Software development service companies often offer a comprehensive suite of services: development, testing, support, and maintenance of software products. However, if you don’t want to outsource your entire software development, but are looking for ways to reduce product costs, outsourced software testing services are the safest option.
Why?
- Testing is the most autonomous part of the software development lifecycle. Testers have minimal interaction with the core team, and their work generally does not negatively impact the quality of the product. More autonomy means fewer risks.
- Testing is usually easier to estimate in terms of time, and initial estimates do not significantly differ from the final time spent on testing. This reduces the risk of unexpected costs.
- Outsourced testing helps you avoid the bias common in internal teams, especially in startups. Outsourced testers don’t feel the moral pressure of finding errors in the code, which can lead to more objective testing results.
- Communication with testers is straightforward and practical. Testing rarely involves discussions about new ideas and strategies. The work is performed according to strict guidelines, and the influence of cultural context on the work is minimal.
Read: Types Of Software Development Testing And Which To Choose
However, outsourced software testing services still come with typical outsourcing risks:
- Poor quality work
- Delayed deadlines
- Information security concerns
- Weak communication
- Potential overpayment
We offer you five rules that can be implemented at your organization level today to mitigate these risks before starting to outsource software testing.
Where do these rules come from?
JetSoftPro is a software development one-stop shop that has been working on projects according to the PDLC principle for 20 years. Our clients outsource software testing services to us, and our reports often contain not only bugs but also strategic insights into the client’s code structure.
We help businesses improve their products, and based on our experience and knowledge, we have formulated these rules, which we follow ourselves and recommend that you do as well.
Read: You Outsource Software Development For the First Time, What Do You Need to Know
Rule One: When you outsource software testing, automate the quality of testers’ work
Testers are people who look for mistakes made by others, yet they still carry the risk of human error. Therefore, to ensure the quality of testing, it makes sense to automate this process as much as possible.
At JetSoftPro, we use a Quality Framework — an automated set of rules that is deployed in JIRA alongside other project tasks and processes. This helps the project manager monitor the quality of each specialist’s work involved in the project.
Here are some additional tools that can be useful for test automation:
Zephyr for JIRA
Zephyr for JIRA is a powerful tool for managing project-related bugs and tracking their progress. It offers several features that make it an ideal choice for bug tracking, including a reporting feature that generates detailed reports on the status of your project bugs.
Zephyr for JIRA integrates with many popular development tools, such as Jenkins and Bamboo. This integration allows users to automatically trigger tests when code changes are made, ensuring that bugs are properly identified and tracked.
Xray
Xray indexes tests in real-time, giving you full control of the entire testing process. This ensures total coverage, quick identification of issues, and confidence in consistently releasing quality software.
With detailed traceability reports, you know exactly which test failed and where the problem lies, allowing you to pinpoint what needs to be fixed and easily collaborate with developers to resolve issues.
SonarQube
SonarQube is primarily used for code quality analysis, but it can also help assess test coverage, making it useful for evaluating the effectiveness of testers.
Rule Two: Train Your Outsourced Software Testing Team for Accurate Time Planning
This starts with corporate culture — time should be a core value in your company. The best way to emphasize the value of time includes:
- Avoiding meetings where most participants are simply present but not actively engaged.
- Respecting employees’ personal time.
- Ensuring adherence to a defined work schedule or set number of hours per week.
- Prioritizing quick decision-making over slow ones (without compromising quality).
- Implementing structured processes within the company.
Next, you need to teach your internal team how to plan their time accurately and assess tasks more precisely, while holding your outsourced testing partner to the same standards.
Here are three tips that will help your team provide accurate estimates:
1. Break Tasks into Subtasks
Train your team to break large tasks into smaller, well-defined subtasks. This helps them better understand the workload and more accurately estimate the time required for each part. Techniques like Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) can significantly improve planning.
2. Use Historical Data and Analogies
Educate your team to analyze previous projects and tasks to use this data for estimating similar tasks in the future. It’s essential to develop skills in working with metrics, such as Velocity in Agile or using Story Points, to objectively estimate workloads.
3. Account for Uncertainties
Teach your team to consider potential risks and uncertainties by adding buffer time to their estimates. The “Three-Point Estimation” technique (estimating optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely time to complete a task) can help avoid underestimating the time needed.
Rule Three: Implement a Security System for Outsourced Software Testing and Other Departments
Every year, cybersecurity risks increase at a concerning rate. To mitigate the risk of information leaks related to clients, financial operations, or even worse — code leaks — implement a security protocol with appropriate access controls for external developers.
Access should be minimal but sufficient for the task at hand. All accesses should also go through multi-factor authentication and an access management system, allowing your DevOps team to track who accessed what and when.
Create sandbox environments for testing so that all operations can be performed without risking your product.
Use VPNs to restrict unauthorized access and apply encryption to all information within the organization that may be of value to cybercriminals.
Regularly scan code for malware and conduct quality checks. Hold training sessions for your employees and develop an incident response plan.
Check the reputation of prospective contractors. You’d be surprised how many companies skip this step, relying only on glossy reviews on the contractor’s website.
Rule Four: Simplify and Minimize Communication with Your Outsourced Software Testing Team
Often, in an attempt to streamline communication, companies create numerous policies for every situation, but this isn’t an ideal approach if the policies aren’t “baked” into an automated system, and employees have to remember them.
If you operate within strict policies, it’s worth automating them, at least through checklists that employees must follow for each process. Even better, use automated systems that block actions outside of policy boundaries.
Make clear and effective communication a part of your corporate culture. Encourage constructive conflict and exchange of ideas. In communication, positive motivation always works better than negative.
Whenever possible, provide clear instructions to your outsourced team and break tasks down into simple, measurable actions. Encourage your team to prepare for meetings and pre-formulate ideas they want to discuss. Train your team to follow any plan, from sprint planning to the overall company strategy. If you’re a leader, the best teacher is leading by example.
Rule Five: Plan Your Budget Ahead
Typically, outsourcing is the answer to “How do we save on software development?” However, if you’ve hired a team that doesn’t provide adequate preliminary estimates, and on your side, you don’t have clear processes, and your management is somewhat chaotic, there’s a chance you’ll end up overpaying.
Overhauling an entire business is difficult and not always practical, so your first step should be to calculate the costs of testing in different scenarios. Apply the same principle when planning new sub-projects for your outsourcing team.
These rules will help you not only with outsourced software testing services but also with overall business development. Beyond the obvious benefits of working with outsourcers, they also prepare the ground for scaling your business.
We highly recommend gathering your management team for a few hours to discuss the implementation of these rules and the steps needed in your organization, as well as to assign areas of responsibility.
JetSoftPro will be happy to provide additional consultation if you need assistance.
