QASource Blog

Today, software engineering is defined by speed. As companies strive to achieve weekly, or even daily, releases, QA and development teams must combine their efforts to deliver a high-quality product on schedule. This is not always easy, as both teams contribute differently to the project. Developers are concerned with developing and delivering the product on time, and QA engineers are tasked with testing and ensuring its quality. Oftentimes, these teams are completely separate units. With proper coaching and guidance, you can unite both teams in pursuit of a common goal: a solid product release that meets customer requirements.

Over the years we have been asked, and have answered, nearly every possible question about QA. The one recurring question that no one can answer clearly is, “What is the right mix of QA engineers to development engineers?” We admit it: we don’t have a firm answer, either. The ideal ratio of QA to dev depends on several key factors, each of which may change on a project-to-project basis. For this reason, we recommend starting with a small team and scaling up or down as needed.

Our clients tell us they paid a lot of attention to company culture when they were comparing offshore QA companies. They were convinced, based on prior experience, that culture is the critical difference in companies that integrate successfully with the development team and consistently find critical bugs. No amount of tools, methodologies, nor bug reporting processes can overcome a weak company culture when outsourcing QA. Nor can these resources contribute as significantly as company culture to the motivation of the QA engineers doing the work.

Automation can save time and resources, plus increase test coverage. In the past, many organizations found it to be either too expensive or too difficult to implement automation. However, today, through the use of open source tools, shared information, and more experienced engineers, test automation projects are worth the time and effort. The benefits usually outweigh the costs, assuming the automation suite is maintainable and portable. Here’s my list of benefits for test automation.

Innately, with a long-term business relationship, your QA team should become more efficient in testing just by the mere experience with your product and team. Over time, the testers get more comfortable with your product features. You and your testers learn the best modes of communication. Your experience enables you to focus on the most efficient processes for receiving and fixing bugs. Like any team, outsourced or in-house, management, development, and QA together build an efficient product development process through experience and adaptability. But that is not all you should expect.