Why Outsourcing Quality Assurance And How To Do It Right

1. Comparison of In-house vs. Outsourcing Quality Assurance

It’s hard to choose between in-house quality assurance and outsourced QA services as one wrong move can make or break your goal. For first-time decision-makers, this can feel far more daunting. However, both the in-house QA team and outsourced QA team cater to different needs and requirements.

The following comparison evaluates crucial aspects like cost, control, scalability, and communication between the two,  offering insights to guide your decision.

Cost

• In-house QA Team: Maintaining an in-house team often entails higher costs due to salaries, training, equipment, and infrastructure. The upfront and ongoing expenses can be significant.
• Outsourced QA Team: Outsourcing quality assurance can lead to cost savings. Companies benefit from reduced overhead and can leverage the cost efficiencies of their partners, who might have economies of scale or lower cost bases due to their location.

Control

• In-house QA Team: Companies enjoy greater control over in-house teams. They can directly oversee projects, tailor processes, and quickly adjust to changing needs.
• Outsourced QA Team: Control over outsourced teams is less direct. Companies must rely on contractual agreements and effective communication to guide the QA process, which can sometimes lead to challenges in alignment.

Scalability

• In-house QA Team: Scaling an in-house team can be slow and costly, requiring recruitment, training, and additional resources.
• Outsourced QA Team: Outsourced QA teams offer high flexibility. Companies can scale their QA efforts up or down quickly, depending on project needs, without long-term commitments.

Communication

• In-house QA Team: Communication is more straightforward, with opportunities for immediate feedback and adjustments.
• Outsourced QA Team: Communication with outsourced teams can be challenged by time zone differences, language barriers, and cultural differences, requiring more structured processes to ensure clarity and alignment.

Focus on Core Areas

• In-house QA Team: Managing an in-house QA team requires significant resources, which might divert attention from core business activities.
• Outsourced QA Team: Outsourcing quality assurance allows companies to concentrate on their primary development and innovation activities, potentially leading to greater business growth and product innovation.

In the end, if your project needs very close management, follows strict rules, or you want to work closely with the team every day, having your own QA team is a good choice. But if you want to save money, need to change how big your team is quickly, or want experts without hiring them full-time, then hiring an outside QA service might be the way to go. The right choice depends on what your project specifically needs and what you’re aiming to achieve.

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2. Pros and cons of Outsourcing Quality Assurance

2.1 Benefits of outsourced QA services

Cost Savings

By outsourcing your QA team, you can save money as hiring offshore QA engineers is often more cost-effective than hiring locally. This helps especially if there’s a tech talent shortage in your country, as you can get skilled testers at a lower cost. Moreover, avoiding delays in fixing errors can prevent additional expenses in the long run.

Improved Product Quality

An offshore QA team can help enhance the quality of your final product by running comprehensive quality assurance tests before the release date. This ensures that your product meets customer demands and expectations, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.

Faster time to market

Outsourcing QA testing allows you to meet deadlines more effectively by detecting errors before the product’s launch date. With an independent QA team, you can ensure that all deliverables are critically tested, meeting client requirements without delays.

Access to Expertise and Fresh Perspective

Hiring a dedicated QA team in one location provides access to highly experienced testers who can offer a fresh perspective on your project’s quality. They can identify potential risks and areas for improvement, leading to timely results and a better final product.

Delegating Tasks and Ensuring Implementation of Development Life Cycle

By outsourcing QA testing, you can delegate core testing responsibilities to QA experts while allowing software developers to focus on their specific tasks. This ensures efficient implementation of the software development life cycle stages, leading to cost savings and shorter production times.

Benefits of QA Outsourcing

2.2 Drawbacks of outsourcing quality assurance

Communication challenges with QA outsourcing team

One of the significant drawbacks of outsourcing QA is communication challenges. Working with a remote team, especially if they are in a different time zone or speak a different language, can lead to misunderstandings and delays in project progress.

Effective communication is crucial for conveying project requirements, discussing issues, and providing feedback. Without clear and timely communication, there is a risk of misalignment between the outsourcing company and the QA team, which can impact the quality and timely delivery of the project.

Dependency on QA outsourced team

When outsourcing QA, companies rely on the performance and availability of the external QA team. Any issues or delays on the part of the outsourcing partner can directly impact the project timeline and quality.

Additionally, changes in the outsourcing company’s priorities or business circumstances may affect the availability of resources or the continuity of the outsourcing partnership. This lack of control over external factors can introduce uncertainty and risk into the project management process.

3. Roles in Outsourcing Quality Assurance

QA Tester is the general term for different roles in software QA outsourcing. They are the people who check everything in the software to make sure it works right. This group includes many experts like QA engineers, test analysts, test architects, test managers, and QA team leads.

In an outsourced quality assurance team, each role plays a critical part in ensuring that the software you get is of the best quality, free from bugs, and works well. Here’s a closer look at these roles:

QA Engineer

A QA engineer is the one who tests the software to find any mistakes and make sure it meets the high-quality standards we expect. They work closely with the people who make the software to fix any issues they find.

Test Architect

The test architect is the master planner who designs the testing world. They come up with the best ways to test the software, making sure we can find bugs efficiently without wasting time. They know a lot about the software and figure out smart ways to test it.

Test Analyst

A test analyst handles the paperwork side of testing. They pick what parts of the software need to be checked and keep detailed notes on the testing results. Their work helps make testing faster by using computers to repeat tests automatically. They also make sure to tell everyone involved how the testing went.

Test Manager

The test manager is like the captain of the ship, steering the testing project towards success. They watch over the testing process and decide what everyone should work on. They keep the testing on track and make sure all the team’s efforts are focused on making the software the best it can be.

QA Team Lead

Lastly, the QA team lead is in charge of the team. They hire new people, do interviews, and sometimes jump in to help with the testing. But mostly, they make sure everyone is moving forward together and that the team works well as a unit.

Key Roles in Most QA Teams

4. Quality Assurance Outsourcing Services

4.1 Manual QA Testing

Manual testing involves human testers executing test cases without the use of automation tools. Instead of using fancy tools or machines, a human tester clicks around the software, looking for any problems or bugs. This approach is good because humans can think creatively and catch things that automated tools might miss, like if a button is hard to find or if something just doesn’t feel right when you use it.

But, it can also take a lot of time because someone has to do all the clicking and checking themselves, which means it might not be the best option for big, complex software projects where there’s a lot to test.

4.2 Automated QA Testing

Automated testing involves using software tools and scripts to execute predefined test cases. This can be really fast and efficient because the computer can do the same tests over and over again without getting tired. It’s great for checking things like if a website still works after a change or if a new feature hasn’t broken anything old.

But setting up these tests can take a bit of work at first, and sometimes they might miss things that only a human would notice, like if something just doesn’t look right on the screen.

Two types of QA testing

4.3 Hybrid QA Testing 

In practice, many organizations adopt a hybrid approach that combines both manual and automated testing to leverage the strengths of each method. Manual testing can be used for exploratory testing, usability testing, and ad-hoc testing. Automated testing can be applied to regression testing, performance testing, and API testing.

By combining manual and automated testing, teams can achieve comprehensive test coverage and improve the overall quality of software products.

5. Outsourcing Quality Assurance Cooperation Models

4.1 A dedicated team of software testing experts

A dedicated team cooperation model is suitable for you if you are looking to hire a team of software testers that will be integrated with your in-house team. Companies choose this model in case they have a fully operational software development team, but need to outsource QA services for their project’s success.

4.2 Staff Augmentation

In this quality control outsourcing model, you can hire individuals or small groups of experts from an outsourcing company. These experts become part of your team, and you manage them directly. It’s like borrowing a few super-smart people to fill in the gaps in your team. This works well when you only need a few extra hands and not a whole team.