There are 2 main reasons why companies utilize offshoring (outsourcing) for performance testing.
The main reason is cost savings. Obviously companies will try to choose locations where there is a lower cost of doing business. The 2nd reason is to be able to ramp up new testers quickly. If there is a greater demand for testing than what the current set of testers can handle then offshoring or outsourcing can be utilized to quickly gain more testers to help with the excess demand.
In an ideal world all performance testers are the same. If you can find cheaper testers elsewhere, then you will get immediate cost savings. But as we know we do not live in an ideal world. There are different levels of knowledge, skill and motivation. We have seen time and time again offshoring fail because companies do not have that correct expectations, they do not set up the proper training, and they do not have the correct set of tools.
You cannot assume (we all know what that does) that just contracting with a secondary company to provide all or partial performance testing will automatically start showing benefits.
There is no reason why offshoring cannot be a successful venture for companies. They must research the offshoring options and find ones that have a good fit with skill sets, low "turn over", and a proven record.
Once an outsourcing company has been chosen then there has to be training. They must understand how your company is expecting the testing to be performed. They must know what types of tests you want them to do (stress,load,failover, etc...), the kind of reports that you want and the SLAs that you expect them to achieve.
After you have chosen the team, provided the appropriate training and expectations, what is left? What tools are they going to be using? The same set of tools that you used when the entire team was internal? At first this seems like the correct response. If it worked internally, why wouldn't it work for an outsourcer? Let's explore this for moment.
First let's just talk licenses. How is the outsourcing group going to gain licenses. Do they have their own licenses that they can use? Most do not and they rely on the company to provide that. So do you transfer the licenses that you have internally to the outsourcer? Do you want to keep some of the licenses in house so that you can perform tests internally when it is needed? More than likely you will be keeping at least some of your performance testing licenses in-house. So that means that you will have to buy more licenses for the outsourced team. Can your current testing tool help with this?
What about testing machines? Do you need to get more controllers and load generators? Can the outsourced team utilize the machines that you currently have? Can your current testing tool help with this?
What about management? How do you know that the outsourced team is doing what they are supposed to do? How do you know if the tests that they are creating are correct? How do you know if they are testing enough? In short how do you know that they are doing a good job? Lack of proper management and oversight is one of the biggest reasons why offshoring fails. Can your current testing tool help with this?
What if you would like "follow the sun testing" or better collaboration with testing. Let's say that you have an important project that needs to get tested quickly. And the only way to get this done is to keep handing off the test to different testers around the world. So when one location is done for the day, a new tester can pick up where the last left off and continue with the testing. This becomes a real possibility with offshoring. A test can begin in-house and then shift to an outsourcer off-hours, thus decreasing the time it takes to get the results to the line of business. Can your current testing tool help with this?
HP Performance Center (PC) is the enterprise performance testing platform that can help you with your offshoring/outsourcing needs. Let's start from the top. PC has shared licenses. Anyone around the world, that is given the proper permission, can access the PC web interface and run tests. There is no need for more licences unless there is a demand for more concurrent testing. And if your demand for more simultaneous tests is growing, then you are doing something right.
Now let's move on to machines. With Performance Center all the machines (controllers and load generators) are centrally managed. There is no need to have LGs placed throughout the world. Testers, worldwide, have access to tests and machines through PC. Again the only time that more machines are needed is if the demand increases. No need to buy more machines just because you have outsourced the job.
Performance Center was created for performance testing management. From a single location you can see what projects and tests have been created, how many tests have been executed and who ran them. There is no need to have scripts and reports emailed or copied. All testing assets are stored centrally and accessible through PC's web interface.
Not only can you view the projects, scripts, and results, you can also manage the testing environment itself. You can run reports to see what the demand for your testing environment is an then plan for increases accordingly.
How about "follow the sun" testing? With HP Performance Center anyone with proper access can take over testing. Since all scripts, scenarios, and profiles are completely separated from controllers can stored centrally, it is easy for a new tester to pick up where a previous tester left off. There is no need to upload scripts and scenarios to a separate location, or remember to email them to the next tester. It is all available 24x7 through Performance Center.
Collaboration on testing becomes much easier in PC than with almost any other tool. If you need different people at different locations to all watch a test as it is running, PC can accommodate that. Just log on to the running test and choose the graphs that you are interested in. Now all viewers are watching the test with the information that they are interested in, all through one tool.
HP Performance Center is your best performance testing platform choice when it comes to offshoring and outsourcing.
So after you pick the correct outsourcing company, and properly train them, make sure that you use HP Performance Center to ensure the highest cost savings and highest quality.
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