Monitor Your ?Score? in Software Testing Engagements
Gone are the days when cost was looked at as the main reason to outsource software testing services. Today, organizations are more focused on striking the right deal to gain access to testing expertise, independent opinion (especially an unbiased non-development vendor’s), and ultimately to improve software quality. While they are on the right path, it is also important for them to define key metrics in order to realize the value out of their outsourcing relationship.
Testing metrics play a crucial role in measuring various attributes associated with a project while providing guidance on the direction of the project. It helps in measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the software testing process and quickly identifies the defects and risky areas that need further improvement. Though complex metrics are not essential to measure the progress of the project, it is important to define simple and key metrics that provide clear and straightforward view of the progress. But, it is also quite essential for enterprises to identify the goals before putting a metrics program in place.
Often metrics, particularly related to defects, are mostly collected at the final stage when the application/product doesn’t perform as expected or cause too many issues to the end user. This is typically a damage control exercise and is not the right way to implement a project. As defects can get injected at any phase of the software life cycle, metrics should be defined right from the requirements phase to the production phase. The basic metrics that should be in place before an enterprise embarks on the quality journey include, total number of defects, defects found at each stage of software life cycle, severity of the defects, delivered defect density etc.
Testing metrics can also be designed on several other attributes like defect detection and avoidance, quality levels, costs, test coverage, test case distribution, apart from development metrics related to schedules, budgets and overall responsiveness which go along well with testing. Focus should be laid on monitoring the defined metrics continuously and making necessary improvements. Enterprises should ensure that they resolve most of the defects at the stage in which they are found. Finally, defining metrics and monitoring their score on a continual basis will be the key if enterprises want to win on cost, time, and quality, and derive value out of their outsourced testing engagements.
AppLabs is the world’s largest software testing and quality management company. With over a decade of experience behind it, AppLabs has become a trusted partner to more than 300 companies, providing both quality assurance and third-party validation.