How to Scale Your QA Testing as Your Software Company Grows

For software companies, QA testing is a must. With new software products launching daily, yours has to stand out — and typically on the first try. You need to make sure your product works flawlessly so that users instantly have a positive experience. 

But how do you deal with the rising demand for QA and testing as your software company grows? You need to cash in a significant amount of time and money to train your in-house teams – or don’t you?

Apparently not. There’s an effective and a sure solution to fixing your quality problem which we’re going to discuss here, and, like we mentioned, you can NOT afford to slack on the QA.

The problem with the ascending software company isn't always the budget or the lack of resources. You may have everything on the table but you’re spoiled for choice. Your problem is building an effective strategy around the rising QA operations.

As alluring as it is to have a one-size-fits-all approach to QA testing, there isn’t one. This is simply because every product or project you undertake comes with different requirements. You would see yourself customizing the QA process depending upon various factors, such as your client, the target industry, and the end users — making it tough to adhere to a definite and uniform testing approach causing you to spend even more time and money than you may have initially predicted.  

Achieving comprehensive QA is tough - even your best teams might struggle with curating a QA strategy due to the inability to create a standardized solution for every project. The plan should meet the needs of a speedy development team –while simultaneously adapting QA to support the ever-changing project goals.

The key to precisely scaling your QA testing process, as your organization grows, lies in identifying and strategizing the best ways to scale your QA team.

The Top 3 Things You Should Consider

1. Increasing Headcount Isn’t Cheap

Recruiting and onboarding comes at a price. Hiring more people means investing in more resources. This can be in terms of office space and supplies, training costs, and tools/technologies needed for QA testing.

2. Hiring and Managing In-house Teams is Quite a Task

The more people you have on the team, the harder it is to manage. A big team means you would see yourself spending more time on making each team member successful with execution – leaving you with less to no time for strategic initiatives. Not doble — especially if you’re looking to keep your work load below 50 or so hours a week.

3. Lack Of Continuous Delivery

Scaling your in-house team has yet another bottleneck: managing QA on the weekends or at night for continuous delivery.

Eventually, all these signals lead to the need for a solution that can help a software company lay low on costs without compromising on the quality. This is where onboarding an offshore team that has experience and expertise to help the in-house team get up-to-speed on execution becomes an excellent solution that most don’t even stop to consider.

By outsourcing, your Dev team spends time and other resources on what’s important - the core product activities such as development innovations. Developers are assured that a dedicated team of testing experts is analyzing and tackling the software testing part. 

Benefits to Outsourcing QA

You Get a Team of Domain Experts

When scaling your QA through outsourcing, you collaborate with teams that have expertise working in the same domain and sometimes, on similar projects. The offshore teams have hands-on experience in working with a variety of customers, which means different requirements, time zones, and deadlines. The pool of resources is enhanced when a software company works with offshore QA teams, with engineers readily available to take on your project.

Up-To-Date Knowledge on Latest Tools and Technologies

You can only expect the best results when you make the best decisions. Similarly, with software QA testing, it is important to choose the tools and technologies that accurately and specifically meet the project requirements. Implementing an inappropriate technology or tool means you could miss on the timeline of the project and increase refactoring. Outsourced QA teams work with all possible tools available in the market. This enables them to evaluate the best-suited tools and technologies for any given project. 

A typical analysis looks something like this:

• Evaluating the project’s testing needs
• Evaluating the pros and cons of testing tools for those needs
• Refining the existing resources to make them manageable and cost-effective
• Defining processes and standards based on industry and domain
• Keeping an eye on the latest updates like upcoming tools and technologies
• Quick Turnaround Time

Before you set your sail and have all hands on deck, it is recommended to have a thorough analysis of test cases. This will help you to identify the potential bottlenecks beforehand and enable you to save time and resources, as well as increase productivity. The outsourced QA professionals are trained to create and perform this analysis and formulate a plan of action. It’s simple math: the earlier your QA team finds a problem, the faster a bug fix can be implemented.

Reduced Costs

Cutting down costs while optimizing the quality is a value equation. Usually, outsourcing is often related to minimizing the cost of the end product. If you hire an additional team on in-house testers, it would eventually cost the company more in the long run. With outsourcing, however, a software company can retain the desired talent as long as they are required.

Conclusion

Being ahead of the curve is always a huge plus — especially for startups and SMEs. Outsourcing has become mainstream for industries of all shapes and sizes. When you are outsourcing QA testing, your QA partner provides you with guidance based on what's trending in the industry, shares its experience, works with you on new ideas, and likely becomes your long-term strategic partner.