"QA Outsourcing has become a great support for the enterprises that are hitting thousands of new applications every day in the market. This is helping to avoid the criticality in the applications by reducing the costs that are associated with software bugs, without any need of huge investments and in-house testing practices. Third-party services and QA outsourcing teams are now the support for many small and big companies to overcome many challenges and improve their quality in production. However, to build the best QA outsourcing team, it is essential to follow a few key considerations."

In this digitalized world, a number of software gets developed and launched by many enterprises every day. But, do you know, there are only a few that succeed in meeting user’s expectations. This may be because the software couldn’t get enough testing practice or the in-house teams may not be having the sufficient time to perform a complete QA testing process. To mitigate these scenarios, it is essential to have dedicated testing teams for the projects and that is the reason most of the enterprises are preferring outsourcing QA team and testing services.

Outsourcing QA teams will effectively help the businesses to enhance their business objectives by lowering-down the costs, make effective use of the available teams, technology, reduce business risks, etc. However, to build the best QA outsourcing teams, it is important to consider a few key elements such as their flexibility, scalability, engagement models, integration, etc.

What is QA outsourcing?

QA Outsourcing is the practice where businesses handle the testing tasks to an independent testing services provider. Though the teams don’t involve in the software development process, they have a crucial role played in testing the application and moving it for production.
By outsourcing QA teams, there are a number of benefits for enterprises, such as:

• Reduces the labour cost value and assures to improve the Return on Investment (ROI)
• Ensures faster time to deliver the application to the market
• Reduces the work of their internal teams and this helps them to focus on new assignments
• Assures to provide 24/7 collaboration
• Ensures to meet the required security and industry standards

What are the 7 key considerations for QA outsourcing teams?

Integration:

QA teams should be able to provide the facility to integrate with the clients and multiple vendors who are available across the geographies.

Engagement models:

This is one of the important considerations while planning for outsourcing. This involves several aspects such as business strategy, global business policy, the landscape, and the outsourcing methodology. These fundamentals will help to understand which has to be aligned such as incremental outsourcing or total outsourcing.

Service Level Agreement (SLAs):

SLAs must be able to determine the complete level of services the vendor is able to provide for the project. The level of services should outline client satisfaction, the volume of work, availability, system downtime, on-time delivery, effectiveness, etc. Also, this remains as a contract for achieving the mentioned services.

Flexibility and Scalability:

QA outsourcing teams should ensure to provide the flexibility and scalability for any fluctuation that arises, i.e. they should have required resources and infrastructure to manage and fulfill every specific need.

Enhancement in Quality:

Quality is an essential requirement while building any application. And, enterprises effectively aim to increase software quality with outsourcing. Hence, the QA testing service providers should provide the required testing capabilities, implement needful changes that result positively for the application, etc.

Seamless Communication:

QA outsourcing should help in the maintenance of seamless communication between clients and stakeholders. The scope of communicating with the teams effectively helps in resolving several issues that include escalation, maintaining reports, resolving the bugs as and when occurred, etc.

Security Strategies:

For every business, securing data and IP protection are crucial, hence before opting to a service provider check the data security strategies and norms. This will help to prevent unauthorized access, prevent data loss and functionality of the resources.

Conclusion:

Digitalization is increasing the demand and reliance on software for enterprises and customers. This in turn immensely increasing the need for software testing from the software development lifecycle. Considering this, enterprises are preferring dedicated teams and choosing services from the independent testing services provider.

About the Author:

I am a technical content writer, writing articles on IT related topics. In this article, I tried to share my views on the key aspects that should be considered while QA outsourcing and opting for testing services from independent testing teams.