QA Manager | TESTCo

Role of the QA Manager in QA Outsourcing

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What’s priceless about software testing? I’ll tell you what I hear every day in my world as a provider of QA outsourcing services. It’s priceless when the test plan progresses according to schedule. It’s priceless when the test plan is designed to deliver business value. It’s priceless when communications between the testing group and the engineering group is seamless and crystal clear. It’s priceless when your customer complaints decline. The QA Manager plays an invaluable role.

The QA Manager role at a software testing company is key to delivering a priceless level of service. This is why TESTCo has always assigned a QA Manager to every project, no matter how small. It costs us money to have QA Managers on board, but I wouldn’t structure my company any other way. (Other software testing companies take the low cost route and don’t use QA Managers for every project).

Let me get more specific about the role of the QA Manager.

Software Testing Must Deliver Value

I write a lot about my business philosophy that software testing (in-house or outsourced) must deliver business value, not just writing and running tests. Value doesn’t happen automatically. Value must be defined, planned, built and delivered to truly qualify as value. Furthermore, it takes a person with a business and software engineering perspective to plan and deliver the right value. That’s where the QA Manager comes in.

At TESTCo, our Test Engineers build value and our QA Managers define, plan and deliver that value to you. We think every qa outsourcing company should do the same.

Software Testing Without a Plan for Delivering Value

It is cheaper for a software testing company to just hire testers to run tests. But if you and the testing team  haven’t thought through the full value chain, then you probably won’t get more than a simple verification that your software does what the testers think it should do.

  1. If value is not clearly defined, then you’ll have to accept whatever you get.
  2. If value is not planned, then your chance of receiving that value is quite low.
  3. If the value is not built according to the definition and plan, then you’re wasting your time.
  4. If the value is defined, planned and built but not delivered, then you’ve wasted your money.

This is why at TESTCo, Engineers build value and QA Manager deliver it. This approach has been so successful that we automatically assign a TESTCo QA Manager to every project at no additional cost to you.

The Priceless Services Provided by a QA Manager

Here is what you can expect to see from a TESTCo QA Manager:

  1. Daily plans
  2. Daily outcome reports
  3. Weekly/sprint plans
  4. Weekly/sprint after-action reviews
  5. Monthly strategic plan
  6. Monthly custom satisfaction inquiry
  7. Quarterly qa strategy
  8. Quarterly value proposition measurement

Every one of these cascading strategies, plans and reports is designed to make sure of one simple thing – that we are working on the most important and most valuable aspect of your software QA and business goals.

Ready to Compare Testing Value?

Is your outsourced QA team delivering test results or business value?  Want to hear what testing value has meant to companies like yours? Click the green Contact Us button on this page and I’ll reach out to discuss your situation and answer all your questions.

offshore software testing

Is Offshore Software Testing Such A Good Idea

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Software still needs to be tested, even if you haven’t hired an offshore software testing service. So, what can be done? Learn what NOT To do when it comes to testing internally

  • Have the engineers test their own work. This is expensive (software developers are usually paid more than testers), and only marginally effective because developers tend to make a LOT of assumptions about what needs to be tested in the code they’ve written. Lastly, they are much better at building something than breaking something – which is where great Software Test Engineers excel.
  • Assign “other” people to test it. The “other” people are usually people within the company in customer service or marketing. This is less expensive (though we certainly work hard to ensure that offshore software testing isn’t cost-prohibitive), but it’s the least effective method because they aren’t trained testers who understand how/what to test and what to do when they find a defect. In addition, productivity and other opportunities are lost when they are pulled away from their regular work to test software.
  • Have the end users test it. This approach appears to be the least expensive but is actually the most expensive. End users that will eventually use the software to accomplish their work often experience frustration and loss of confidence in the application when they are put in this position.
  • Do nothing and hope for the best. You wouldn’t be reading this if you really thought this was an option – after all, that’s why you’re even considering offshore software testing.
  • Automate it! This is the holy grail of software testing. It involves writing a program to test a program – a very complex process that requires up-front investment and is really only valuable when you have a LOT of tests to run, very frequently, and in a very short period of time. See how On Demand (versus strictly Offshore Software Testing) can help with software automation projects.  Learn if your Agile development is wasting money on automation by checking out our reports.

But if none of these are options are ideal, especially if you find yourself reading this AFTER you’ve started a software project, you may think it’s too late to consider offshore software testing services.  But it’s not.  TESTCo can help get your software projects back on track faster than you thought possible!