer for this is to choose an official channel for any kind of announcements and updates. There have been many cases of poor management when the teams use too many platforms to communicate. One is for the client, one is for the team members, etc. In each platform, there are hundreds more conversations going on, so it will be very hard for you and the vendors to connect under this chaotic situation.

Without setting up a proper communication focal point, not every one of the project can grasp the idea of what’s been going on, resulting in miscommunication and malfunctions.

Read more: Remote work communication in IT projects: Questions answered

 

3. Miss on the test documentation

Once you start your software QA outsourcing process, don’t haste the outsourced team into writing test plans and test cases right away. For a testing project to go smoothly without any hiccup, the first-ever thing you need to prepare is the documentations of whatever is included in your project. The tech specifications, notes, explanations, etc. are to be included.

 

 

Don’t just toss this documentation around. In contrast, it is advisable that you check regularly for the progress and how much they know from the project. From this ground knowledge, you will know their performance in some sense and have corrections whenever the tiniest hiccups appear.

For the vendors, complicated test documentation is never ideal. Instead of going full text, you should also put some infographics, charts, tables in place as visual aids. This can help the outsourced testing team have a deeper and quicker understanding of the project.

 

In conclusion

When doing software QA outsourcing, there are hundreds of mistakes you might make along the way, and the aforementioned do’s and don’ts are the things that Lotus QA has concluded through many testing projects with clients from all over the world.

We hope that with the advice from Lotus QA’s experts and experience, you can successfully apply it to your software testing outsourcing projects and avoid the issues along the way.

 

 

Software Testing Outsourcing with Lotus QA

Lotus QA with one of our focuses on quality assurance can provide you with the best software QA outsourcing service. At Lotus QA, we can ensure you of:

• High Security: LQA not only follows stringent procedures of ISO 27000:01 for optimal security and international standardized process but also flexibly adapts to clients’ requirements
• Quality Human Resource: we ensure staff competency through strict rounds of interviews, on-job orientations, continuous learning & development for the most suitable QA staff.
• Flexibility: We provide different working models to allow clients to choose or change the plan at any time.

 

Contact us for more guidance on this:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

For a software or a product to function smoothly, software testing is of paramount importance, but not any company is capable of having an in-house testing team due to limited resources. Instead, an outsourced software testing appears to be a viable solution. Let’s find out more about the 6 reasons why you should choose software testing outsourcing.

 

1. Cost-effectiveness

Building an in-house software testing is very costly. For example, according to Indeed, the base salary for a software testing engineer in the US is $87.5K per year, with an average cash bonus of $5000. This varies within the country, and it can even reach the point of $152,163 per year, which is a lot.

On the other hand, thanks to geographical pricing, the base salary of nearshore, offshore is 50 to 70% lower than that in the US. For instance, the average salary of a Vietnamese software testing engineer is $650, which is only $7800/year. By choosing a software testing service provider in Vietnam, your company can now reduce the testing cost by a lot.

 

 

As you can see from these statistics, there is a huge gap in the cost range between an in-house testing team and a nearshore/offshore team. With an in-house team, the employer not only has to pay a large amount of money to hire an average software testing engineer but also pays for additional compensations such as cash bonuses, healthcare, annual benefits, etc. And this does not even include the HR operation costs and costs for testing tools, which can add up to thousands of dollars. But with a nearshore/offshore team, you don’t have to worry about these costs.

 

2. Flexibility

Another reason why you should choose software testing outsourcing is the flexibility it offers, including fast team scaling and quick adaptation to project requirements.

 

Fast team scaling

Outsource software testing offers you the benefit of a fast team scaling, as you can ask for a team of 3-5 testers and hire them within just 2 weeks. Whether it is manual testers or automation testers, you can still get the team members that you want in a small amount of time. This is also applied when you want to scale down your team to match your business trajectory.

 

 

Quick adaptation to project requirements

In this ever-changing market and disruptive advances of the IT market, the case of changes in project objectives and requirements is very common, causing headaches for business leaders when they want to switch up. With this change in the test objectives, your in-house team will find it very challenging to adapt due to the demands for new technologies, the use of new tools, etc. In contrast, the outsourced test team can quickly change the personnel and replace them with those of required skills and hence, adapt to project requirements within a few days.

 

3. Faster time-to-market

Time-to-market is one of the most important factors that will impact your product’s efficiency, revenue, market shares and competitiveness. The last thing you want for your project is the delay. But with an in-house team, a delay is very likely to happen because recruiting, training and onboarding process can take up a large amount of time for your business, not to mention the testing process itself.

However, with an outsourced software testing team, the first thing that you will never have to lay hands on are the recruitment process. The vendor will provide you with the perfect candidate that can work on your project right away.

 

 

They will also be responsible for creating and accurately following a timeline that is optimized to suit your own targets and business. Certain measures will be taken to ensure that timeline, and there will be no unnecessary delays, endless searches for the right tools, etc.

 

4. Access to expertise

Software testing outsourcing companies have their own talent pools with many QA experts who have many years of experience working with different testing tools, systems, test environments. They also has what it takes to understand your domain, whether it is healthcare, finance or education to give you strategic advice.

 

 

For IT workers in general and software testers in specific, acquiring and attaining talents of high expertise level is very difficult. This is because, besides the high salary, your company has to have the reputation and additional benefits to recruit one tester with experience and skills, which requires a lot of effort and money.

But with outsourcing, the outsourcing vendor will hand the CVs that include the technology and skillsets you need directly to you, and you will have the benefit of choosing the most suitable candidates.

 

5. Focused operations

Software testing is a vital part of the software development life cycle, but it is not necessarily a core function of your business. By outsourcing software testing activities, your core business operations are now untangled of the recruitment and operational activities for the new testing departments, and you will have more time and focus on your important operations.

 

 

The testing team will be in the good hands of the vendor, who has experience in managing an outsourced testing team. All you have to do is to check regularly on the progress of the testing team and spend time on what can really create the edge of competition for your business.

 

6. Unbiased perspective

When it comes to software testing, cognitively biased perspective is a common issue, leading to biased test analysis, test cases and test execution. Put it simply, an in-house team will know the basic information of the software development process, hence knowing the potential defects coming up. Although this kind of information can help testers detect the most obvious bugs, their point of testing is now drawn to the apparent hypothesis, making them unaware of the alternatives and other defects.

 

 

This is the reason why we need an unbiased perspective from external test experts. Since the product-related information is missing, the testers can dig deep into the documents and have multifaceted perspectives towards the products. Thanks to this, there will be no bugs missing, no in-attentional blindness, no biases in test cases and test execution if handed out carefully.

 

Our final thoughts

Deciding whether you should choose an in-house or outsourced software testing team requires much consideration of many aspects. But if you are leaning towards these features, outsourcing software testing is definitely your answer:

• Cost Savings
• Flexibility in team scaling and project adaptation
• Faster time-to-market
• Large international talent pool with expertise
• Focus on core operations
• Unbiased perspective in testing

 

Software Testing Outsourcing with Lotus QA

Lotus QA with one of our focuses on quality assurance can provide you with the best outsource software testing service. At Lotus QA, we can ensure you of:

• High Security: LQA not only follows stringent procedures of ISO 27000:01 for optimal security and international standardized process but also flexibly adapts to clients’ requirements
• Quality Human Resource: we ensure staff competency through strict rounds of interviews, on-job orientations, continuous learning & development for the most suitable QA staff.
• Flexibility: We provide different working models to allow clients to choose or change the plan at any time.

 

Interested in our software testing outsourcing services? Contact Lotus QA for consultations from test experts:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

With the increasingly high demand for software testing on the global market, Vietnam, as one of the top countries to provide software outsourcing services, has seen a rise in the companies offering software testing services. Software testing companies in Vietnam have many years of experience in quality assurance. These companies are the representatives of what Vietnam can offer for the testing market: affordable budget, domain experts and dedicated supports.

Top 10 software testing outsourcing companies in Vietnam

Lotus Quality Assurance

Lotus Quality Assurance (LQA) is ranking as top 3 Software testing companies in Vietnam, recognized by the Clutch B2B rating platform in 2021. Founded in 2016, Lotus QA is a young yet promising company working in the software testing industry. With a competitive price of no more than $25/hour, Lotus QA has successfully proven its competency and dedication to clients’ experience, gaining us the honorable Sao Khue awards and the reputation of top-notch services in the demanding market of America, Japan, Korea, etc.

Software testing services at LQA include QA consultation, testing implementation, and testing talents for hire. LQA’s expertise is mobile app testing, web app testing and automation testing, proven through successful projects with many renowned businesses in the world such as Toshiba, LG’s Electronics, AVN, Panasonic, etc.

Throughout 5 years of development, Lotus QA has witnessed the biggest growth rate in company size with 248 employees, 30% of which are manual testers and automation testers. With the experience working mainly in medium-sized and small projects, Lotus QA can well provide you with top-notch software testing services with midmarket and small businesses.

Lotus Quality Assurance (LQA) – Top Software testing companies in Vietnam

KMS Solutions, Inc.

With 12 years working in the IT sector, KMS Solutions have served 130+ clients, helping them save $139M in different IT services, notably software testing services.

To achieve these impressive numbers, KMS Solutions provide industry-leading solutions for sustainable, profitable growth. Through comprehensive software QA and testing services, KMS Solutions offer high-quality engineers with comprehensive domain experience, with a competitive price.

Especially, KMS Solutions apply an automation-first mindset to everything they build. This mindset allows their testers to deliver quality software at faster speeds expediting your time-to-market.

FPT Software

FPT Software is a giant in Vietnam’s IT outsourcing market with an international-acclaimed reputation. In FPT Software, clients work with a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE), which is a command center that makes use of standardized tools and processes to enhance the alignment between enterprise environment and IT, and increase QA efficiency.

FPT Software can provide you with multiple quality assurance and software testing services, but the most recent success of FPT Software lies in the implementation of automation testing. With the use of certified and standardized testing tools, FPT Software gains the trust of many clients. To meet the requirements of testers, FPT Software has developed a team of 1,700 testers worldwide, offering their expertise to 200+ clients of all industries.

Logi Gear

Established in 1994, LogiGear is always rank in Top Software testing companies in Vietnam with wide experience, especially in automated testing. They spent more than 27 years optimizing their testing services. The most stand-out testing services in Logi Gear are:

– Automation testing: With well-versed experts in a variety of Test Automation tools, Logi Gear can boost up the testing process and save time.

– Functional testing: LogiGear provides a QA functional testing service that utilizes decades of knowledge of Software Testing and specialized Test Automation tools.

– Offshore teams: LogiGear can solve the problems of lack of Subject Matter Expertise, lack of Infrastructure/Resources, scalability of QA and time-to-market.

CO-WELL Asia

CO-WELL Asia is currently an emerging destination for software testing services. With 400 IT engineers working in Hanoi and Da Nang that graduated from the top universities of Vietnam and many others all over the world, CO-WELL Asia can offer a higher ratio of QA testers to programmers in comparison to other Vietnamese companies.

Especially in CO-WELL Asia, various training courses have been organized in Vietnam as well as abroad to enhance staff’s technical level and soft skills. With these skills, CO-WELL Asia can bring optimum value to our customers.

In terms of skill composition, 40% of the staff are PHP, 12% of .Net, 12% of Java, 36% of HTML, iOS, Perl and other languages. Moreover, CO-WELL Asia achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Certificate of Information Security Standard and multiple Sao Khue awards, including the best ten software outsourcing services in Vietnam.

MeU Solutions INC

For MeU Solutions, their main testing services are Manual Testing, Automation Testing and Security Testing. Through their 13 years of experience, they have done 100+ projects with 30+ pools of real devices. Their current testing staff is 30+ QA engineers, working with a low hourly rate of under $25/ hr.

With profound expertise in testing an extensive range of iOS, Android and web applications, MeU Solutions INC has successfully delivered quality apps to global clientele.

TMA Solutions

TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide TMA Solutions is one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 3,000 engineers. Their engineering team was selected from a large pool of Vietnam IT engineers; they are well-trained and have successfully completed many large and complex projects.

TMS Solutions is quite a big name in the Software Testing market in Vietnam. Their main service offerings include full product verification, test planning & execution and test automation. With just under the fee of $20/ hr, you can hire their best teams to carry out software testing services for you.

SHIFT ASIA

SHIFT ASIA opened its office in HCM Vietnam in 2016, as a strategic SEA hub to scale operations and better serve the greater APAC region. Started off with 25 QA professionals for the manual testing division, SHIFT ASIA has since grown into a full-functioning office handling international clients.

Through their years of development, SHIFT ASIA now has 200 passionate employees with diverse backgrounds and expertise. The things that facilitate our wide service offerings are security assessment, test automation, international inspection, offshore development and many more.

Waverley Software

Waverley Software is another big name in the list of software testing companies in Vietnam. This brand was started in 1992 in the US, and then reached out to the world through the expansion in many countries, namely Vietnam.

In Vietnam’s market, Waverly Software stands out as a top-quality QA company, providing all kinds of testing services. Waverley’s quality assurance and software testing services help companies around the world build

uality products. They conduct QA audits, provide standalone software QA, manual testing, and test automation services using agile testing methodology. At Waverley, they design their own testing tools; provide various types of software testing; write test documentation including test plans, checklists and test cases; monitor quality metrics and conduct data analytics. Their office in Ho Chi Minh City hosts some of South East Asia’s top software testers. Waverley Software conducts training programs for technology graduates on a regular basis, which allows them to rapidly scale their clients’ teams with trained talents for a smooth testing process.

Axon Active

Axon Active is the last name in the top 10 software testing companies in Vietnam. Axon Active’s offshore testing center not only provides regular offshore software testing services but also works towards becoming a trusted consulting partner. They aims to help design a strategic software testing process for the clients’ business and advice suitable software testing solutions that improve your business efficiency and performance, helping you achieve long-term objectives.

A quick comparison among the top 10 software testing companies in Vietnam

Company	Hourly rate	Employees	Founded Year	Main testing services
Lotus Quality Assurance	< $25 / hr	248	2016	– Web & Moblie App Testing testing – Embbeded Software Testing – Automation Testing – Integration Testing – API Testing
KMS Solutions, Inc.	Undisclosed	50 – 249	2009	– Test Automation – API Testing – Mobile Testing
FPT Software	< $25 / hr	10,000+	1988	– Web & Moblie App Testing testing – Embedded product testing – Cloud testing – Inter-operability (IoP) testing
CO-WELL ASIA	1,000 – 9,999	$50,000+	2011	– Web App Testing – Mobile App Testing – Data Migration Testing – Testing tools & Project management tools
Logi gear	Undisclosed	50 – 249	1994	– Web & Mobile Testing – Test Automation – API Testing – Localization Testing – Games & IoT Testing
MeU Solutions INC	< $25 / hr	50 – 249	2016	– Shift-Right Testing – Effectively Managed Testing – Automation Sign-On Package
TMA Solution	< $25 / hr	1,000 – 9,999	1997	– Full Product Verification – Web & Mobile App Testing – Test Automation
SHIFT ASIA	< $25 / hr	50 – 249	2016	– Web & Mobile App Testing​ – Vulnerability Test
Axon Active	Undisclosed	250 – 999	2008	– Web & Mobile App Testing
Waverley Software	$25 – $49 / hr	250 – 999	1992	– Web & Mobile App Testing

Conclusion

Vietnam has the potential to become a new software testing outsourcing hub of Asia. With the Introduction of top 10 Software Testing Company in Vietnam, we hope you can find the best service provider for your testing projects. If you are small or medium-sized company looking for top-notch software testing companies in Vietnam, you can contact Lotus Quality Assurance’s expert and let us know what we can help you with!

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

As software testing is a compulsory procedure in any software development life cycle to ensure product quality, any tech company would need a team of testers to devise and execute tests.

As opposed to the increasing number of software developers available on the market, that of software testers is not abundant. In fact, it has been reported that there would be an alarming shortage of software testers as growing demand outstrips the number of graduates entering a profession that many reject as unglamorous.

 

Although the seemingly attractive offer of high salary is put on the table, it is still very difficult to find an experienced software testers. Hence, many businesses have to resort to the junior testers, hoping them could learn their way to more skills and knowledge.

With this resourceful yet inexperienced talent pool, businesses are compelled to preparing a thorough and complete checklist of what they have to know about there candidates for the job of software testers. The technical aspects that should be put into consideration are:

• Basic knowledge for testing types and how to approach testing
• Test environment
• Test domains, domain-specific knowledge & candidates’ experiences
• Test tools (for both technologies and management)
• Test process and how to adapt to that process

What interviewer should clarify about your software tester interview process

– Clarify what kind of testing engineers you are looking for. When it comes to testing, the two most popular jobs are manual testing and automation testing. For each of these approaches, there are different criteria for you to consider when interviewing.

– What domain(s) you are aiming at. If your business is fixed within a particular industry/service, this clarification won’t be too complicated. Nevertheless, in the case of IT Outsourcing vendors recruiting for their talent pool, the recruiter should clear out what domain(s) for their next project to find the best-suited candidates.

– The career path for engineer testers when they’re onboard. Many test engineer want to build their way up in their career path, and this is what they expect to get from their employer. Make sure that the interviewer and the interviewee stay on the same page in regards to career path to avoid any conflict in the future.
Technical aspects to interview software testers

Talent gap is not incommon, but it doesn’t mean you would have to hire any testers there are on the market. With careful consideration over what you want in your testers, finding the suitable candidates is not entirely an tough challenge.

1. Basic knowledge for testing types and how to approach testing

For every tester, it is a must for the candidates to cover the basic and fundamentals of what test types they are going to work with. If they fail to tell the differences of, let’s say, GUI testing and API testing, it can be a big disadvantage. The lack of basic knowledge can result in numerous hiccups during your work, not to mention the time wasted on training for this elementaries.

Hence, for this part, the interview questions should be devised to sort out the ones that did their research and those didn’t bother to learn.

 

Please do remember that any of the questions concerning testing types and the differences among them can be easily found and answered online with details. The interviewer should not identify these as the deciding factor for the interview results. Instead, this should be the defining factor of how good they are with theoretical knowledge.

Between manual testing and automation testing, the interviewer should ask somes questions with regards to their differences.

For example, you can ask what test types are suitable for automation testing and what test types can’t be executed with automation testing. These question help indicate the overall knowledge of testing that the candidates have, helping interview forming the initial perspective about them.

2. Test environment

To put it simple, a test environment is a setup of network, software and hardware for test executions. Also known as test bed, test environment is configured based on the Application Under Test.

 

When interview want to dig deeper into how candidates work in their testing projects, there should be specific questions about the test environments. Through these questions, you can know:

• How does the candidate devise test environment? Is the process thorough enough or similar to that of your system?
• How does the candidate organize multiple environments for testing?
• What checklist of test environment elements that testers have to cover in their testing process?

3. Test domains, domain-specific knowledge & candidates’ experiences

As digital transformation is present in every aspect of out lives, so does software testing. However, among the applied domains, the most popular are finance & banking, healthcare, argriculture, entertainment, etc.

For each specific domain, there will be different software structures, hence the different approaches for software testing process.

 

For example, in the finance and banking system, the interviewer are likely to ask test candidates about the security testing process.

The reason for this is that for financial institution and organizations, data security tops of priority. Personal information and financial status stand as the most at-risk kind of information in the world. Working as a tester in this sector, the candidate is required to ensure each transaction be secure and accurate. For businesses working in finance and banking, the questions about how they carry our security testing are definitely on the list.

4. Which test tools (for both technologies and management)

When talking about test tools, we want to refer to both techical and managerial tools.

First, about management tools, it is recommended that the interviewer ask about the most frequently used tools and how the candidates can cooperate on that platform. The act of bug and work reporting should be also included in this part.

About technical testing tools, it should be divided into 7 main types of testing tools, including:

• Test detecting tool
• Mobile app testing tool
• Cross-browser testing tool
• Automated testing tool
• Load testing tool
• API testing tool
• Security testing tool

It is impossible for one for master all of the kinds of testing tool above. To know whether the candidate are suitable for your testing team, the interviewer should ask specifically about the testing tools that your team are gonna use the future.

5. Test process and how to adapt to that process

The testing process indicates how the whole testing team deal with one particular project. Normally, a testing process includes the following steps:

• Planning and Control
• Analysis and Design
• Implementation and Execution
• Evaluating exit criteria and Reporting
• Test Closure activities

 

These steps can be changed upon requests of clients with customization. ISTQB, which is a prestigious institution of testing and quality assurance has pressed the international standardized process for companies to follow. However, customization is also very common.

Walking through every step of the process, testing is executed with thorough analysis and close supervision. In these steps, it is vital to involve Business Analysis, Testers, Developers and QA staff to ensure a stringent and high-quality process.

With the 5 above aspects to get to know about your test candidates, through which you can devise a checklist of what you would want from them, we hope you can find your best-suited test engineers.

If you don’t know where to start with tester recruitment process, contact us for expert consulting at:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

IT Outsourcing is the way to go for many projects and many companies worldwide. As the information technology industry progresses and thrives, the fostering of digital transformation is on the rise, even for companies that have no strategic core of technology development. 

Whether it is an enterprise or a startup, IT Outsourcing can be the tactical approach for prospects and enhancement, not to mention the cost-barrier to be lowered when implementing this.

However, as if managing complex technology projects wasn’t difficult enough, IT outsourcing can be a loose screw in your overall IT operations if the management methods go off the rails.

In fact, it can create numerous stresses that you have never experienced, causing malfunctions and underperformance when using an external team.

Interesting enough, it is normally the lack of communication, strategic analysis and management skills that derail the project, not the technical competence of the IT Outsourcing providers. Indeed, the most important and primary aspect in managing outsourced projects lies within how to meld diverse organizations into a cohesive unit. To do this, you might want to follow these 9 strategic guides for a cost-effective and cohesive operation when working with IT Outsourcing companies.

 

Identify what to outsource

The picture of outsourcing is not as simple as you might think. In fact, the adoption and implementation of hiring someone outside of your organization require a thorough examination and assessment of what to outsource to ensure minimal cost and strict security.

What should always be kept in your mind is the ultimate goal of outsourcing, which is the cost to be reduced. The question here is, which operations and systems can be outsourced without damaging the business’s operations and core strategic services.

 

To do this, you should divide your operation into 2, one of which is a commodity system and the other is a strategic system. By stating the “commodity”, we meant the activities that keep you running but do not necessarily differentiate you from other competitors in the market.

By dividing your business activities accordingly, you can have a clearer look at which activities can be outsourced to a supplier with a reasonable price and which cannot be entrusted to outsiders. 

 

Choose your supplier

One special feature of IT outsourcing is the length of the contract. Normally, the outsourcing contract in other sectors could last for years, while in the IT industry, the average contract duration is 2 years. 

The reason for such a short contract time is the unprecedented and unpredictable changes in the industry, not to mention the ever-growing amount of new approaches and technologies. Many companies might want to change the terms and requirements in the contract to adapt to new features of the industry, and this is inevitable.

When choosing your supplier, another thing to take into serious consideration is to minimize the power of suppliers by soliciting separate bids for each service. By doing this, you have already minimized the risks of complete dependence on the suppliers.

On the other hand, one should not automatically assume that a supplier would outperform their own IT department. Instead, the in-house department should be allowed to compete with the outsourcing team to institute the best practices.

To constructively choose the right IT Outsourcing supplier, your business should form a team consisting of mostly IT professionals to review the proposed bidding for each contract. Their deep technical expertise, together with a clear understanding of the company’s goal, can keep an objective eye on the service, benefiting the business operations.

 

Clarify your business goals

The clarification of your core value proposition and business goals does not necessarily stay at the top of your priority list, but it is a must for smoother and more effective collaboration between you and your outsourcer.

This does not entail endless and lengthy training sessions and documentation exchange. In fact, the essence of this is to share your most important features and elements of your business such as business process, business model and your people. 

 

Once your business goals have been clarified to the outsourcer, they will have more information to adapt and align their approach in accordance with your business goals. To achieve this, a mutual understanding between two parties can help a great deal to create more value, both for your business and the outsourcing company.

For the case of IT Outsourcing, you need paramount consideration of how to define your business and software concept. The questions of what it can do, what target audience and how efficient you want it to be have to be answered right at the beginning of the project. Being on the same page about mutual interests and values can create a strong partnership, which can be of great use in the time coming. 

 

Make sure everyone’s working from the same playbook

Being cognitive is very much advantageous to your business when you want to adopt IT Outsourcing, but it does not simply mean the alignment in business values, business goals or anything so large-scale like that.

In fact, it is about the resonation in how to work, process, test and deliver. One way to ensure the well-designed and robust workflow of the two parties is to create a playbook that contains step-by-step instructions.

This method has long been in use in some giants of the IT industry when outsourcing. With a detailed hand-book, all information compiled can facilitate consistent application of your requirements. 

With this hand-book, the majority of information is the background and the technical material that could help them in further streamlining and managing the project.

During your work of outsourcing your projects, you might encounter IT Outsourcing companies from different parts of the world, and they might not be speaking English. 

Hence, besides the written documentation and requirements, preparing wireframes, annotated diagrams and other visual aids is also recommended. With your needs clearly conveyed through specific notes, the outsourcer has a higher chance of getting what you want.

 

Work effectively with the time-zone

Assuming that you’re working with an offshore IT Outsourcing service provider from Vietnam, while you’re in America. In this case, working in different time zones can cause much delay and inconvenience. To deal with this, you should be cognizant with the time difference, hence scheduling meetings that suit both parties.

 

By doing this, it not only helps you save time, it also shows your concern about your partner, through which you can build a level of trust and motivation for both parties to work harder. 

To make this work, you can take the following as an example. If you have partnered with an IT Outsourcing company in Vietnam, which is 11 hours ahead of the East Coast of the United States, you can send them something at the end of your business day, they can work on it while you are sleeping and have it back to you at the start of the next business day.

 

Build business communication

“Communication is the key.” With communication, a mutual understanding is formed with bells and whistles of the dos and don’ts in the projects.

Alongside the overall message to be delivered during the project, you also have to ensure the understanding over the project and the work required from every team member. 

You have to make sure that every team member has a clearly defined workload for the day, and understands their purpose of the project. Here’s how to do this:

• Daily calls with the team or at least 2-3 times per week. 
• Have a team of business analysts (BA) or a project manager (PM) to ensure that every stage of the software development goes smoothly. 
• Regular but short meetings which prevent exhaustion with long discussions and get regular updates.
• Involve a tracking mechanism (aka metrics) for measuring the team’s productivity and quality.

 

Use project management software

On a small scale, management software may not be the most necessary. In contrast, a large-scale operation would benefit your business the most if you use a collaborative platform to manage projects. 

In this platform, instead of staff keeping track of their own workflow, tasks and schedule in an unorganized manner, they can follow their work, time management, and task progress, in tune with their visualize colleagues

 

In other words, this platform is like a gathering place which keeps all the records of one’s work, allowing users to accomplish more without getting distracted. 

When choosing a platform for your project, you should pay attention to the built-in extension and other broadening functionalities to find the most suitable one. 

For projects with sensitive security terms, some might find a customized or in-house built tool is more suitable. 

 

Adopt software development methodologies

There are many software development methodologies that you can make use of, the most famous of which is the Agile and Scrum method. These allow the outsourcing team to work under unification and collaboration. The feature of continuous integration and continuous delivery helps boost the speed of projects’ time to market. 

These also ensure flexibility, constant reiterations and close supervision upon the outsourcing team, entailing full control over the operation and activities.   

 

Sync up regularly

To effectively speed up and ensure the work of outsourcing, agreement on the sync-up schedule and reports should be made.

It can be done on a regular daily basis, or even weekly to ensure the time frame and outcome, especially if your outsourced team is in another time zone.”

“Effective communication, especially with new or off-site employees, is key to creating a more efficient, productive and profitable project,” says Handy. “Whether you are using Google Chat or Slack, keeping all project communication in one central location will increase accountability and allow all team members to communicate in real time.”

Operating an IT Outsourcing project in tune with your business culture that can ensure efficiency and productivity is tricky. With strategic approaches and detailed checklists of the dos and don’ts, you can easily lower the cost-barrier with IT Outsourcing providers. 

 

Don’t want to bother yourself with the trivial problems of IT Outsourcing? Contact LQA now for standard and scrupulous IT Outsourcing services.

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