Offshore Software Testing Company Helps BetweenMarkets Deliver On Time

Why would a company with good internal software testing capabilities decide to hire an offshore software testing company?

BetweenMarkets, an enterprise software company specializing in distributed order fulfillment, was recognized as one of the premier development organizations in Austin, Texas. Although BetweenMarkets had released their first product with zero customer reported defects, they quickly realized that their software testing process – which consisted of a combination of in-house testing and expensive consultants – would not scale as they began the build out of their second release.

Problem

BetweenMarkets was preparing to release a new product version to market. Although the product had been successful in production environments, the management team was worried about the changing dynamics of their quality processes. As implementation of their second product release began, it became obvious that their existing software testing processes would not be effective going forward. “We had tremendous success in the quality of our first release. However, as the size and complexity of our application grew, there was just too much ground to cover,” said Erik Huddleston, CTO at BetweenMarkets. “There was no way we could cost effectively staff and train the people we needed to maintain our rigorous quality standards. Not only was there a tremendous amount of code to test, but there was also a wide variety of skills needed to effectively analyze the quality of our application and diagnose problems.”

Decision to Use An Offshore Software Testing Company

BetweenMarkets decided to turn to an  offshore software testing company in order to achieve the scalability, flexibility, and diversity of skills that were required. After interviewing and accepting bids from over a dozen offshore software testing firms, BetweenMarkets selected TESTCo. “TESTCo’s Engineered Assurance technology made it the clear choice,” Huddleston said. “Engineered Assurance, coupled with some great overseas relationships, gave us the real-time visibility and predictability that no other firm could deliver.”

Solution

At the end of each workday, a build is produced with a list of new features implemented and defects resolved. A TESTCo project manager, aided by Engineered Assurance technology, then analyzes the work and formulates a test strategy covering the next 12 hours. A team of specialists is assembled whose skills exactly match the night’s challenges. By morning, when BetweenMarkets’ development team returns to work, their issue-tracking system is fully populated with the results of the preceding day’s code analysis. BetweenMarkets immediately knows of any problems that were introduced into the product within a day of their creation. At the same time, BetweenMarkets’ management team has a full online report of the preceding day’s activities as well as analysis and recommendations going forward, all because of offshore software testing through TESTCo.

Benefits of Offshore Software Testing

In addition to enabling a new, more powerful development process, TESTCo offshore software testing provided BetweenMarkets with a number of tangible benefits. By offering a flexible usage model for testing services and a reduced per-head cost, BetweenMarkets was able to reduce its software QA testing related expenses by 50%. “The types of outsourced / offshore software testing skills you need vary over the course of a release as does the number of resources required. TESTCo was able to flexibly allocate the right people at the right time to keep the quality of our product high, and the cost of the effort low,” said Huddleston. Since BetweenMarkets is able to weave software testing into the daily development process, they are able to dramatically reduce the length of their release cycle. “TESTCo has helped enable a real-time, iterative development process that has had a dramatic impact on our time-to-market,” Huddleston said. “The introduction of real-time software testing decreased release cycle times by 20% and increased the defect discovery rate by 400%. TESTCo used their Engineered Assurance technology to provide us with accurate defect discovery within a single build, so that by the next build, the defect could be repaired. It’s hard to quantify the value of fixing bugs that are fresh on the developer’s mind instead of months later before a release, but it is significant,” said Huddleston. “It has had a tremendous impact on the quality of the code we produce.”