Software Test Outsourcing and India as its prime Hotspot

<ORIGINALLY SHARED UNDER THE AUTHOR NAME: Knowledge Sharing Team at QA InfoTech>

The Oxford dictionary meaning of outsourcing unfolds as: “obtaining (goods or service) by contract from an outside supplier”. In the Global Software Industry, outsourcing would pertain to undertaking certain modules or components of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to a third party company preferably centered in a developing country where IT resources are in abundance at a relatively lower cost. Software quality assurance and testing is rapidly inflating niche in this broad domain. The main motifs behind outsourcing are simple and uncomplicated: effective cost-cutting with an assurance of quality in service.

Let us briefly summarize the major goals met by software outsourcing:

• Efficient workload distribution: By distributing various components of the software process to one or many third-party software firms, the operation speed and efficiency of the process can be doubled, if not quadrupled.
•  Reduction in labor costs: The cost of apt resources in developed countries of the North Americas and European Union (where major software giants are based) is quite high and continuously escalating. In an attempt to drastically cut down the overall budget and maximize profitability, outsourcing is done. The abundant savants of India and China are thus targeted who happily accept it. It’s an overall win-win situation.  
• Maximizing core specialization: A company that is competent and specializes in software development would invariably outsource its software testing department in today’s ambience so that it can optimize its growth in the niche field with domination.
• Utilization of latest practices: The parent company has the advantage of having pure access to a specialized knowledge base by employing outsourcing firms.  
• Lesser chances of biased evaluation: Third party firms working in tandem with the parent company drives home an environment of unbiased evaluation and cross-verification of different workflows in process. This leads to a greater assurance of quality of services and the process as a whole. For an instance, if a software firm outsources its testing department, it would dissolve the partiality in auditing the performance of the developers and the test engineers.    

As per NASSCOM data, in the Fiscal year of 2011, the IT sector in India made cumulative revenue of USD 88.1 billion. A major chunk of it, amounting to 77%, comes from outsourcing services. This year it is expected to cross the USD 100 billion mark. A major share of the country’s GDP is thus earned from the IT sector and in extension Software Outsourcing services. Now, how did this scenario arise? It is neither fate nor mere coincidence. Globalization came in India’s picture in wee years of the 1990s. This economic reform fuelled by government incentives like liberalization had opened the gates for multinational players to invest heavily. This commenced the advent of IT sector in India. The factors which contribute to India’s dominance are listed below:

• Strategic Time Zone difference: India enjoys an average of 10 hours time difference with the US. This substantially speeds up the whole process as 24 hours continuous cycle is followed.
• Superior Quality Services Guaranteed: India boasts of around three quarters of global count of CMMi level V firms. Also, to remain afloat in the cut-throat competitive market, companies provide for excellent communications infrastructure.
• Speedy economic growth and attractive government incentives: With a stable economic growth foreign companies find it safe to outsource work to India sans fear of market instability. The Central government of India has also deployed plans of tax rebates to make IT investment more lucrative for pronominal companies.

Thereby, India now being the fastest growing developing economy in the world provides the perfect platform for growth of Software Testing outsourcing.  The hitherto unexplored field is now a USD 30 billion baby and is growing leaps and bounds. Institutions which provide software quality assurance training and certification courses are exponentially rising. To sum up, we can affirmatively say that outsourced Software testing has never been in larger demand. Kudos to it!

<< Being Human Being >>

> Chapter 1 

It's incredible that the mind can even contemplate about being a human being. There are many facets to this seemingly simple query. We do have to live up to the reputation of humans as being the masters of this Universe. Very crude? Yes, but in our minds, we are indeed the masters of the Universe, which we have duly proved during the course of history. Speaking of history, what is it actually? We can define it as a documentation of major events in a definitive time-span. Now, why do we even ratify events as major or minor? Why do we easily resign to the conception that the importance of an events is directly proportional to the number of human casualties involved in it. An ominously gory assumption in basic elements, but it holds good int he test of time because human nature always want to quantify things. Death being the ultimate truth propels the attention of the mind after it is quantified. This race of quantifying to gain relevance drowns the message being relayed.

The hardwired Procrastinator

OK, by now it has been established beyond doubt and reasonable debate that I unfathomably suck in blogging. And yeah, big time in that too. I can honestly say that I tried to compose a few thoughts out loud, but most of it evaporated in thin air or were somehow lost in translation (not that I think in my Native language, but the mere idea of typing thoughts into text kind of repels my lazy fingers)

See, the real picture is falling into one piece, it is my inbuilt nature to procrastinate till the last second which abates my writing vibes. The cogs in my brain adamantly rotate to wield out unimportant and meaningless work to keep me occupied. What's even more worrisome is that they have even tamed my conscience who hardly raise a word. Mr. Conscience!! Break those shackles and kindly rise from the ashes!!

It is widely accepted that morning shows the day! Maybe so in most cases but I want to believe that I live in Melbourne and can change the day from the morning. Let's pro-act! 

Exordium!!

It's uncanny that I have been in Blogger since Oct 2008 but this is my first blog. Blame lack of self-motivation or simply resisting to change: reasons are numerous. Still, here I am trying to write something substantial and yet failing to find an admirable topic.

To keep it simple let me start with the basics. Currently, I am a Software Testing Trainee working in Noida. I landed up here as a result of campus placement during Autumn-Fall'10 at our dear old Icfai University Tripura. Technically speaking I am still a college student(till June 15 2011), but the management over here treat us like corporate tycoons;)

I am loving the competitiveness and responsibilities of the real world but at odd moments, when the sun is not so bright, I am left to ponder: Is this the life thousands aspire? Unfortunately, I have no answer to my inbred question. Maybe time would unfold the answer, maybe not. In such uncertainities, I would like to conclude.