BetterQA Recruiting

Quality assurance is an essential part of the software development cycle. Deciding whether to test in-house or choose an external independent testing team can be a struggle.This article will present the advantages and disadvantages of having test independence within a project and an in-house testing team.As a first step, providing testers with test independence leads to a higher rate of finding bugs. Testers provide additional input to the code author, allowing them to find missing behaviors or errors that may have been missed during the development process. Communicating with the development team can provide a mix of familiarity with the product and an independent opinion provided by the tester.LEVELS OF TEST INDEPENDENCENo independent testers — developers testing their own code is the only form of testing available.Independent developers or testers within the development teams or the project team.Independent test team or group within the organization, reporting to project management or executive management.Independent testers from the business organizationIndependent testers external to the organization, either working on-site (in-house) or off-site (outsourcing).It’s usually best to have multiple test levels, with some of these levels handled by independent testers. We have found that it works best for most projects. Additionally, developers should participate in testing, especially at the lower levels. By doing that, they can exercise control over the quality of their work.How testing independence is implemented varies depending on the software development lifecycle model. For example, in Agile development, testers may be part of a development team. In some organizations using Agile methods, these testers may be considered part of a larger independent test team. Additionally, product owners may perform acceptance testing to validate user stories at the end of each iteration.