Options for Getting Performance Testing and Test Automation Done
SPAOnDemand Testing Service
There can be no argument that you must provide a high-quality product. High quality for software products implicitly means that you must have an efficient and effective testing process and infrastructure to assure that your product is ready BEFORE your customers ever see it.
An effective testing infrastructure recognizes that the cost of defect caught post-release is exponentially more expensive than a defect caught pre-release. It detects and corrects defects before the product is ever released to your customer. An efficient testing infrastructure optimizes the cost-risk equation, minimizing the cost for testing activities while maximizing the probability that your product will meet or exceed your customers’ requirements.
Arguably, many companies do have reasonable functional testing capability. However, they seriously lack the regression, automation and performance testing capabilities that could greatly improve the quality of their product in the eyes of their customers. Why? There is constant pressure to invest scarce resources to deliver more and more features to stay ahead of the competition. AND, this typically happens at the expense of testing. Test automation and performance testing are activities that companies always seem to plan, but never actually get the resources and time to perform thoroughly.
Does your company have skills and bandwidth to perform these tests? If you are like most other companies these days and have leaned your workforce to the bone, chances are that you must focus your limited resources on introducing features to stay ahead of competition.
How then do these mission-critical testing activities get done?
There are options, of course. You could build the capability in house. BUT you may end up needing more resources and time than you have to build a team, define effective and efficient processes, and establish the purpose-built infrastructure. For a lot of companies, hiring people and investing capital in areas that are perceived to be outside the core, revenue generating activities of the company is simply not an option.
You could outsource testing to a generalist IT service provider, BUT this testing is really a specialized activity and you could find yourself with exactly the same quality, management, and cost issues you had to start with.
A better option may be to leverage new breed of specialist testing service providers that already have people, processes, and technology infrastructure that is purpose-built for this type of testing. In essence, you plug into an optimized highly effective, highly efficient testing cloud. Risks are reduced, costs are controlled, and results are predictable. Problem Solved.
