How to hire an offshore testing team in 4 steps

Bugs in your software hurt both your budget and reputation. With a customized testing strategy in place, a business can detect system vulnerabilities and ensure faster product releases while not compromising quality. Quite often, large companies require testing many products within one organization. 42% of businesses apply software testing to more than ten different systems, according to the 2023 State of Testing report. Given the large volume of systems that require testing and their increasing complexity, many enterprises lack the in-house expertise to run tests on-site.

An ultimate way to bridge the expertise gap is to hire an offshore testing team. What are the key benefits of going offshore to recruit QA engineers? How to find the top specialists to develop and implement your robust testing strategy? Scroll down to find out.

Why do you need to hire an offshore testing team?

According to PractiTest, 34% of organizations with 500+ employees on board use their internal resources to perform software testing. These enterprises lean towards traditional development and testing models and tend to have extended manual testing teams. However, the need to invest in salaries, training, and testing infrastructure for your in-house makes this approach costly. 

Hiring an offshore testing team is a decent alternative. What benefits besides cost optimization make the other 66% of enterprises outsource their testing services? Let's delve into the key advantages of hiring a team of offshore QA engineers:

• Access to domain expertise. One of the key reasons to outsource your QA operations to distant locations is talent availability. Businesses that recruit offshore testing teams can tap into a global talent pool of QA specialists with expertise in your or related domain. Such knowledge enables them to quickly identify and resolve bugs typical for your industry. For instance, besides other domains, N-iX has extensive experience in end-to-end automotive testing. N-iX specialists can help you analyze your system, set up A-SPICE workflows, run tests, and implement automated reporting.
• Broad testing coverage. By cooperating with offshore testing team members from different time zone, enterprises can have their testing operations running for more hours. Let's say your business is located in Western Europe, and you hire an offshore software testing team in Colombia. In this case, your in-house specialists can run tests during regular business hours while your offshore team covers additional 6-7 hours. Businesses from the US that outsource testing services to Europe can likewise use time differences to their advantage.
• Faster time-to-market. Delegating your testing processes to offshore teams enables businesses to allocate resources effectively and accelerate product release. Outsourcing allows you to hire an offshore software testing team with the required expertise, so the QA experts will quickly comprehend the specifics of your product. Thus, the in-depth analysis translates into prompt bug resolution and faster time-to-market.
• Increased scalability. The opportunity to scale up and down according to your project needs is another significant advantage of offshoring testing services. Access to a global talent pool of QA specialists allows you to meet the fluctuating demand by augmenting and decreasing your offshore testing team if needed.

Hiring and managing an offshore testing team: Key stages

Once you have decided to hire an offshore software testing team, it's time to look into the process from a practical point of view. Regardless of your project specifics and business needs, there are four key steps you should follow:

1. Get clear on your staffing requirements

During the initial stage, you have to define your staffing needs. Careful consideration is crucial at this point since some types of testing, such as penetration testing, require experts with specific knowledge and certifications. Besides desired skills and domain expertise of your QA experts, think about the size of your offshore testing team. Large and complex projects may need more testers or even several teams with different focus areas.

2. Select the offshore testing company

Why reinvent the wheel and look for QA experts by yourself? Delegate this task to experienced outsourcing vendors like N-iX, which can help you find and hire an offshore testing team according to your requirements. Clutch lists over 2.8K tech enterprises with software testing on their service list, so choosing a partner is daunting for many businesses. 

To hire a testing team quickly, opt for midsize and large vendors with 250+ experts on board. Such enterprises typically have access to a larger pool of QA professionals, ensuring prompt integration of testing activities into the development process. Consequently, partnering with a tech vendor with high talent accessibility will result in faster time-to-market. 

It's also vital to research the potential partner's testing and QA methodology. Make sure the vendor follows the best practices for test strategy design, environment setup, test execution, and defect management. Another huge plus is if your tech partner has an extended portfolio of case studies and client testimonials that showcase their experience with manual and automated testing across various domains.

Related: Finding the right quality assurance consulting company for your project

3. Choose the suitable cooperation model or service

Once you've found a reliable company to help you hire an offshore testing team, it's time to figure out what cooperation model or service best matches your business needs. At this stage, your decision depends on several factors, such as your company objectives, the level of control you wish to maintain, and the flexibility required for the project.

If you aim to fill the expertise gap, the team extension model best fits your business. In this scenario, your tech partner's duties involve augmenting your existing testing team with required QA engineers and managing the recruitment procedures. 

For instance, N-iX has helped Orbus Software, a leading UK technology provider, to expand their manual QC web team with experts from our QA Automation Center of Excellence and QA automation engineers. The client reached N-iX to eliminate operational overheads with regression testing and increase the speed and efficiency of QA processes. During the project, N-iX's specialists introduced in-sprint test automation, which has become an integral part of the CI/CD. As a result, the client has accelerated time-to-market and optimized costs related to manual testing. Currently, the N-iX testing team is accountable for all QA operations connected with the iServer suite.

If you want to recruit a whole team of experienced testing engineers, choose the managed team model. Besides quick access to required expertise, this option helps optimize resources. While your tech partner gathers and coordinates your offshore testing team, you can focus on other critical business operations. 

QA consulting best matches the needs of enterprises that want to solve business issues with the help of quality engineering. As you opt for this service, your tech consultants will assess the current testing processes and detect areas for improvement. QA consultants also assist companies with choosing the most effective testing tools for their environment and developing a test strategy.

4. Establish effective communication channels

Once you hire an offshore testing team and formalize a partnership, it's time to ensure a smooth communication process. We recommend using collaboration and cooperation tools to monitor your ongoing testing operations and promptly resolve any issues. The good idea is to schedule face-to-face retrospective meetings with your offshore testing at the end of each sprint or iteration. 

Read more: How to streamline communication with your remote development team

How can an offshore team help you set up an effective testing process: N-iX approach

Scaling your team with offshore testing experts within a short period doesn't mean compromising the quality. At N-iX, we help our clients maximize their testing capacity with minimum effort and a tailored approach to each business case. Depending on your starting point, your offshore testing team will either implement testing processes from scratch or optimize your existing testing workflows. Let's break down each scenario into steps:

Setting up your testing processes from scratch

1. Analyzing the system. Initially, your offshore testing team will thoroughly examine your existing system to pinpoint defects that affect product quality.
2. Choosing a tech approach. Following the system analysis, N-iX experts will present various technical approaches to tackle these issues.
3. Developing a Proof of Concept (if needed). For some business cases, verifying the feasibility of the chosen testing approach before moving on to its implementation is essential. Here's when our QA team will test a small part of a system to validate the effectiveness and suitability of the chosen testing approach.
4. Introducing a unified testing approach. At this stage, your testing team will devise a comprehensive testing strategy covering the roles and responsibilities of each team member, the testing methodology and plan, and the chosen testing tools and environment.
5. Defining the test scope and clearing data for testing. After deciding upon a testing strategy, your offshore testing team will detail the scope of testing and outline what functionalities, modules, or components will be included in the testing process. Our QA engineers also clear the data for testing, ensuring no data dependencies or conflicts that could impact the testing process in the long run.
6. Choosing and applying the reporting tool. The team will choose and apply a reporting tool that caters to the project's needs to document and effectively communicate test results to stakeholders.
7. Representing test results. Your team will present the test results in an easily understandable format, indicating any bugs or issues found and describing how these were resolved.
8. Enabling the CI. At the final stage, N-iX experts will set up continuous integration and integrate the testing operations into the development process. For enterprises, it translates into faster and more efficient software development cycles and high software quality.

Optimizing your testing processes

1. Evaluating the existing testing processes and identifying areas for improvement. After you hire an offshore software testing team, they will assess the current testing processes and identify areas that need enhancement.
2. Estimating the project's roadmap and selecting the tech stack. The N-iX team will then outline the project's roadmap and select a tech stack that best aligns with the project's objectives.
3. Providing solutions based on best testing practices. Now that the project roadmap has been estimated, our experts will suggest practical solutions for optimizing your testing processes grounded in best practices.
4. Introducing automated testing. At this stage, the QA team will introduce automated testing to streamline the testing process, accelerate issue detection, minimize human error, and improve test coverage.
5. Enhancing test coverage and scope. Expanding test coverage and scope minimizes the risk of undetected defects and improves overall software quality. To ensure comprehensive product testing, experts at N-iX write additional test cases, enhance test scripts, and increase the range of testing environments.
6. Developing extensive and complex documentation. Comprehensive documentation makes it easier for team members to understand the testing approach, track progress, and share knowledge across the organization. Our testing team provides clear reports and documents test cases, translating into excellent test coverage visibility for stakeholders.
7. Reducing time-to-market. Finally, your offshore QA team will focus on minimizing time-to-market by implementing strategies to streamline the testing process and ensure prompt identification and resolution of bugs. As a result, N-iX's clients benefit from faster product releases and a competitive advantage in their industries.

What makes N-iX the perfect partner for expanding your testing capabilities?

• N-iX is a global engineering company with over 21 years of experience in delivering software QA and testing services as well as QA consulting to clients from manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, fintech, telecom, retail, and other industries;
• Software testing is a part of 85% of long-term projects at N-iX. We have a vast portfolio of integrating testing operations into our clients' development streams;
• Our QA team spans over 150 skilled professionals with practical experience in a wide range of domains;
• N-iX's testing specialists deal with implementing end-to-end testing processes. We lead our clients throughout the whole test integration cycle, covering test strategy definition and planning, test environment setup, test creation, execution, and closure, as well as acceptance, quality analysis, and defect management;
• We adhere to key international regulations and security standards, including ISTQB.