Software Testing to Software Engineering
According to analysts, the growing dependence on software testing to improve product quality is resulting in greater IT budgets getting allocated to the testing activity. In fact, it is being suggested that in the years ahead, software testing will make up nearly 20-25 percent of the software budget. Forrester Research estimates that the demand for outsourced software testing will account for 28% of IT budgets in Europe and the U.S. within two years.
Recognizing the fact that customers are looking at effectively and efficiently developing quality products, offshore software testing service providers are focusing on improving the analysis and design phases of their offerings and ensuring that they have the capabilities to test earlier in the product life cycle. Their aim is to align their software testing services with the business needs of companies.
In order to do so, they are also changing their testing approaches. The service providers are working in proximity with customers and involving their business teams to drive software product quality. They are establishing strong connectivity and traceability between needs, the product features and the testing that must be undertaken.
All in all, offshore software testing service providers are delivering more value to customers using mixed methodologies of exploratory testing and automation testing. Specialized testing services like performance testing and security testing, act as the extra topping on the pie.
As software testing becomes more complex, based on increasing refinement of the applications and technologies, outsourcers are designing solutions to meet business objectives of the applications being tested and the technologies utilized by applications. They are also building test infrastructure required to test such applications and selecting the right test methodologies to provide adequate test coverage.
With test automation becoming a key element of software test strategy, these companies are also using more sophisticated, mature testing tools that better integrate with other tools to support collaboration. Many of these tools are based on open source standards and built on common infrastructure that makes them easier to integrate with other life cycle tools. The goal is to use tools that provide a seamless testing experience and enable more holistic, realistic and robust testing. Outsourced software testing sector is thankful to such tool sets.
Interestingly, offshore software testing organizations are using prevention practices as well, like using static analyzers, etc., for early bug detection. At the same time, they are also using commonly available simulation tools to easily create artificial computing scenarios so as to test for exceptions and error paths earlier in the development process. Such tools often provide the functionality to generate tests on-the-go. The offshore software testing service providers are replacing misleading metrics such as bug counts and test case counts in testing projects by useful metrics such as specifications coverage, model coverage and code coverage.
Truly, today the outsourced software testing has become need of the hour to sustain competition to serve customers efficiently.
