Testing4Success.com – Many companies are now looking to outsourced their QA, and there are several key benefits over keeping it ‘in-house’. There are a number of reasons why a company opts to outsource, such as; to supplement an in-house QA team to ensure project deadlines are met, or outsourcing small items of QA work without the hassle of hiring permanent or contracted testers. While at first an outsourced QA company\u2019s hourly rate may seem similar to that of a QA contractor, actually, the cost is significantly lower than contract or permanent staff. This is because with an outsourced QA company, you are only paying for the actual hours tested. You are not paying 37.5 hours to keep someone busy for the whole week, you are simply paying for the actual testing time. This could be 4 hours or 20 hours, it directly relates to how much QA work is needed.<\/p>\n
Now, if you consider permanent members of staff, you have to pay them a yearly salary. But, rarely can someone predict how much QA work will be needed that year, so there may be times when it is a struggle to keep them fully utilized. Now, add on sick pay, vacation and training, and you have what is comparatively an expensive QA process. It is the same with contractors, you have to provide a 3 month or 6 month contract and pay someone a high hourly rate. Again, you cannot exactly predict how much QA work will be required. There will definitely be times during that period when the contractor will not be fully utilized. Software development projects almost always experience delays at some point during the project, and during these delays permanent or contracted staff will still need to be paid. This is not the case with outsourced QA.<\/p>\n
In addition to the overall cost saving, one of the other key benefits to outsourcing QA is a consistent level of quality. A good outsourced QA company has a team that contains a depth of knowledge and expertise gained over testing a wide range of software products. This significantly decreases any associated ramp-up time on technologies, processes and practices, because a tester with the best matching skills can immediately be utilized.<\/p>\n