QASource Blog

Starting a formal offshore QA engagement can be a daunting experience as you are trusting people thousands of miles away to ensure the quality of your product. Although every company has different guidelines, some practices, such as effective communication, are common throughout the industry. Our recommendations on how to start your formal QA outsourcing process are below.

Though it can seem to be a daunting task, there are many reasons to switch QA providers or integrate QA into your project. QA ensures that your project is released with as few flaws as possible.

Training a QA team is no easy task, but there are several guidelines to follow in order to make your team successful. Keep in mind that the success of the team in the long run depends on each individual engineer.

QA outsourcing is a great way to give specific projects the needed attention from the experts in the QA field. Companies outsource to stay ahead of the competition. Outsourcing can free up internal resources to focus on the core aspects of the business and boost efficiency. In this regard, India has made a name for itself in the outsourcing field – especially in the IT industry. But, why India? Below are the top 5 reasons why you should outsource QA.

Understanding key management skills required to achieve an efficient, productive QA team is essential to the success of projects. In today’s world, we are changing our approach towards Agile & Scrum processes, which focus on not just executing test cases at the end of a test cycle, but communicating risks throughout the software development lifecycle. This requires QA testers to be involved with various parts of the team including business analysts and developers at each level. Being able to manage the QA teams is crucial for an organization’s success. Here are some key skills needed to manage your QA team effectively.

Without high-quality defect tracking tools, monitoring software bugs is impossible. No engineer can track each and every defect in his or her head, nor with a single spreadsheet. Bug tracking allows teams to focus on priority issues that directly affect the quality of the software, and communicate about them more effectively.

In an Agile environment, development and QA testing services are tightly woven, resulting in an efficient testing process and ultimately, a high-quality product. A good test case is the foundation of this “hand-in-hand” relationship. To create a test case, the objectives of the product are translated into test conditions. These conditions describe an input, action, or event, along with an expected response or output. If this expected output is achieved, the test case has verified the proper function of the product.

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.