When companies are trying to run lean - increase efficiency and cut costs - they look for every opportunity to optimize the way teams work and produce. Though IT services have been outsourced for decades, many companies are still skeptical about outsourcing their QA services. Many decision makers still think of outsourced QA as “throwing it over the wall,” with limited interaction and collaboration between teams and deliverables that may or may not come back per the requirements.
But there are plenty of reasons to believe in QA outsourcing. It helps product companies deliver high-quality products without breaking the budget, allows larger teams to scale resources up or down as needed, and frees up development teams to focus on value-adding features. (Click to tweet)
Today’s QA world is fueled by two key forces: the growing expectations of product companies and the competition between the testing providers. Every day, CTOs and dev managers are pushing their teams to break new ground, and they’re looking for QA resources that can match their enthusiasm and passion for innovation. Most product companies are looking for a testing services provider that feels right at home on the cutting edge. With the urgency to innovate being one of the driving forces in the industry, the QA world can expect major things in 2018 and beyond.
The Agile method is a development methodology that depends on fast iteration and close collaboration among dev and QA teams. Historically, people have viewed outsourced QA as incompatible with Agile, emphasizing the misconception that teams need to be under the same roof in order to effectively communicate and reach alignment on project requirements. This view is drawn straight from the Agile manifesto: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is a face-to-face conversation.”
But with advances in technology come great shifts in thinking, and people are realizing that dev and QA need not be housed in the same building — much less the same country or continent.
Product companies have it hard these days. From established organizations to scrappy startups, everyone’s focused on trimming the fat and running lean. This puts the onus on Dev and QA managers to deliver innovative, high-quality products using a constricted budget and limited resources. In turn, today’s recruiting process is about getting a lot of bang for a little buck.
You know the old saying: “The customer is always right.” Turns out that it’s true across industries — from service and retail, to IT and software QA. Product companies work hard to deliver features that delight their customers, and software QA providers do their best to ensure that the quality of these features is high before shipment. At the end of the day, we all work in service of the customer.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have been the stuff of fantasy for a long time. Remember the bulky headsets and long, snaking connector cords of the 1980s? But it’s becoming increasingly popular and approachable in today’s market — just consider the rampant success of Pokémon GO, the mobile AR game. Companies are starting to explore how VR/AR can help create a more attractive, immersive product for their customers. With this exploration comes plenty of innovative development and QA testing work.
From the early robotics of the 1950s to the advanced, algorithm-driven machine learning of today, AI has come a long way in a short amount of time. Though AI is still relatively young, QASource has found that AI's current and potential value to automated testing is massive. With the increasing complexity of applications, the lightning-fast speed of the software development lifecycle, and the highly competitive time to market across industries, engineers will take all the help they can get, whether it be from machines or other humans.
So, why exactly is AI beneficial to automated testing services? Put simply, it allows the machine to learn and understand environments, perform “intelligent” actions, and improve itself automatically.
It seems there is a fresh news story about a high-profile hacking or customer data breach every week. No organization wants to be the subject of the next reputation-ruining headline, but many business leaders still skip over the topic of security when it comes to interviewing, hiring, and onboarding a new outsourced QA partner. The focus instead often tends to be on cost and speed, all the while assuming that security is covered.