Software testing market set to boom

Be aware of independent testing route

Software testing is clearly booming in the form of ?independent testing?, where testing activity is outsourced and typically off-shored. More businesses are driven by the cost savings offered by these outsourced test services, but should be aware of the dangers of taking this route. Most test services providers are known to offer double the testing resources in India for the same price as independent testing performed in an on-shore location. The desire to reduce costs is quite understandable, but is possibly a false-economy. The actual value of adopting an outsourced test approach has to come from a measure of the total cost of adopting a focus on independent testing, as opposed to one of investment in embedded testing where test activity occurs within the time frame of other software development activities in the project. Removing test activity from the original development site and team never makes the delivery of an application more efficient, of higher quality, or lower cost; in fact I believe it?s quite the opposite. Failing to have test specialists as an integral part of a team, who test regularly and often, typically results in an overall decrease in quality and a larger set of defects that need to be addressed by the team late in the project lifecycle, when it is far more expensive to resolve them. Whilst upon first glance it may appear cheaper to separate and ?industrialise? all test activity into a reactive test factory that processes the outputs of a development team after the application has been developed, the total cost of delivery success will increase substantially. In an economic environment where many organisations want ?more for less?, the offering of outsourced test services to replace expensive full-time test resources will always appeal to those who haven?t considered the big picture and have been given the ?hard-sell?. When that market segment is also seen to be growing it will quickly become a target for those offering these services, even if the end result for the client may not quite be as they expected.

Posted by: Julian Holmes, co-founder, UPMentors 09 Sep 2010