A company might consider
Software Outsourcing a
website's testing for several reasons. 1. The company may be
launching a new site, or a new version of their site, and may
feel that most testing tasks can be relegated to offshore
provider. 2. The company may not have the resources -- people,
skills, software, hardware or time - to perform testing. 3. The
project to be tested may be of such as short life span that the
company doesn't need any long-term investment in testing
processes. 4. The company might want an independent third party
to perform the testing, in order to get a more objective view of
site quality. 5. The company may even be outsourcing the
development and coding for the site, making the outsourcing of
the testing a reasonable decision. (Even more reasonable would
be a firm that provides the coding and the quality control for
its own code.
The decision to outsource testing needs to be a well-considered
decision, because most people who aren't responsible for the
testing misunderstand the meanings and scopes of the concepts
involved in testing. Two very important issues must be resolved
before taking the outsource step: first, the company that owns
the website must be absolutely clear about the scope of the job
-- including the tasks, processes, and responsibilities -- that
they want to hire out; and second, the company must be sure that
they are speaking the same "language" as the test firm they will
hire.
If I want to outsource any testing tasks for
Website
Development, I need to understand clearly the nature of the
tasks, and how the tasks fit into the overall quality plan for
the site. Many testing tasks can be parsed out to contractors;
for example, hiring another firm to perform usability reviews
makes excellent sense because many firms specialize in usability
testing. Usability testing, however, is not the same as quality
assurance, and if I hire a usability firm under the assumption
that my quality assurance needs are thereby being handled I will
be making a very big mistake.
If I want to outsource quality control for my site, I'm making
certain assumptions about how I will do business. Quality
control is a system for testing all output against a standard of
quality; this is an ongoing process, because in a proper quality
control environment all output has to be tested. If I hire a
firm to help me test prior to launching a site, I need to either
form a partnership with the test firm to help with future
production or build my own team of quality control testers.
Neither option is necessarily difficult, but I have to consider
this before making the decision to outsource because the choice
will affect my future workflow.
If I want to outsource quality assurance, I'm making a decision
to introduce the test firm deeply into my company's decision
process. Quality assurance is a pro-active process that requires
close proximity to all phases and aspects of the creation and
maintenance of a website. If I exclude the role of quality
assurance from important meetings and discussions -- for
example, design meetings -- I'm crippling the process. Quality
assurance is an order of magnitude more complicated, more
involved, and more important than testing of quality control
alone, and assurance requires constant attention and a
penetrating interest in improving everything. This understanding
must play a role in any discussion of outsourcing quality
assurance.
I do think that a skilled and dedicated testing firm can be a
vital part of a quality assurance effort, as long as the
process, and the relationship, are managed by somebody on the
website's team who is ultimately responsible for the process.
Outsourcing testing tasks is a great idea, especially if it
frees up resources -- time and attention -- for the web team to
focus on higher-level issues. I'd gladly pass off browser
compatibility testing to have more time to work out
architectural issues, for example.
Issues to Consider When Outsourcing Testing: I spell out
some points below that I think are important to address when
making the decision to outsource testing for a commerce site.
This is a big decision, and approaching the decision itself from
a quality assurance point-of-view shows that
Outsourcing Testing is not simply
a matter of jobbing out a set of simple tasks. Understand the
scope of what you will outsource.
About the author:
Tatvasoft - Offshrore Software
Development Company
Alternative E-mail: chetan.patel@tatvasoft.com
Ph No.+919824832541
