When your in-house engineering team is developing software and completing QA at the same time, the quality might be compromised, especially if the appropriate methodology is not used. A more effective and objective way to ensure quality of your code is to separate software development from QA through a professional QA team. And using outsourced QA testing is an excellent way to get started with outsourced software development.

You may have tried outsourced software development in the past with less-than-successful results, or you may have considered outsourcing but were concerned that it wasn’t going to work – but there are (at least) five excellent reasons why outsourced QA testing is a great way to see if international outsourcing is right for you.

1. Protect Your Source Code When you outsource your software QA, you will not be divulging the source code to the outsource partners. They will be writing test plans and working with the software from the end-user’s perspective, without actually touching the code. In that way, intellectual property will not be compromised.

2. Maintain Objectivity To maintain objectivity in the development of your software and improve overall quality, it is a good practice to have development and QA achieved by different teams or different vendors. Typically, if one team or company performs both development and QA functions, objectivity is lost. The software application will most likely not be evaluated critically. You risk the possibility that bugs or errors will go undiscovered.

3. Improve Your Product You may be thinking that QA is not really necessary, or you may not have enough engineers on your team to accomplish QA. As such, you might normally skip the QA piece of software development. It is critical, however, to involve a QA team early in the development process. By partnering with an outsource QA testing team early in the process, you have the opportunity to discover bugs before they become part of the software design.

4. Hire Just One Engineer When you make the decision to outsource QA testing, you can choose to hire one QA engineer, allowing you the opportunity to learn how the vendor works. You can learn first- hand how to work and communicate with offshore engineers, and you can become acquainted with the experience and education of the engineers. Over time, if the team demonstrates that they are able to maintain quality and troubleshoot problems, you may want to explore other areas of outsourcing, such as development.

5. Build Automated QA Tests Once you understand the capabilities of the outsourced engineering team, you can consider more complex QA and development projects. To reduce time to release to market, you may also decide to apply automated QA testing techniques that would be difficult to do on your own.

Outsourcing QA testing can be a pilot project that opens a door to outsourced software development. Whether your project is a success or a failure, the cost and the impact to your business is minimal. At TRUEXTEND, we employ a formal and separate QA process, and the ultimate goal of our team is to create quality software products. It’s a part of our culture. When you do consider outsourcing your QA, you may want to consider TRUEXTEND.