Maximizing the Investment in Your Testing Team

For the C-level executives in your company, the goal is to maximize the investment in human resources. So, if you have a software tester, you want to make sure that person is actually spending the majority of their time testing software. Time spent doing other unproductive non-testing activities would be considered a waste of company money.

Example Week of Where a Tester's Time Is Spent (Not Using qTest)

Let’s look at an example. Company XYZ is paying Bob the software tester an annual salary of $62,400. That is an hourly rate of about $30. The CEO of the company obviously wants to get the most out of that investment in Bob. However, if Bob’s software testing tools are slowing him down, that can be a big problem. The chart below illustrates the issue.

This chart shows that Bob is spending only 50% of his time actually testing applications. 37.5% of his time ($450 per week) is spent doing inefficient tasks related to testing like manual documentation due to the lack of good software testing tools.

Over the course of a full year, that’s $23,400 of company money that is being spent inefficiently! In other words, it is being spent inefficient administrative tasks rather than the actual testing of software applications.

Using better software testing tools can help reduce the time spent doing these inefficient tasks, helping maximize the company’s investment in Bob the Tester. QASymphony recently did a survey with our customers about efficiency improvements since adopting qTest. We found some interesting results:

• 64% of respondents said qTest produced time savings of at least 40% when managing test cases.
• 60% of respondents said qTest reduced documentation time by at least 40%.

Example Week of Where a Tester's Time Is Spent (Using qTest)

Let’s assume, based on the survey data, that using the qTest platform can make Bob the Tester 40% more efficient in documentation and managing test cases. Here’s how that original chart would change.

As you can see, Bob the Tester is now spending 65% of his time testing and only 22.5% doing the inefficient non-testing activities.

You have reduced your non-testing labor cost from $450 a week or $23,400/year to $270/week or $14,040/year. That’s an efficiency improvement of $9,360 just for one tester. If you multiply this across multiple testers in your company, you can imagine the big potential for maximizing your total investment in the software testing team.

At the end of the day, you want your testers to spend the vast majority of their time actually testing software. Having the right tools can help you do that.

To learn more about how to sell software testing tools to your executive team, download our free ebook: Executive Value Guide: Making the Case for Modern Software Testing Tools.