The Right Software Testing Services

Your selection of software testing services can make or break your project. How much QA should you employ? When should Quality Assurance become involved in the project? What testing, tracking, and reporting will best serve the project? These are the questions that you need to answer when budgeting for the QA portion of your project.

• Make a bad choice and watch your schedule slip, your features get removed, and your budget beg for mercy.

• Make an "OK" choice and you’ll tax your budget without getting any real value for your testing dollar. You may even fool some people into thinking your project is complete.

• Make the right choice in your selection of software testing services and your project will come in on time, under budget, with all the features you could have hoped for!

How do you make the right choice?
To make the right choice, a choice that will serve your budget, your schedule, and your software, you need to understand what you are choosing. To protect your company and your project you need to know how to make an informed decision when choosing which software testing services to employ.

To choose wisely, you must understand:
• What is the right price?
• What software testing services are you paying for?
• What information will be provided to you?
• How can software testing services add value to your project?
• What value are you getting for your software testing services dollar?

If you understand and can answer those questions, then you can make an informed decision. Once you know your options, you can make the right choice.

Why Does “Cheap” QA Cost More?

When deciding about outsourcing quality assurance, more often than not people choose the software testing company that charges the least per tester hour. Although the per-hour rate may seem like a great deal, cheap software testing services often do not provide real cash savings when the final project budget is tallied.

“Cheap” QA often doesn’t bring the whole quality package to the table. Their software testing services entail testing, and testing only. Unfortunately, even that is not something they do as well as your project deserves.

The lack of expertise they unwittingly bestow on your project may seem innocent enough at first, but in time it will cost your project dearly. Your bugbase will become filled with countless issues that are not clearly defined, whose impact is not quantified, and that will require extra work from the rest of your team to unravel.

If you are lucky, there will be no language barrier to overcome, but all too often “cheap” software testing services cost you time to sort through bugs that should be easily understood in the first place.

As your bugbase becomes cluttered with issues that everyone must work to understand, your budget begins to take unintended damage. Paying extra just so you can understand the bugs that are in your bugbase is not a good way to get a valuable return on your QA dollar.

Another common shortcoming of “cheap” software testing services is their unfailing ability to fill your bugbase and eat up valuable development time with false negatives. Instead of obtaining clarification from their client, ensuring understanding of the documentation, or knowing how to use their own network these “testing companies” log issue after issue that cost your project money.

A false negative will cause your developers to investigate an issue that cannot be solved programmatically. It will require testing that could otherwise be spent on productive investigation. It will cause confusion that you must deal with to refocus everyone and get them back on the same page. Is that how you want to spend your software testing services money?

Unskilled, uninformed, or just careless work by “testers” employed at cheap Quality Assurance companies will cost your project dearly if you let it. I have listed to so many producers and project managers over the years lamenting their choice of an “inexpensive” QA house.

One of the most common false negative QA-budget-wasters is that of the firewall. As simple as using one’s own network should be, a testing company’s firewall can be its most notorious source of bugs. Not understanding why they are unable to connect to each other through their own firewall, the untrained “tester” logs bug after bug about how the multi-player game is only playable by a single person.

Since they are unable to connect to the “tester” sitting right next to them, it must be the fault of the software they are testing. This has almost killed the budget of no less than five projects that I am aware of. Once, the “tester” didn’t even check his computer to see if there was an Ethernet cable plugged in Instead, he spent the afternoon logging bugs that cost three developers and two other testers multiple days to diagnose.

Is that how you want to spend your budget on the software testing services that you select?

“Cheap” software testing services also won’t quantify the impact of their results for you. They may push the button 500 times and send you the statistics of what happened each time, but they can’t tell you what they mean.

It’s unfortunate, but they simply are not equipped to do so. They can, with enough direction, run most any test, employ your desired testing software, and send you the results. What they can’t do is tell you what those results mean.

This leaves quantifying the impact of your project’s testing effort to you. As a project manager, you don’t have the time or the expertise (unless you have an extremely strong background as a QA Lead ) to accurately assess all the details. As a QA Lead or Manager you will have to make your best educated guess when quantifying the results of this testing since your team did not perform it themselves. Can you trust the cheapest software testing services out there to have delivered you only the most accurate information? Are you sure they have not overlooked anything? Do you understand all of the testing that was executed? You should, since your reputation and possibly your job depend on it.

When you understand the amount of time and energy that is at stake, you can begin to see where your money can be wasted. The budgetary-devastation that occurs by wasting development and testing effort is profound. Milestones are missed, features are removed, overall “quality” simply doesn’t exist – all while your budget gets blown.

These are just the most obvious ways in which the “cheapest” software testing services actually end up costing you more.

"First law of Bad Management: If something isn't working, do more of it."
~Tom DeMarco: Slack

Understand What You’re Getting

Often when looking for a software testing services company, people want to be absolved of all responsibility for the quality of testing. This is a wonderful fantasy, but who is to blame if you project misses its deadlines or is so buggy it can only be considered a risk-release by a company desperate to get cash coming in again?

If you don’t understand what testing is to be performed and how your code is to be covered, who is to blame if your project is not thoroughly tested? If you don’t get enough testing, or the testing you had expected; if entire modules are glossed over or if the testing status report is too vague…is that solely the fault of the software testing services company you employed? Of course not. You chose them, not the other way around.

When choosing a software testing services company you should not be afraid to ask for a complete explanation of what they will provide. This should be more detailed than:“We guarantee complete code coverage with our advanced software testing tools and dedicated testers.”

They should be able to explain to you just how they guarantee code coverage. And after they explain it, you should understand it. If you don’t understand it, then have them explain it again. If they cannot explain how their testing will cover your project in a way that you understand, then it’s possible they don’t have a full grasp of it themselves.

Don’t settle for industry jargon and buzzwords. A real Quality Assurance Professional can explain in plain, “lay” terms what testing will be performed, what it will cover, what information the testing will yield, and exactly what they will be able to tell you based on that information. It’s simple. Anyone that tries to tell you different either doesn’t understand their own testing or wants you to believe that they are delivering value to you when they really are not.

If your software testing services provider is unable to explain their methodology in a way that you understand, then you should look elsewhere. Other than risking whether they know what they are talking about or not, by selecting this vendor you ensure that you won’t understand the testing for your project.

You should understand what type of testing will be run on which parts of your project and when. This testing should make sense to you. If it doesn’t, ask until it does make sense to you (maybe they actually do know something that you don’t).

You don’t have to have a complete grasp of every detail, but you should be able to explain to your boss or to a non-QA colleague how the testing for your project is being covered. A reputable software testing services company should be secure enough to allow you insight into their processes.

Even if you are simply shopping for compatibility testing and all you need is a software testing lab, you need to know what coverage they will provide. They should be able to explain and document the types of testing that will give you the best code coverage. They should be able to easily tell you what testing will take how long and what data points it will provide. Then show you how they will make sure those data points are of high value to you.

They should offer you the option of transparency so that you can see what they are doing (and doing so should not slow them down). If the company you are considering employing won’t share their test plans, test suites, processes, or procedures with you, then you should think again before hiring them. This is a company that believes their secret lies in a word document, or in an automation test suite, not in their personnel.

If they believe that showing you their test suites will make them less valuable to you, if explaining their test automation reduces their worth to you; you should be very wary. If they are the type of company that knows you can run their “super secret” test suites as well as they can, then you want nothing to do with them. If a software testing services provider knows that you can execute their test suites just as well as they do – that’s because they don’t have expert Quality Assurance personnel.

Quality personnel will want you to understand what it is they are going to do for you. They want you to help them provide you even better results than you had expected. This is a major differentiator between the “right choice” of a software testing services provider and a choice that you will regret.

Assuming you do understand how your QA Team will cover the testing of your project, let’s look at whether they will actually be able to deliver…

What Makes QA Successful?

An ongoing debate regarding SQA is where the value lies. What makes a QA team successful? One school of thought holds that thorough test plans and enough automation are the way to ensure your QA is as good as it can be. This school of thought, although well intended, is simply wrong.

“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it."
~Peter Drucker: Speaker's Library of Business Stories

A test plan is just a tool. In the hands of an elite QA Tester, it yields valuable data that will be analyzed and quantified for the highest value. In the hands of anyone not committed to your projects success, you are wasting your money.

But even before that test plan is created, an elite tester or lead provides value for your project. In the earliest phases, they become an integral part of your project team. An elite QA Professional will find bugs that you are planning to create in your documentation.

Experienced software testing services personnel can dissect your use cases, your specs, your documentation. They will find the conflicting scenarios, the unintended omissions, and the areas of greatest risk. They will highlight all of these problem areas so they can be addressed before getting coded into bugs.

That will save you development, testing, and redesign time as your project progresses. Typically this overlooked opportunity can save at least tens of thousands of project dollars. Why? Because the savings occurs not only in testing, but in avoiding creation of the bug in the first place. This saves your developers time, your technical writers time, and your testers time; time that can be more effectively spent creating the highest quality product.

When you engage expert software testing services personnel early in the project, they come to and map out for you which testing techniques are best for the project. They will be able to identify looming pitfalls and provide solutions to mitigate or avoid them entirely. The best way to save money is to not spend it in the first place. When expensive obstacles are avoided, your budget smiles ever brighter.

With elite Quality Assurance personnel committed to your project early, they have the opportunity to develop the relationships necessary to ease the burden of other project team members. Since all testing goes through QA, expert software testing services personnel know how to create processes that make everyone else’s job easier.

They also maintain open, instantaneous lines of communication with all team members. This provides them the opportunity to ensure that all parties have the information they need as quickly as possible. There is no overnight delay waiting for your QA department to open for the day – which is your night.

Truly elite QA Professionals are in the business of protecting your brand; short-term and long-term. They are dedicated to continually creating higher quality products. They are committed to your project because they have the integrity to champion your success.Who do you think will find the most high-quality bugs?

1. A tester, invested in his/her paycheck, working solely from specs and related test suites
– OR–
2. An expert QA Professional intimately acquainted with the entire project’s history, committed to your mutual success, and driven to create the highest quality product?

Which choice would you make? Do you want an “inexpensive” tester? Or would prefer a partner that will do everything they can to guarantee your success and the success of your project?

Prevention or Cure…It’s Your Choice

What does that mean? According to Dictionary.com: “A little precaution before a crisis occurs is preferable to a lot of fixing up afterward.”

Do you see how this should be applied when selecting your software testing services?

Expert QA personnel understand how to add value to your project from the moment they join it. Serving as both conscience and lookout, they will identify hurdles that would otherwise cost you dearly. They will dissect your documentation; scrutinize your use cases; question your implementation; install and streamline processes – all before you can waste any money.

Elite software testing services professionals will do all this before actual development needs to begin. With their help, you can avoid pitfalls and obstacles before they ever have a chance to affect your project. This is your ounce of prevention!

Employ it properly, and when the time for testing comes you can use a scalpel instead of a shotgun. These same prevention experts will test expertly for you – and since they are so knowledgeable about your project, they will provide you the highest testing value. You will not need 100 testers (whether they cost $5 or $50,000); you will need only a few – because they are experts. They are not average, they are the elite!

If, in your selection of a software testing services provider, you choose to ignore the “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” principle, the cost will be yours (and your budget’s) to bear. If you choose a “pound of cure”, then you will get to experience every potential obstacle personally.

Endless crisis management means that you will have less time to move the project forward and less focus to manage your team. The sheer volume of testers necessary increases the chance for missed testing, an uncoordinated test team, and haphazard reports that you will have to work to understand.

Your developers will have their hands full fixing bugs that have been in the documentation since day one. They will be sorting through and triaging false negatives from a test team that has no vested interest in your success.

The project will be at constant risk from the seemingly endless fires to put out, the milestones always at risk (if not missed completely), and your feature list will shrink as implementation cannot occur in the originally projected timeline.

And all this will happen while your budget sustains abuse daily. How is that raise looking for you now? Can you get your industry-changing software on the shelves before your competitor?

If you have made choices that have lead to project slippage as described above…
If you have had to sacrifice quality in order to meet a deadline…
If you are tired of continual budgetary maiming
If you are ready for a change… click here to get started

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