Finding the right offshore QA service provider for your software project can be a tedious process. However, it can be done through careful selection and proper planning. This article provides helpful tips on how to overcome the challenges of choosing the best remote QA outsourcing vendor to succeed in your current software projects. Below are the steps to follow.
- Plan ahead your staffing needs and workflows.
- Enhance your current workflows.
- Select a skilled QA personnel to oversee your future service provider.
- Ensure your software development and testing are aligned to your business goals.
- Select the best software testing provider who can meet your project requirements.
- Evaluate your offshore vendor’s expertise, reliability, service and resource capability, and self-management policies.
- Conduct ongoing vendor management and assessment.
- Provide solutions to potential offshore QA outsourcing issues.
- Identify what lies ahead in every milestone and implement necessary process enhancements.
#1 Evaluate your staff requirements and software technologies
Prior to finding a perfect fit among the list of available offshore QA outsourcing software development companies, ensure that your internal team is prepared for future collaboration.
Improve your existing workflows
The main considerations between you and your offshore QA service provider in the testing phase involve your software specification needs, current and upgraded codes, and the identified and fixed bugs. Before commencing any task with a software testing company, you should clarify several issues:
1. Where the needed data on each of the essential information is recorded?
2. What is the frequency of updating the information?
3. What specific tools do your dedicated team employ (e.g. development environment, source code management, and continuous integration software)?
4. What bug reporting method is more convenient to use?
Using ideal development methods and their full compliance with QA requirements may not be applicable in the real environment setting or are not needed at all. However, providing more vital information to your offshore software testing vendor reduces the time of formalizing the initial partnership so the actual work can take place. This minimizes the project cost in evaluating the hiring companies requirements and agreeing on the timelines and services to be rendered.
Select a skilled QA manager to oversee the project
To ensure the project development is being monitored properly, you need to have an in-house team lead or one senior-level QA personnel to supervise your dedicated development team of about 20 to 50 remote testers) to work closely with a service provider more effectively by conducting:
- Evaluation of the test strategies, plans, cases, reports, and bugs.
- Identification of updates in software requirements.
- Assessment and management of vendor performance and provision for feedback.
- Development of balanced judgments during conflict situations and their immediate resolution.
- The anticipation of possible risks and preparation of a mitigation plan.
- The motivation of your dedicated development team to collaborate with an external software testing team.
Development and testing alignment are critical issues in offshore software testing outsourcing. Oftentimes, the external test teams are reluctant to interact openly and freely with dedicated development teams. In the process, the absence or poor inter-team interaction can lead to miscommunication of the software requirements, late modifications and approval of a test plan, unclear bug reports and, eventually may miss iteration objectives and targets. The main function of the designated QA manager is to convince the stakeholders that the best approach to execute a smooth process in the operations is to establish cooperation and mutual understanding between the parties involved in the project.
