QA Outsourcing Vs QA Outstaffing Vs Independent QA

 

With the increasing digital transformation, software companies should meet the demands of a dynamic market. But, in-house testing procedures are mostly surged because of tight deadlines and inexperienced software testers limits the scope of testing. Due to this, in-house teams ignores basic issues, in the beginning, that results in adverse effects later. Although the traditional way to deal with software development favors in-house teams, it is hard to find a software testing service that addresses your needs. So choosing the best QA testing service can be tricky. But you have the option of choosing between outsourcing, outstaffing or hiring QA teams. If you’re confused about these three terms, let’s have a look at- the difference between QA Outsourcing, QA Outstaffing and independent QA teams. 

What Is QA Outsourcing?

QA

Outsourcing software testing means hiring a third-party testing service to handle software testing for a specific project. Outsourced testing team is a better choice for your business because you don’t need to invest more cost in infrastructure and operational costs and their services have lower cost overall. An outsourced testing service improves in terms of expertise also. Their technical experience in different fields helps them to solve issues efficiently and in less time. 

Also, their knowledge about different fields can assure software quality and help you to meet the client expectations. It can also help businesses focus more on operations and business development instead of worrying about the software. 

Things To Consider Before Outsourcing Software Testing-

Lack of existing checks, balances and proper communication may fail teh delegating testing to an external service provider. So, at the beginning, you must carefully provide all the necessary requirements related to software testing. It helps third-party services to prioritize testing metrics and improve software quality. Also, you should remember that an outsourced software testing team may work in different time-zones. This becomes the reason of the communication gap and creates unnecessary hurdles in testing.

Advantages of QA Outsourcing –

Outsourcing testing service will take your work by handling full-cycle testing of project across each stage. So software teams invest more time to come up with innovative features instead of stressing about software quality.

What Is Outstaffing QA Testing?

Software outstaffing is similar to outsourcing as teams hire testing services from outside their company. But instead  of working with teams having different time zones, QA service allows software testing teams to work with the in-house development team. In case of outstaffing, teams hire individual testers or testing teams from outside their company to do the work under their guidance. 

Mostly this kind of technique is used by businesses that need faster and effective experts outside their field of knowledge. It is best for teams that already have a team of in-house experts. Software QA testing can immediately turn into an overwhelming process; having a dedicated team is not always sufficient to carry out testing. In such a case, software teams require some extra resources to complete software testing. Your experts will work with these teams, manage their workflow and productivity and assign them tasks. 

Third-parties provides these kinds of testing services under an outstaffing contract, where external resources follow the customer’s employment schedule. So it includes detailed management from your end. Generally, outstaffing testing services are carried out in two ways according the length and complexity of testing in the project. One way is leasing staff, which is great for long term projects. Then again, temporary staffing is for short testing tasks. Outstaffed employees work for a period of 1 week to 3 months.

Things To Consider Before Outstaffing Software Testing- 

Outstaffing software testing need experts who are skilled in software testing methodologies. Managing external testing resources without them will be difficult, which results in unwarranted delays. Simultaneously, outstaffing needs consistent communication and collaboration with your dedicated testing team. So, if they’re remotely working, your testing experts cannot handle them effectively. In spite of the fact that outstaffing is great for teams who need more control over the testing process, it also demands extra effort from your team.

Advantages of QA Software Outstaffing-

Having dedicated software testers in your team allows you to have complete control over the testing process. It’s upon you how you want to proceed with testing or control costs. There is no need to define a complete set of requirements in the beginning and you scale the testing service throughout the project according to the need.

What Is Independent QA Testing?

Sometimes, hosting an in-house QA testing team is not feasible. In such a situation, teams need to consider hiring a dedicated team of testers outside of their company. Despite the fact that using totally independent QA teams appears to be specific, it is a great technique to reduce the cost and risk related with an inflated number of employees. Independent QA testing service gives your team a fully functional and dedicated testing resource without costs of hiring, and retaining employees. This kind of testing service can be beneficial for a software team if testing resources are not involved in any other testing project. Independent QA testing service offers great collaboration and communication.

Things To Consider Before Independent Software Testing –

Allowing a high level of self-governance to testing services can be both rewarding and highly risky, contingent upon which services you trust. Although testing teams with extensive experience and expertise perform best with independent teams, inexperienced testing resources can fail without explicit guidance.

Advantages of Independent QA Testing-

Autonomous testing team can concentrate better as compared to testing teams with extensive cross-collaboration. So the testing service can transparently implement testing procedures and grant software teams with greater time to market for their product. As testing team operates independently,it has complete over project delivery. Meaning that they can work with minimal external pressures, uncover performance issues thoroughly and streamline the app’s workflow.

Best Practices For Hiring Third-Party Testing Services-

1. Use Of Agile-

Agile software testing practices provide a well-documented and understood approach to software testing and quality into software delivery. So it is necessary to consider the adoption of Agile procedures during testing. Also, if your development team is following the Agile methodology, then testing service can fail at providing testing promptly.

2. Select Partners With Established Technology Frameworks And Best Practices-

Software teams should ask testing teams what unique intellectual property and best practices can they implement in your project. Unless a team has significant experience with resolving testing anomalies, using a set of best practices, methodologies, and tool kits, they can’t help you to improve the quality of the product while increasing time to market.

3. Consider Testing Experience In The Industry-

Mostly, testing services do not have the technical experience to back up their expertise. So it causes them to overlook certain issues. Eventually, trusting these services bears a greater risk of software failure. Software failure is detrimental to any business. It can interrupt the business workflow, cause downtime, or cause faulty transactions that hurt the business financially. So it is important to ensure that software testing service is proficient and has relevant experience. Simultaneously, you should consider the company’s portfolio and take a look at how they performed in a similar project. Looking at these factors can give you a clear idea of their experience in a given situation.

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/qa-outsourcing-vs-qa-outstaffing-vs-independent-qa/

Quality Assurance VS Quality Control

You might have heard about the concepts Quality assurance and Quality control but didn’t know the difference between them. Both the terms are related to software testing. People frequently use QA and QC to describe the same processes. So it is not surprising that we still confused about these concepts. QC is defined as QA engineering in some test plans.

Considering all the things, a QC engineer tests the development process a product while the main objective of QA is to guarantee the implementation of the considerable number of methodologies that can improve the quality of software. Let us see both the concepts one by one, Quality assurance and Quality control. 

What is quality?

Quality is fulfilling the requirement, expectation, and needs of the customer is free from defects, lacks and also considerable variants. There are standards needs to follow to satisfy the customer requirements. 

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance is a method of software application development with less defects and mistakes when it is finally released to the end users.

It is characterized as an action that guarantees the approaches, techniques, methods and processes designed for the projects are implemented correctly. Quality Assurance is completed before Quality Control is performed after completion of . It detects the defects in the process. Also it focuses on preventing defects. Quality Assurance is a proactive process and is Prevention in nature. 

Benefits of Quality Assurance-

The goal of QA is to ensure that product development is done according to all the stated standards of quality. From the idea and the general plan to the assembly of the end product the QA-engineer focuses on the software development process, improves it, and also prevents defects and problems.

The QA management means:

• Checking the specifications and also software requirements.
• Test planning
• Development of ideas that will improve the quality of the product
• Risk assessments
• Analysis of the test results

The main advantage of QA management is that you know precisely at what stage and also at which point the QC engineers need to start their work. Of course, it requires the foundation of a test plan, test documentation, and a test environment.

Responsibilities of QA specialist:

• The analysis and specification of requirements with client or with the business analysts.
• Scheduling the testing processes
• Writing test cases (scenarios to test)
• Functional testing
• Identification of problem areas
• Discussing changes and also different fixes with the developers
• Tracking the life cycle of each error
• Re-testing fixed defects
• Analysis of the test procedures
• Testing process optimization
• The analysis of the processes in a team
• Process improvement
• Test documentation management

What is Quality control?

Quality Control is a software engineering process that is used to guarantee that the approaches, techniques, methods and processes are designed in the project are following accurately. Quality control activities operate and also verify that the application meet the defined quality standards. It focuses on analyzing the quality of the end products and the final outcome instead of  concentrating on the processes used to create a product.

Advantages of QC-

First of all, it should be noted that QC is a part of QA. A QC specialist analyzes the test results and is responsible for the identification and also elimination of defects in the project. They ensure that the results of what the developers have done are what we expected to see. In general quality control checks the current quality level of the tested object with the help of following criteria as:

• Front end loading measurement
• Conformity to requirements
• Compliance of the project to the stated quality

Before the starting of QC, you have to choose what the standards of quality for the end product are. After that, we have to define the volume in which the test process will be carried out. At the next step, the analysis of real-life statistics is figure out. Only then can someone decide what further action to take. In case of IT industry, we need to keep fixing the project until all defects are removed and the end product will satisfy the client’s needs.

If there are a large number of errors, you need to make a decision to possibly change the development plan. In the final analysis, QC is a continuous process, which has a focus to eliminate defects and provide quick responses to emerging problems.

Quality Assurance VS Quality Control-

Quality Assurance vs Quality Control

Many people think QA and QC are the equivalent and interchangeable but this is not true. QA and QC both the terms are connected and sometimes it is very difficult to realize the differences. Truth is both are identified with one another yet they are diverse in starting points. QA and QC both are part of Quality Management. However QA is focusing on preventing defect while QC is focusing on identifying the defect.

1. Definition- 

QA is a process for ensuring quality in the processes by which products are developed.

QC is a process which deliberates on fulfilling the quality request.

2. Focus on-

QA aims to prevent defects with a focus on the process used to make the product. It is a proactive quality process.

QC aims to identify (and correct) defects in the finished product. Quality control, therefore, is a reactive process.

3. Goal-

The objective of QA is to improve development and test processes so that defects do not emerge when the product is being developed.

The goal of QC is to identify defects after a product development and before it’s released.

4. What-

Quality assurance prevents quality problems through planned and systematic activities including documentation. The activities or techniques used to accomplish and keep up the product quality, process and service.

5. How-

QA establishes a good quality management system and the evaluation of its adequacy. It also includes periodic conformance audits of the operations of the system.

Quality control finds & eliminates the sources of problems through tools so that customer’s requirements are continually met.

6. Responsibility-

Everyone in the product development team is responsible for quality assurance.

Quality control is usually the responsibility of a specific team that tests the product for defects.

7. Statistical Techniques-

Statistical Tools & Techniques can be applied in both QA & QC. When they are applied to processes (process inputs & operational parameters), they are called Statistical Process Control (SPC); & it becomes the part of QA.

When statistical tools & techniques are applied to finished products (process outputs), they are called as Statistical Quality Control (SQC) & comes under QC.

8. As a tool-

QA is a managerial tool.

QC is a corrective tool.

9. Orientation-

QA is process oriented.

QC is product oriented.

Are you looking to develop a web solution for your business? We at Solace believe in the benefits and effectiveness of using different types of testing for web development. Our expert’s team will be there to develop effective web app that will give success to your business that it deserves. Contact us for web development that will help to boost your business.

Alpha, Beta and Gamma Testing- What is the difference?

What is software testing?

Software Testing is the way of identifying the correctness and quality of software program. The reason for this is to check whether the product fulfills the particular prerequisites, needs and desires for the client. In other words, testing is executing a system or application to find software bugs, defects or errors. The activity of testing is to discover the reasons of application failures so that they can be corrected according to requirements. Types of software testing are- Alpha testing, Beta Testing, Gamma Testing. Let us discuss one by one. 

Alpha, Beta, Gamma Testing

1. Alpha testing-

Alpha testing is a type of acceptance testing. It is performed to discover all possible issues/bugs before releasing the product. The focus of this testing is to simulate real users by using a black box and white box techniques. The aim is to carry out the tasks that a typical user might perform. Alpha testing is an internal testing performed by in-house development or QA team. This kind of testing is called alpha only because it is done early on near the end of the development of the software, and before beta testing. The alpha phase includes the following testing types: smoke, sanity, integration, systems, usability, UI (user interface), acceptance, regression, and functional testing. It is quickly routed to the development team, if an error is detected. Alpha testing helps to identify issues missed at the stage of requirement gathering.

Advantages of Alpha testing-

1. This type of testing provides better view about the reliability of the software at an early stage. It also helps to simulate real time user behavior and environment, and ability to provide early detection of errors with respect to design and functionality.

2. Alpha testing provides better insights about the software’s reliability and robustness at its early stages. You would even be able to detect many of the serious issues quite easily during the alpha test, because other minor design structures are yet to be integrated.

3. This testing ensures that the user will get high quality services in the form of complete functionalities and stability.

4. The most widely recognized  requirement is that the software provided to the user should work appropriately according to the purpose for which it is created. Conducting alpha tests will reveal whether the software has all these necessary features to pass the strict quality standards set by customer

2. Beta Testing- 

Beta testing can be called pre-release testing. It can be conducted  with a limited number of end users called beta testers before the official product delivery. There are two types of beta testing- Open beta and Closed Data.

• Open beta is for a large group of end users or to everyone interested
• Closed beta is available only to a limited number of users that are selected especially for beta testing.

During beta testing, end users detect and report bugs they have found. All the testing activities are performed outside the organization that has developed the product. Beta testing helps to identify the gaps between the stage of requirements gathering and also their implementation. The product that has passed beta testing is called beta release.

Advantages of Beta Testing-

1. Opportunity to get your application into the hands of users prior to releasing it to the general public. Beta testers can identify issues with your application that you may have not noticed, such as confusing application flow, and even crashes.

2. Beta testing reduces product failure risk via customer validation.

3. It also improves product quality via customer feedback.

4. Cost effective compared to similar data gathering methods.

5. Creates goodwill with customers and increases customer satisfaction.

Gamma Testing-

One can perform a Gamma Testing when software is ready for release with specified requirements. This testing is performed directly by skipping all the in-house testing activities. The software is almost ready for final release. No feature development or enhancement of the software is undertaken and tightly scoped bug fixes are the only code.

Gamma testing is the third level of testing, performed generally for safety. Tragically, Gamma testing is becoming a thing of the past, killed off by decreased time cycles, competitive pressure, and the myopic focus on quarterly benefits.

Difference between Alpha testing and Gamma testing-

• Alpha Testing is conducted by a highly skilled testers at development site. Beta Testing is always conducted in Real Time environment by end users at their own site.
• Since Alpha Testing is done onsite therefore developers as well as business analyst are involved with the testing team whereas in Beta Testing developers and business analysts are not at all involved.
• Alpha testing requires lab environment or testing environment, whereas Beta testing doesn’t require any lab environment or testing environment.
• Beta testers can be naive or proficient end users of software product but alpha testers are always high skilled professional testers.
• Alpha Testing involves both black box testing as well as white box testing. Beta Testing is always a black box testing or functional testing.
• Before the launch of software product into the market alpha testing is done. Whereas Beta Testing is done at the time of software product marketing.

You can also get the detailed difference between Agile testing and traditional testing at- Agile testing vs traditional testing. Also know more about when you can stop the testing of a software at- When you can stop testing of a software?

Are you looking to develop a web solution for your business? We at Solace believe in the benefits and effectiveness of using different types of testing for web development. Our expert’s team will be there to develop effective web app that will give success to your business that it deserves. Contact us for web development that will help to boost your business.

What Is Automated Testing And Why We Need It?

With regards to Quality Assurance, there are two alternatives to look over: manual testing and automated testing. Both the options includes the testing of an actual product and a product that should have been created. Software testing is a process aimed at setting the reality i.e., what we have -against the expectations, i.e., what we should have. The difference between both the testing is that – Manual testing needs an individual who physically checks whether everything works properly or not. Whereas the automated testing may be carried out without human intervention. First of all, look at some basics of software testing.

Three layers of software testing-

• Component testing- As the name implies, these tests verify the functionality within a specific component in isolation (i.e. one section of a code). They do not manage the interaction of such component with other components in a system.
• Integration testing- Integration testing verifies several dependent components. Basically, they check how the functions of a component perform when such component is integrated into a system.
• Regression testing- These tests verify the whole system. The goal is to ensure that newly added functions did not affect the existing functionality.

Need of automation testing?

Every software development group tests its products, yet delivered software always has defects. Test engineers strive to get them before the product is released but they generally creep in and they frequently return, even with the best manual testing processes. Test Automation software is the ideal way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of your software testing. Manual software testing is carried out by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, attempting different usage and input combinations, also comparing the results to the expected behavior and recording their observations. Manual tests are repeated multiple times during development cycles for a change in source code and other circumstances like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.

An automated testing tool is able to playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the outcomes to the expected behavior and report the achievement or disappointment of these manual tests to a test engineer. When automated tests are created they can easily be repeated and they can be extended to perform tasks inconceivable with manual testing. Because of this, managers have found that automated software testing is an essential part of successful product development.

What is Automation Testing?

Automation Testing means execute  test cases with the use of automation tool. Automation software is able to enter data into the system for test. It also compare expected and actual results and generate detailed test reports. Test automation requests for some investment of money and resources. Successive development cycles will require execution of same test suite repeatedly. Using a test automation tool,it’s conceivable to record this test suite and re-play it as required. When the test suite is automated, no human intercession is required. This helps to improve the ROI of Test Automation. The aim of Automation is to reduce the number of test cases to be run manually and not to eliminate Manual Testing altogether. Automated software testing has long been considered critical for big software development organizations but is often thought to be too expensive or difficult for smaller companies to implement. 

Benefits of using Automated testing-

Automated Software Testing

1. Saves Time-

Software tests have to be repeated multiple times during development cycles to ensure quality. Every time source code is modified so the software tests need to be repeated. For each release of the software it may be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. Repeating these tests by manually is costly and time consuming. Once created, automated tests can be run over and over again at no additional cost and they are much faster than manual tests. Automated software testing reduces the time to run repetitive tests. And a time savings results directly into cost savings.

2. Increase your test coverage-

Automated software testing can increase the depth and extent of tests to help improve software quality. Generally lengthy tests remain unattended during manual testing. They can even be kept running on various PCs with various configurations. Automated software testing can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to verify whether the product is behaving as expected. Test automation can easily execute different complex test cases during every test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests.

3. Find more bugs-

Automated tests generally check for any regression in the system after new code has been executed.

There is always more chance of finding bugs in new features than in existing functionality. 

4. Improve Quality-

Although automated tests are capable of giving us quick feedback and alert us about the health of an application, so that we can return any code change that has broken the system, automated testing individually does not improve quality. Just because we have a modern test automation, it does not guarantee that no bugs will emerge into production. We can improve quality by ensuring correct practices are followed from start to finish of a development cycle. Quality is not an afterthought; it should be prepared in the right way from the start. It isn’t sufficient to depend on automated tests to get a picture of the quality of the product.

5. Automation does what manual testing can not-

Even the largest software and QA departments cannot perform a controlled web application test with thousands of users. Automated testing can simulate tens, hundreds or thousands of virtual users interacting with a network, software and web applications.

6. Helps developers and testers-

Shared automated tests can be used by developers to detect problems rapidly before sending to QA. Whenever source code changes, tests are run automatically and are checked in and notify the team if they fail. Such features save developers time.

Conclusion-

Automated software testing is more beneficial for complex development: the longer a project lasts, the bigger gain automated tests can bring in the end. Automated tests cannot solve all problems that may occur during the development process. But if executed properly, they make the work much more efficient and, so, more cost – effective.

Are you looking to develop a web solution for your business? We at Solace believe in the benefits and effectiveness of using automated testing for web development. Our expert’s team will be there to develop effective web app that will give success to your business that it deserves. Contact us for web development that will help to boost your business.

How automation enables teams to develop, test and deploy quality applications faster?

Every company owner needs a product that is error free. A product having bugs and errors could not satisfy a single user. Quality of product is the key factor of success of business whether it is small scale or large scale. Automation is a part of our daily life. Not only daily simple repetitive tasks but also highly skilled tasks are slowly getting automated. Automation saves millions of dollars and time in development and deployment of software product because of the benefit of build once and use multiple times. Automation is software development helps the development team to minimize errors and thus increases the productivity. IT automation is the use of instructions to create a repetitive process which replaces IT professional’s manual work. There are some automated tools available for development and testing.

How automation affects processes?

IT automation is depends on software tools to define and execute a series of actions that can be called by manually or by an external trigger. IT automation replaces the series of actions and responses between administrator and IT environment. Complex IT automation can be carried out by combining multiple scripts into a series. These automation processes are more helpful when they replace the administrators frequent task. This saves the time of administrator which is utilized for decision making.

There are some automated tools/frameworks available for development and testing and deployment.

1. Prebuilt Software-

It is difficult to estimate the cost of development of a new project. But it can be easily calculated by using a prebuilt framework such as CMS, pre-built shopping carts. Sometimes there is a risk of increase in cost or delay in deployment due to poor design compatibilities or errors in code. These Pre-built software is built to remove these errors and problems. It provides ready made features that minimizes the cost of development as these features don’t need to be coded again.

2. Validation and Testing Automation-

The testing can be done repetitively so that the bit of software is bug-free.  The testing can be done in parallel with development to reduce the further bugs. No manager would like to deliver untested product.Untested product costs more than tested because it requires more support. Automation of testing helps to not only validate the workflow but also to detect the errors. Automation testing means the automation of mechanism of repetitive and necessary tasks in a testing process that will be difficult to be done manually.  

Advantages of automation testing-

• Easy and early detection of errors.
• GUI testing can be achieved at multiple browsers and platforms thus reduces the bugs in less time.
• Continuous testing and API driven testing detects bugs in multiple releases.
• Bug free product at each release.
• Increase productivity
• Saves money
• Greater consistency

3. CI/CD for release control-

The concept of continuous integration is to find bugs and issues quickly and provides each developer feedback on their work and rapid fixing of bugs. Build creation is a tool to validate application to make it free from bugs or errors and free from a breakage. This is carried out for each run of build creation.Whenever build fails, the failure reasons are identified and report is sent for bug fixing.

When to automate an application?

• Large and sensitive projects.
• Access the application for load and performance with many virtual users
• Requirements do not change frequently
• Obtainability of time
• Projects that need to test the same areas often

Automated testing Tools-

Automation Testing

1. Selenium-

Selenium is popular among all the automated testing tools. It is designed to support functional aspects of web based applications and wide range of platforms and browsers also.

Features of Selenium-

• It supports many programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Perl, PHP, and JavaScript and even more.
• Selenium also supports parallel test execution.
• It requires less resources as compared to other tools.
• Test cases prepared using selenium can be executed on any OS.

2. Ranorex-

Ranorex is all in one tool for cross- platform test automation. It is easy to use for beginners with codefree click-and-go interface. This is powerful tool with full IDE. It has a large user community.

Features of Ranorex-

• It automates challenging interfaces like SAP, ERP, Delphi and legacy applications.
• Run tests in parallel or distribute on a Selenium Grid
• Cross-browser testing
• Reduced maintenance

3. Waitr-

It is open- source cross- platform web application testing tool. It is more reliable and also flexible tool of ruby libraries for web browser automation. This testing tool interacts with browser likewise that of human, for eg., click the links, fill the forms and validate text.

Features of Waitr-

• It is free.
• Waitr is lightweight and powerful tool.
• It has an active and also growing community for support.
• It supports multiple browsers on multiple platforms.

Benefits of automation-

1. Speed-

IT operations includes a number of different tasks. Automation helps to perform these tasks rapidly than manual. Automation helps administrators from time spent on routine tasks, so that they can invest their time on more important tasks such as decision making.

2. Accuracy-

Errors lead admins to invest extra time to troubleshoot and repeat the work process to get it right. IT automation allows an IT professional to build accurate sequence of operations that can be run N number of times in an effective manner.

3. Flexibility-

There will be change in processes as technologies changes. Automated processes remain static until it manually changes. Organizations should have a workflow to update and revalidate automation processes. This helps to track the changes in tasks.

If you are new to software industry know the types of testing at our blog- Alpha, Beta and Gamma Testing- What is the difference?

Automation is a key to success-

Using automation for development, testing and deploying, you will be at a mechanism in which you always know the state of software. It is important to think and note that whether changing in a code causes more errors or not. It can be easily done by automated process and is beneficial to the production. You can safely develop new functionalities without worry about breakage of any functionality. This directly means that you are eliminating the risk of breakage of anything, and if you find any issue, you can fix it.

Need to develop a software for your business? Then you are at the right place. Solace expert’s will help you to develop a software that meets your requirement by using automated tools. So you can get your software within less time and money with high accuracy. Contact us for software development which gives exponential hike to your business that it deserves.