If you’ve wondered, “which strategy is better – hiring an in-house quality assurance (QA) team or outsourcing a QA team?”, you’re not alone! This question has been asked several times over the years in multiple meetings in different organizations. The in-house QA has been a traditional, tested route for years, and therefore, several organizations want to stick to it.
However, with off-shoring becoming a popular work model in IT in the last decade and a half, organizations are slowly opening up to the idea of contracting an external QA service provider. There are too many success stories for large and small organizations outsourcing their testing work to ignore the benefits of the model anymore.
What’s the Inhibition in Outsourcing QA Testing?
QA plays a crucial role in not only identifying and fixing bugs in an application but also determining its quality and speed of delivery. The organization outsourcing QA is, therefore, hesitant that “independent QA service providers” who are not involved in product development might not be able to perform tasks as per the required business standards.
However, not only has this perception found to be incorrect in many cases, the “independent service providers” have proven that their complete detachment from the development process often helps them perform better, unbiased testing of the product.
5 Benefits of Outsourcing QA Testing
With increasing competition and growing customer demands of quicker and quality delivery, organizations are expected to develop and deliver high-quality software products with a minimum budget in the least possible time. For organizations of limited size, it is nearly impossible to quickly scale up technically as well as in terms of resource size to meet the growing market demands.
Challenges like these, along with factors such as software complexity, size, and user sophistication has led to the demand for independent testing organizations. Let’s look at the 5 key benefits of contracting independent service providers for testing:
Impartial and Autonomous Testing
As the independent QA service provider is not involved in the development process, they have an unbiased outlook towards the product. It’s highly likely that they will conduct impartial testing on stringent quality requirements and certify it only when the product is 100 percent bug-free.
Multiple Test Environments
The independent QA service provider has ready test environments along with deep experience of testing products on these environments. The availability of varied test environments allows the product to be tested on multiple possible parameters and ensures a comprehensive check for all kinds of users before the product is rolled out.
Accelerated Delivery Speed
Organizations that employ an independent QA service provider face low failure rates because testers focus exclusively on quality and adherence to requirements. Thorough QA ensures that subsequent release cycles are faster. Also, in many cases, if the testers and developers are in different geographies, the QA team starts work at the end of the development team’s day. This helps in faster project turnaround.
Flexibility
Independent testing organizations have experienced and skilled workforce across various testing domains. Organizations can onboard the best possible resources on a project as and when needed to carry out testing activities in the best possible manner. Outsourcing QA also offsets the testing task from the in-house team, giving them the bandwidth to exclusively focus on the development task.
Cost Efficiency
By hiring an independent QA service provider, organizations can considerably reduce the costs associated with the overall project. They can choose to have experts and guaranteed services on all kinds of projects without any investment in hiring, onboarding, and training resources. Also, as resources are hired only for a specified duration, there is no burden of maintaining an optimal size testing team throughout the year.
Why Choosing the Right Outsourced QA Testing Provider is Important
No company wants to tarnish its credibility by releasing faulty software. That’s why they engage with expert QA service providers who can help them achieve optimal quality of the product within their time and budget.
However, choosing the right independent QA service provider is a tricky task, and going wrong in the selection has serious implications. Therefore, while choosing an independent QA service provider, organizations must keep the following points in mind:
- The independent QA service provider should have a track record of successfully handling software QA projects.
- They should have a complete portfolio of testing services along with the capability to validate scalability, performance, and user acceptance.
- They should offer the flexibility to onboard resources in time and down-size the team when required, along with long coverage hours and a sound plan to deal with a potential crisis.
- They must have adequate security measures to prevent any security breach. ISO certifications are a reasonable assurance that best practices are being followed.
