Independent Testing Guide - How It Delivers Quality Driven Product

How Independent Testing Will Help You Deliver a Quality-driven Product

Can you trust the verdict of a judge who is a part of the inner social circle of the person he has to prosecute? Or an auction controlled by the group of bidders? For both these processes to be fair and just, the decision makers have to be unbiased.

Now, when you are actively involved in the development of any product or software, testing it with a neutral mindset is easier said than done. As a developer, you would wish to ship the product at the earliest, and end up overlooking some errors and bugs. To avoid such a situation, you should hire an independent testing organization who will thoroughly test your product for faults and glitches, making it deployment ready.

But first, let’s have a look at the independent testing definition.

Independent testing is defined as a range of tests done by some other professional testers who may/may not be directly involved in your product development process.

Different levels in Independent Testing

There are different levels at which testing can be done. Ranked from the lowest level to the highest level of independence, these are:

Programmer testing his codes
Testing carried by other programmer within the organization
In-house testing team
Independent Testing organization

You can think of setting up an in-house testing team, or letting other project developers do the testing. But these are not the best solutions. Read on to find out why…

Why is there a need for Independent Testing?

When the programmer tests his codes

You would never ask the chef to be his own critic. And even if you do, you would have a hard time believing all that he says. Meaning, a creator can never be a good critic of his own work. The development world is no exception.

A programmer knows his code inside and out. Their aim is to build the product and ship it at the earliest. Instead of looking for errors from all possible angles, they will be tempted to find ways to bypass the errors and bugs found.

Writer Glenford Mayers in his book ‘The Art of Software Testing’ enumerated the difference in the mindset of a developer and a tester. He said that a developer thinks like a builder focusing on building, whereas a tester looks for flaws that will lead to the collapse of the building if not solved.

Testing carried by other programmer within the organization

A mid way is to find someone within the organization. This can be some other programmer, who is involved in some other projects. This gives a certain level of independence. But the problem arises due to the same reporting manager. The manager may ask the programmer to skip some tests when there are some time constraints. This will result in incomplete testing of the product.

Also, when asking other developers to carry out the testing, it will lead to the deployment of various resources on a single project and lead to work loss. This will be harmful for the overall working of the organization.

In-house testing team

Having a different in-house team is a good solution. But since they will be within the organization, they will be influenced by restrictive timelines. Also, it will be costly to maintain an in-house team. This will result in a lot of budgetary and resource constraints for the team. The team may have the exposure of limited tools and software, thus not meeting the requirements of all the projects.

The testing environment will also vary in terms of numbers of users and integrations done. The testing will then be carried in hurried manner, leading to missing out on some errors which may surface after the product is released.

The solution that will take care of all these shortfalls is ‘Independent testing.’

Why Independent Testing?

Independent testing organizations will look into all the aspects of your products. They work with the mindset of finding flaws and bugs. They will not be taking shortcuts in the testing process. And since they were not a part of the development process, they will conduct tests on neutral grounds, with no previous interests hindering the testing process.

The mindset of finding maximum ‘break points’ will go in your product’s favour. Almost all third party testing organizations will give you detailed error reports with corrective measures.

Advantages of Independent Testing:

Third party testing organizations have many proven advantages like…

Independent testing ensures that the testing is carried out in the most bias-free manner. This helps in removing all minor and major coding errors and thus improves the overall quality of the software.
Independent testing organizations have expertise in many tools and software present in testing domains like manual testing, stress testing, and automation testing. All your specific testing needs and requirements can be fulfilled easily via such organizations.
At times in-house testing teams will carry out testing only in later stages of development, which will push the project’s timeline. And in case, there are some major errors, it will result in the delay of your product’s release. Independent testing organizations are flexible here, especially if they are in a different time zone, they can fasten the deployment cycle from early stage with shift-left testing approach.
Purchasing numerous tools and softwares, giving training to your employees, regular renewal of subscriptions, and catering to any specific infrastructure needs of these tools, will result in many unnecessary expenses. Instead, you can hire independent testing organizations who have all these facilities setup and thus reduce your cost significantly.

Disadvantages of Independent Testing:

At the same time there are some disadvantages that you have to keep in mind so that you can minimize their impact:

There can be communication gaps because of the different teams involved which are present in different geographic locations.
Your developers may become less careful with their coding, thinking all the errors will be taken care of by the independent testing team.
For smaller budget projects, it is not feasible to hire an independent testing team.

It can be seen that hiring an independent testing team will result in a product that is quality-driven if you can find a way to bypass the disadvantages. Let a different organization take care of your product’s testing as testing is among their core functionalities.

Author Bio:

Aakansha is a content marketing expert at Galaxy Weblinks. Her expertise includes QA testing content, blogging, social media as well as strategic policy. She has an in-depth understanding of design and development processes and often writes about user experience, designing, web development, mobile apps, security and more.

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Independent Testing Guide – How It Delivers Quality Driven Product