Outsourcing QA Benefits for all sizes of businesses

When should you outsource?

Any product manager or system manager has at least once encountered issues like manpower shortage for testing, specialized knowledge in software quality assurance, product performance, inflated cost after a number of iterations, security risk, and so on.

Unless it's an already established organization with perfect resource allocation that has shipped numerous products, it is rare to find a team that is fully functioning. In various scenarios, instead of stretching internal resources, it is a smart choice to outsource part of operations or development work to third-party experts that specialize in the job you want to be done. That, in the long run, saves you half-done jobs, or unwanted hiring costs during downtime.

Advantages of outsourcing

- Better test coverage

- Cost efficiency with Pay-per-usage

- Impartial and autonomous results

- Access to best practices and the latest tools

- Improved time to market

- Minimized management efforts

- Saving skilled developers from manual testing

The list goes on. But most importantly, when you outsource, they do everything they can to deliver the best output within the deadline, while internal teams can come up with excuses to delay integration, execute the partial tests and give you headaches. It sounds like a good idea to take advantage of experts whose job is sole to ensure quality and performance, which would allow your developers to focus on core development than time-consuming tests. But what is the downside?

Disadvantages of outsourcing

Of course, outsourcing comes with some disadvantages. And depending on how well you manage it, it could make or break your project.

For example,

- Confidentiality and security risks

- Lack of flexibility and contractual restrictions

- Management difficulties and communication overhead

Read about software testing outsourcing