Finding a good software testing vendor is no easy task. In this guide from the software testing practitioners A1QA, youll learn about 10 essential things to pay attention to when outsourcing these responsibilities to outside helpers.
- Define what testing can bring you
Investing in software testing, you can keep your customers happy by ensuring the quality of your products. This can increase your customer retention rate and the proportion of people who recommend your products to other people through word-of-mouth, which can be extremely cost-efficient for your business.
A1QA has over 14 years of software testing experience and completed over 1,500 successful projects overall. This practice has proved indeed how software testing can have a true positive impact on clients businesses.
- Prioritize quality assurance
Achieving the highest quality standards means meeting your customers expectations, primarily by avoiding defects and bugs that could compromise their experience. With A1QA, you can test your software for performance, functionality, usability, security, localization and compatibility, to identify quality-related issues so that they can be easily fixed before your product goes to the market.
- Outsource as early as possible
KPMG’s ‘Trends in Software Testing’ report in 2016 revealed that the main factors for outsourcing software testing are quality (30%), cost (29%), and availability of expertise (27%).
If you decide to go for a vendors help, its recommended to outsource software testing at the earliest possible stage of product development, so that its possible to resolve any problems and make improvements on the go. The longer you wait, the harder and more expensive it will become to fix bugs, especially if you wait until your product is already on the market.
- Choose the most appropriate pricing model
To start with, testing vendors, A1QA among them, provide three pricing models so you can choose which options are right for you. The Fixed Price model is useful for small and medium projects because you won’t have to worry about any extra costs or going over the budget. However, this is only appropriate for projects that have been thoroughly planned, timed, with clearly defined acceptance criteria and that are unlikely to change as they progress.
For projects that haven’t been defined yet and may be subject to change, it is better to use the Time & Materials model, which price is based on the number of hours worked in a billing period.
Alternatively, you can choose the Dedicated Team model, which will be priced on the overall project requirements and allow you to make more adjustments while remaining in control of the team.
- 5. Learn how to improve user experience
Providing the best possible user experience is crucial for ensuring your customers remain loyal to your brand. When it comes to testing, for example A1QA offers the ’360-degree’ approach to usability, which includes a detailed analysis of a product’s weak points, and recommendations on improvements.
A1QA will determine whether people will enjoy your product’s design and how they respond to it in different situations. This will help you identify which parts of the UX and UI they like, and which parts they’re unhappy with.
- Choose the working arrangement that suits you
There is more than one option to cooperate with a testing vendor.
While 95% of clients choose to hire A1QA’s team remotely, there can be on-site and mixed teams as well. You may prefer to hire a team to work at your site if you want direct face-to-face feedback and faster knowledge transfer. However, choosing the remote option is not only cheaper but gives you access to a larger pool of QA engineers. In addition, it allows such vendors as A1QA to choose from a wider pool of project members, enabling you to receive broader feedback on your tested products.
- Figure out what you want from business optimization
Identify any issues and assumptions that need to be prioritized while testing your product. For example, do fewer customers purchase one of your products because of defects or a perception of low quality? Once you learn how to resolve these issues in the product itself, you will save a substantial amount of time and money by avoiding the same mistakes in the future.
- Understand the development life cycle
A software testing team will want to determine the root cause of every bug or error as soon as possible, and prioritize the most serious defects so they can be acted on quickly. The software development life cycle (SDLC) outlines the stages involved in software testing, which will be adapted to the needs of the project to ensure the best testing practices are used. Teams may refer to case studies of similar projects for extra guidance and reduce the likelihood of having to make changes and performing any stage again.
It all starts with the requirement stage, where the scope of testing will be determined by the software testing team. Leading on from this is the planning stage, where the resources needed to complete each testing procedure are identified.
Next is the analysis phase, where testers will determine what needs to be tested, the complexity of the project, and the skills required. This is followed by the design stage, where the testing is broken down into ‘sub-projects’ and the team looks at how they will obtain data and set up their testing environment.
The following part is the implementation stage, when the team creates test cases in preparation for the execution stage, when the actual testing takes place. After execution, the team will perform the final stage, when the results are reported and analysed.
- Recognize the potential to get your product on the market earlier
With software testing, you can resolve defects earlier on in the product development process, which means you can get it to the market sooner. Alternatively, if any bugs and defects remain unfixed, you can end up with expensive repair or reimbursement of any damage to your customers, and risk hurting your brand reputation.
- Make sure you get maximum value
Outsourcing your software testing (and indeed many other operations) can be an effective way to reduce your overall operational costs. However, it is important to obtain maximum value from your software testing, too. Too much testing may not only be expensive but lead to delays of your product launch, which in turn can affect your bottom line, particularly if demand for your product is seasonal. The main point here is that the value you gain with business optimization should always be greater than the cost of the testing itself.