SLA in an Ondemand Software Testing Factory

By rule of thumb, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) in an Ondemand Software Testing Factory (OSTF) must be defined upfront the Ondemand service starts. This is the way the client and the factory could know if the service both are expecting is in the right way, otherwise a tunning should be activated on the road.

First of all, a contract must be stated, and on this SLAs are defined (among other important things), all the game rules are stated here!, then a pilot project is defined and agreed, the pilot last the enough time to realize we are already to start, the client to send out the work, and the factory to work it remotely.

The SLAs that must be defined on an Ondemand Software Testing Contract are at least the following:

• JIT, Just in Time
• DRE, Defect Removal Efficiency
• OB, On Budget
• OTD, On Time Delivery
• DDE, Defect Detection Efficiency

Software Testing OnDemand?

What about software testing ondemand? are you ready to face this offering to your clients? nowdays (and always...) companies are looking to reduce costs, to get the best product, in the right time, and with the right quality.

Software Testing can be an offering like nearshore/Offshore projects for software development, but, the difference is we do testing.

Here are the requisites to comply an Ondemand Offering for software testing:

• Right People !!
• Right Mature on the Software Testing
• Right Methodology/Process
• Connectivity to the testing environment (if that is the case)
• Own Test environment
• SLAs (Service Level Agreements)
• SLM (Service Level Management)
• Tools !! (Automation, managament, etc.)

QA Open Source Tools

The QA Open Source tools, are now the most popular ways for companies to

perform their projects. Even if they are part of the biggest firms in the world.

In my case I enjoy looking at this kind of powerful tools, there are not easy of use or friendly tools, you must have technical knowledges on how to customize them by programming the source code or in other cases you invest more time on performing the task than using license tools.

The most popular Open Source tools are:

• Ruby/WatiR
• Sellenium
• AutoIT
• PHPunit
• WatiN/WatiJ
• J-Meter
• AB-Apache
• Badboy
• Among others..

Nowdays the companikes are looking for reducing cost through Software Testing, we can help them by looking at these type of tools.

Quaility Center... an experienced implementation

When working with HP technology Quality Center (QC), the first thing that came to my mind was "INTUITIVE" thing, and shorted time implementation than other cheaper solutions, that because the other HP solutions (QTP, LR) are really easygoing and friendlies, but the real thing is that it is not that much as thought, so, the implementation took me more time, because QC is too open, you can do whatever you want on it, it is a brainstorm that has to be carried out in order to determine how your process can fit on it. Researching further with experts on Testing discipline, told me that QC has its own definitions for software testing (scenarios, test cases, procedures, etc) and that is the reason that is not too standard. If you want to implement a TESTWARE on QC, you can not have it on one module, but it need to be distributed in several modules to make it work (could it be a tricky solution), as I understood, QC is only a repository for QTP, and LR scripts, that was the purpose it was constructed, but never for managing a testing process.

Test Process Management

In each company exist quality policies, quality process and standars, that are used to achieve the quality goals defined by the upper management. 

We need to make sure that we understand the purpose of every factor needed to make it success. In the industry for Software testing we have several best practices among others I pointed on TPI, TMM, CMM, use them like a guidelines to set up your testing process and obviously they have statistics that back them up, try to make your life easier using them. 

Turnover in Testing

The Turnover in testing is a hard topic to talk about, but depending of the nature and the economic situation of the company, country and in some cases of the tester.

It is quite interesting to define what is the case and perfect work enviroment where the testers can say "Im not in sell and Im comfortable here". But the real thing is that some dollars can move mountains and offer more value to the testers and more if the offer has more challenges and learnings for the people.

Some companies are now worry in this issue, because they invest a lot of time, money and blod to let the testers understand the business flow, the technical issues, and the processes, and when finally this is done, the tester finds a better job position outside the company and everything is a waste of time, and falls apart.

The best way to retain the key testers at your company is following the next bullets:

• Offer them a Testing Carreer inside your company.
• Offer Formal Training, Certifications can last 5 years.
• Move testers to different responsabilities without put in risk the projects.
• Let them feel like executives.

The Profile of a Tester

The Tester commonly is called in Mexico "The people who doesnt know programming languages" in other words the guys that do not like develop software because they do not know how to do it.

But the truth of it, is that there are lots of testers that generate good code of programming and their skills are profitable. I could say that in QA we have good automated testers that generate code with out the use and help of any record play back.
Nowdays is quite complicated to find a good tester in the market doing nothing, every tester is busy and have a good project or Job. That pursued me to construct my own "QA incubator", in order to generate skilled people and become them Tester, but I would say "Sofware Test Professional" (STP).

The basis to become a good STP are:

• o Analysis skills, able to understand any kind of business industry
• o Programming skills, able to automate test cases.
• o Non-functional testing skills, able to exercise the system beyond to its borders.
• o Database skills, able to verify the transactions in the backend.
• o Good communication skills, able to connect the tongue with the brain.
• o Able to mentor everybody.