Supplying financial services software is about providing customers with peace of mind. In an online world of rapid change and perceived danger, your product can deliver a constant, reassuring presence that gives people a feeling of control and confidence.
To achieve that kind of reliability, accuracy, and security you need to turn your QA process over to an expert team that understands the financial domain. This means adopting the advantages of outsourcing offshore.
Are your ambitions getting too big for your own resources?
Every successful software development company experiences growing pains once the technical needs of its projects exceed the expertise and basic workloads of its core staff. When this happens, it is tough to know where to turn for help without adding an unwanted spike to your budget. For years, many companies have turned to offshore software testing, with its promise of cheaper labor costs and a reputation for quality.
Offshore testing brings with it both advantages and disadvantages.
On one hand you can:
Every product deserves high-quality testing. It’s the best way to ensure that your developers stay motivated, stakeholders stay happy, and customers stay loyal to your application-whatever it may be. But when it comes to certain software areas, your testers need to be even more vigilant than usual. Think legal, healthcare, and finance software, where highly sensitive user data is stored and transferred. Because the consequences of a bug or security vulnerability are so serious, QA teams need to be on their A-game. And if they’re not, things could go very wrong.
Metrics are the secret weapon of successful QA teams.
The right metrics provide an unbiased, deeper understanding of your QA process. They help you identify and fix your pain points and will improve your team’s overall efficiency.
In response to the continued loss of bombers during World War II, one country’s air force decided to add additional armor to its planes. Since the extra weight would cause a loss in performance, they had to be strategic. The obvious answer was to analyze the bullet holes in returned aircraft and place extra plating at the concentration of fire.
Wrong.
The sporting world has long struggled with deciding the significance of the “V” in its MVP awards. The use of the word “valuable” clouds the thinking on whether voters are searching for the player most valuable to the team and its success, or the flat-out best player that year.
We face a similar problem when comparing manual and automation testing in the QA process. Each approach has its pros and cons, but ultimately it is hard to declare one as universally superior. The most effective way to decide between them is to consider how often each has the advantage over the other. Automation gives you greater coverage, API integration, and speed. Manual testing, on the other hand, gives you greater human input, and an accompanying eye for detail and solutions.
Speed comes at a cost.
The idea of racing through the QA process and achieving time savings near the stressful end of the software development cycle is very attractive. The hard work of your core DevOps phase is behind you, and your thoughts turn to getting the product to users. So automation testing may be your first instinct for QA. Automation testing is indeed the fastest form of QA currently available, and will cut your testing time by 95%.
We hope you enjoyed our first installation of this blog post, where we dive into some of the pain points unique to healthcare domain testing and explore their solutions. Whether you have access to a QA partner, or you’re taking on the challenge of healthcare software testing in-house, this article should help you navigate the road ahead!
Your test automation approach and metrics should make you feel good about yourself. They are supposed to let you know what is working well within your software development process and what needs improvement. The right approach and metrics will also reassure you that you’ve made the right choice in implementing test automation in the first place.
