Quality Software Engineer Salary at Testcrew BETA

TestCrew: In both your books (Manage the Testing Process and Critical Testing Processes) you discuss outsourcing as an option. What is the greatest challenge when outsourcing testing that firms face, in your opinion? How would you suggest overcoming these challenges? Rex: The root challenge when outsourcing testing is the same faced when outsourcing any work: unrealistic expectations. People look at outsourcing, and the drive to try it out all too often is, "Wow, look at how cheap it is!" Managers do some imperceptive math, looking at the hourly rate of the outsource staff and comparing it to the hourly rate for internal employees. When outsourcing, you aren't buying hours, you're buying work, a job to be done. The expectation that costs will be x amount lower, based only on comparing hourly rates, is another will o' the wisp that many are chasing with outsourcing. So, companies need to have realistic goals and expectations when they undertake outsourcing. I've done a lot of outsourcing myself, and it's successful only when both firms involved have in place the proper infrastructure to enable the clear, clean flow of information back and forth. There needs to be in place mechanisms for resolving blocking issues, for delivering test results, for defining processes, and others. A classic mistake is to create an outsourcing plan based on the assumption that all the tests completed by the outsourced firm will pass. This is ludicrous: a major objective of most testing is to find and resolve bugs. When these bugs are found, people all too often run into problems when outsourcing. Here's an example: the outsourcer is given a build to test, and in the course of setting up the test, damage occurs to the software configuration. Now, all their test results will be skewed. The need here is to recognize the problem, resolve the configuration errors, and fix them. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to set up mechanisms for recognizing problems and course correcting. Organizations that do well when outsourcing have in ...