Situation
TriActive, a leader in hosted system management applications faced a challenge common to successful companies. Their expanding development team was outgrowing their QA resources. Before undetected bugs slipped through to production, TriActive wanted to enhance their current team with a proven offshore partner.
Problem
TriActive's service and development teams were growing rapidly, and the QA department needed to scale with it. New features in their application intensified the workload for Marni Wilhite, lead QA engineer, and her test team.
"We kept adding more developers so there wasn't much time for us to write test cases or do regression testing." she noted.
TriActive began searching for a vendor with a system that could scale up with development, as well as accommodate foreseeable growth.
More importantly, they wanted a partner who would implement a solution effortlessly with little disruption to their current processes.
Decision
TriActive required all of the critical components of an offshore QA organization - clear communication and impeccable standards. A poor experience with a previous provider made them wary of working with another outsourced vendor.
"We were hesitant to go with an offshore team. We had done some outsourcing before and it had not gone well. The biggest fear was quality and communication," said Marni.
TriActive's QA organization would not condone diminished product quality. The partner that they chose would have to show up with established systems. "We wanted a regression test suite and wanted someone who could provide a long-term approach," Marni stated.
Solution
TriActive met its requirements by choosing TESTCo, whose local QA Manager promptly defined the top priority test cases.
"We relied on TESTCo to do a risk analysis - they asked a series of focused questions, and then quickly narrowed down the most important areas for us."
Key to the successful TESTCo delivery was the daily status report that cataloged the testing status, priorities, and questions from the outsourced engineers.
This frequent communication allowed Marni's group to expedite the knowledge transfer.
During the project ramp up, Marni and her co-workers coached the offshore personnel through the learning curve.
However, with the local QA Manager, the offshore group mastered TriActive's application. They responded with results. By the next day, TriActive would see changes based on their requirements.
"We provided feedback to our local QA Manager. They were quick to respond to our requests," remarked Marni.
Benefits
TriActive's investment paid off. After the project ramp up, the test team spent less time on regression testing.
"We get a summary email about the test cases, and it takes fifteen minutes a day. Now we can focus on the features for each release. We've incorporated the offshore team's method for writing test cases into what we're doing as well."
Marni commented on her group's final assessment of the TESTCo solution. "The offshore team surpassed our expectations. Communication has never been an issue."
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About TESTCo
TESTCo customers eliminate software testing problems, slash support costs by up to 50% and achieve their release date commitments ... all without the risk of hunting down the best offshore vendor, the pain and frustration of learning how to properly manage them and the unpredictable results so common with most offshore vendors.
About TriActive
The TriActive Systems Manager (TSM) provides robust functionality of enterprise systems management capabilities. The TriActive solution is packaged into scalable and modular components, which provide customers with the flexibility to choose the capabilities they need.
TSM uses a design comprised of the following three components:
These integrated components work together to provide an easy-to-use interface to the systems management services that customers need, without having to maintain the systems management software at their sites.
