Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
12.1
Software Offshoring
Software services providers have been offshoring software development along with
testing projects offshore. Customers reap the benefits of lower labor cost, consistent
quality, and reduced schedules. Service providers also leverage their knowledge of
executing similar projects in the past, which helps new projects.
So far, offshoring has provided benefits like consolidation, sharing of resources,
better utilization of resources, lower costs, and excellence due to strict adherence to
software engineering principles and software process standards like CMMI.
The time has come for something more to be done than what has been achieved
through offshoring.
12.2 The New Concept
Offshore service providers execute a lot of projects simultaneously. They can put
these projects into categories. Similar projects are in the same category. They can
create central organizations called centers of excellence (CoE) for providing spe-
cialized services. So we can have a CoE for QTP automation, another CoE for
LoadRunner performance automation, and yet another CoE for creating test cases
for CRM (customer relationship management) applications. So, on the one hand,
we have processing centers and, on the other hand, we can have lines for services.
This will be similar to production lines in manufacturing industries.
We can see that mass services already exist in the form of call centers, bill gen-
eration, and so on. Software testing can be set up along similar lines.
There will be a central department that will receive incoming projects. Each
project will be analyzed and will be broken into parts. These parts will be sent to
concerned CoEs. The CoEs will process these parts and will forward them to the
next CoE in line, who in turn will process and then forward them to the next CoE.
This continues until processing is complete on that part, and then the part will be
considered finished. All the parts will then be assembled by a central organization.
So each software test project will be ready to be delivered after this assembly.
During processing, each part of the project will be treated as an inventory item.
They will wait in line to be processed when their turn comes. Once processing is
done, they are forwarded to the next processing center.
Already you may have a feel for this idea.
Now let us describe the process in detail.
12.2.1 Old Organization Structure
As has been traditionally done, software testing is an integral part of any software
project. In the software development life cycle, there is a phase for testing when
all testing for the application is done. In such an arrangement, the testing phase
is handled by a software testing team that is led by a software testing lead or test
