Flexible Test Resourcing

One constant phenomenon observed throughout the IT industry is that testing has extremes of activity. Flexible resourcing suits the nature of testing, but is not always possible. Outsourcing can facilitate this.

Even if you are committed to Agile, you still need to weigh the real benefits of outsourcing against co-locating all your system and system level regression tests.

Benefits of outsourcing with W3QA

• Fixed costs turn into variable costs
• Access to specialist technical expertise “on demand”
• Increased productivity
• Allows you to focus on core strengths
• Access to a secure, reliable, scalable and integrated infrastructure
• Opportunity to explore new ways to work
• Interact collaborate and communicate with a test automation pioneer
• Provide complete accountability and reporting on all test execution

Consider the following examples:

A project is using an agile methodology and going through four weekly incremental deliveries. The cumulative affect of regression testing is diverting test resource away from focusing on the current increment. Although the increments are planned, regressing testing is often overlooked during planning.

Another incremental project is geared to weekly scheduled releases to the live environment. There is usually a period of two to three days of system testing before being released. Here full time test resources switch between days of relative inactivity to being required to become supermen and wonderwomen when the application is ready to test.

In both cases, managers have little option but to over resource their test teams or compromise on quality. They find themselves having to retain highly skilled and expensive test specialists during unutilised time.

In an ideal world the tap of test resource would be turned on and off to match the intermittent demand. This is of course not always possible. Often domain expertise prevents simply moving testers around where they are required.

Using the W3QA Framework offers the benefit of having domain expertise involved during test specification but not during execution. This role-based design presents an opportunity for successfully outsourcing a specialist activity that requires no business domain expertise. This enables clients to keep business domain expertise and project management resource on-site.

The scalability offered by W3QA means that any outsourcing can be staged and controlled. Devote Agile practicioners can take cautionary steps whilst evaluating whether they have really lost anything - and hopefully keep some time to assess what they have gained.

Geographically distributed teams (GDT) are becoming common - even within the Agile community. The keenest advocators of co-location are recognising its limitations. Almost as much as those that promote outsourcing are starting to see a retreat from poorly conceived distribution. There are certainly limitations with following the extremes of any practice.