Quality assurance and software testing are essential parts of any software development project. However, they can also be time-consuming and require specialized skills and knowledge. This is where outsourcing QA and testing comes in. By outsourcing these functions to an experienced QA outsourcing company, you can gain several significant advantages for your project. Here are some top reasons why outsourcing QA and software testing is a good idea.
Access to Dedicated Testing Resources
When you outsource QA and testing, you gain access to an entire team or department dedicated solely to testing your software. This testing team has the time and focus to test all aspects of your project. They don't have other responsibilities pulling them away from testing as an in-house team might.
Dedicated testing resources allow for more comprehensive testing coverage. The QA team can spend the necessary time exploring all use cases, edge conditions, different devices, and platforms and ensuring a high level of quality before release. They have the bandwidth to test iteratively and catch issues early.
This level of dedicated testing attention and coverage is difficult for most in-house teams to achieve, as they are split between development and testing duties. Outsourcing to a specialist QA firm allows you to tap into a team whose sole responsibility is the rigorous testing of your software.
Specialized Testing Skills and Expertise
QA outsourcing companies employ skilled testers with extensive industry experience testing all software application types. They keep up to date with the latest testing methodologies and technologies.
This specialized expertise and experience allow them to test your software more efficiently and thoroughly than an in-house team without dedicated QA skills. They understand how to develop comprehensive test plans, execute different types of testing like security, usability, and cross-browser testing, and smoothly manage defect tracking.
Outsourced testers also gain expertise in testing different types of applications over time. This diverse experience exposes them to more technologies, development practices, and kinds of bugs compared to an in-house generalist. They can catch issues specific to your industry or application domain that an in-house generalist may miss.
The outsourcing company's testers remain updated with the latest testing tools and techniques through ongoing training. They leverage automation wherever possible to optimize efficiency. This high level of specialization increases the rigour and quality of testing for your project.
Flexibility and Scalability
QA and testing need to ebb and flow throughout a project. There may be phases requiring more testing resources, like pre-launch, followed by less intense maintenance testing. It's difficult for an in-house team to flexibly scale up/down based on these changing needs.
Outsourcing allows you to quickly scale testing capacity up/down on demand. If a new feature requires extensive exploration, you can increase the number of testers assigned for less time before reducing it again.
During crunch periods like pre-release, you can burst test resources to higher numbers to compress the testing schedule. Then scale back once the crunch is over without carrying unnecessary overhead.
The outsourcing provider's other clients give a natural buffer against these fluctuations. They can reassign testers between projects as needed to match your requirements. This flexibility is significant for managing budgets and turnaround times efficiently throughout development.
Free Up Development Resources
When testing is operated externally, your in-house developers can focus solely on development tasks. They don't need to context switch between coding and testing duties. It allows development cycles to proceed faster.
Integrating testing seamlessly into the development cycle, like through test-driven development practices, requires testing to be a dedicated responsibility. Having an external team's own QA and testing allows development and testing activities to remain fully synchronized without stepping on each other's toes.
Your developers also don't need to spend time writing, maintaining and executing test scripts; this helps minimize debugging of both code and tests. Outsourcing handles all of this so developers can optimize their efforts on building new features.
Controlled Costs
QA outsourcing provides predictable, fixed monthly costs for testing support. You pay only for the dedicated testing resources and capacity required without maintaining permanent in-house overhead.
Outsourcing eliminates costs associated with hardware/software, workstation licenses, office overhead like rent and equipment, full employment benefits, recruiting, training and other HR obligations. The provider handles all these fixed costs and operational expenses.
There are also no idle testing resources to pay for during quiet periods since the provider rightsizes capacity to your needs. You only pay for actual testing hours utilized each month at agreed rates.
If testing requirements decrease, you can efficiently reduce the team size without severance costs; this makes QA outsourcing more cost-effective than building and maintaining an in-house team long-term. The monthly subscription model helps control quality assurance budgets.
Access to Latest Tools and Technologies
QA outsourcing vendors have dedicated budgets to invest continuously in the latest testing tools, technologies and infrastructure. As testing practices advance rapidly, they can stay up to date.
Some examples include test automation frameworks, performance and load testing tools, mobile and UI testing techniques, specialized APIs for emerging technologies, virtual/cloud environments, and more. Their licensed tools and knowledgeable teams are always primed with the cutting edge.
This means your project has access to incorporate newer, more influential testing approaches from the start without expensive procurement cycles. The provider can spin up complex emulated environments, run large-scale performance simulations, and apply modern test data management skills.
This level of advanced, continually evolving capabilities would be difficult and costly to replicate in-house. Outsourcing gives your project the competitive advantage of world-class, up-to-date testing supported by the provider's investments.
Faster Time-to-Market
One of the significant benefits of outsourced QA and testing is getting the ability to release software rapidly without compromising quality. An external testing team can shave weeks or months off the launch schedule.
Defects are identified and addressed in parallel by dedicated resources when test execution, planning and maintenance are externalized. There is no bottleneck slowing development and testing to be done sequentially by the same people.
Issues are caught and fixed at the earliest opportunity to keep development moving full steam ahead. With continuous testing cycles overlapping release preparation, you will launch confidently and initiate generating value for users and revenue faster.
A focus on automation also contributes to accelerated testing cycles and quicker bug resolution. Everything possible is automated to optimize speed without cutting corners on quality standards.
Independent Perspective
External QA professionals bring fresh eyes to the project without the context of the internal development process. They approach testing with an independent, unbiased perspective not achieved in-house.
This independent view improves the chances of uncovering previously unseen defects or edge cases not observable to those steeped in development. Subtle assumptions become evident, and intentional testing to break the product reveals new things.
An external company's testers also stay current on best security practices and bring threat modelling experience from many diverse projects. They scrutinize the mindset of malicious actors to catch even sneaky vulnerabilities before release.
The outside view results in more robust, secure software through independent quality verification before users see it. Developers benefit from this impartial "red team" style security analysis.
Conclusion
As software projects grow more complex with compressed deadlines, outsourcing QA and testing delivers clear benefits over maintaining testing capabilities internally. Specialist testing providers offer dedicated, skilled resources focused entirely on verifying quality.
Their flexibility, tools investments, accelerated testing cycles, and independent perspective help organizations shorten development cycles without compromising standards. Costs are also more predictable through a subscription model suited to testing needs.
Overall, outsourced QA stands to improve both development efficiency and software quality assurance. It frees internal teams to focus on coding while ensuring thorough, timely defect discovery and resolution through dedicated testing professionals. Outsourcing testing is a strategy worth serious consideration.
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