LTS QA

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