Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
manager. For automation testing, there could be team members who are automa-
tion engineers and who will be building automation scripts for the test cases that
are to be automated. There are functional experts who have industry knowledge
and who will do the majority of functionality testing. There will be experts who
will do performance testing of the application using automation tools.
With outsourcing of software testing, these organization arrangements get
changed significantly.
From the client side, there will be a project manager who oversees the engage-
ments with service providers. Under him, there will be a small team who look after
managing software development and software testing done by internal staff as well
as by service providers.
The topmost position from the service provider side is the engagement or deliv-
ery or account manager who is responsible for all communication, clarification, and
deliverables for all projects that are getting executed for that specific client. Under
him, there could be a project manager for software development and under
him
will
be a software testing manager to take care of software testing functions.
12.2.2
New Organization Structure
Software testing, as is now well known, should never be confined to just one phase
of software development. Instead testing activities should be spread across all phases
of software development.
If this is the case, then how are we going to integrate software testing parts with
other parallel software development activities? These software development activi-
ties will be going on at different locations and will be done by other organizations
with whom the service provider who has undertaken software testing may not have
any connections.
In the new model, software testing function is detached from the software devel-
opment function, and in the extreme case software testing is done by an altogether
different organization that have connections with the organization that will be doing
software development. Software testing thus becomes a separate project, distinct from
the software development project. In fact, the organization that will be doing the soft-
ware testing will offer its software testing expertise as a mass service to reduce project
costs and offer its testing services to its customers at lower prices. However, this type of
arrangement posses a communications problem for the organization doing the software
development project and the one which is doing the software testing project. There are
many touch points between these two projects. If these two projects are being done by
two separate companies, then how can proper communication between these compa-
nies be nesured? We will discuss the solution for this problem later in
Section 12.3.
Let us first see a traditional organizational structure (see
Figures 12.3
and
12.4).
It
can be seen that the organization structure needed by the service provider for software
testing management becomes very complex in this new scenario. He needs delivery man-
agers who work closely with the customer. A delivery manager may be working with
