“Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” This one quote is enough to prove the importance of quality in any work, offshore software development is no exception to it. In offshore development, quality has a position that is above price and location. It is the good quality of services that instills trust in the clients and encourages them to engage the offshore development company for more IT services.
Needless to say, the lack of quality can destroy the brand’s reputation and put them in a detrimental market position. In offshore software development, where most of the work happens far away from the line of sight, it is necessary to put in place certain quality control measures that will ensure that quality is everyone’s responsibility and not a handful in the quality assurance department.
There are a couple of factors that determine quality in offshore software development. Every global offshore software development company is required to understand these factors and plan their project strategy surrounding them. Understanding these factors and giving them enough emphasis will ensure that your offshore project moves forward and reaches the completion stage smoothly and efficiently.
The quality plan
The overall quality of a software project is dependent on the quality plan. The quality plan is a broad overview of how the entire project team will adhere to and monitor quality at various stages of development, testing, and execution.
A well-defined quality plan ensures that there are no mishaps, especially in live environments. It also sets expectations for the quality assurance team who can devise specific test cases that align with the bigger quality plan.
The choice of Quality Management System (QMS)
A Quality Management System (QMS) is a system that puts into place the policies, processes, and procedures necessary to deliver high-quality products and services to its customers. Some of the popular Quality Management Systems include Six Sigma, ISO standards, Total Quality Management (TQM), and so on.
Each QMS has its own quality framework and processes that contribute to maintaining the overall quality of the software project. It is necessary that the QMS be chosen before the project commences. This ensures that every team member is aware of the quality process and designs their own individual process to align with the same.
A robust quality assurance team
In any software development environment, the role of a quality assurance team is unquestionable. They act as in-house team members who look into the code quality and deliverables from a third-party perspective. This third-party perspective helps look at gaps in the workflow or even identify errors in the developer’s code that need fixing.
Most offshore software development teams have their own in-house quality assurance teams. This helps retain more control over the process and also introduce quick changes to the testing plan if the project requirements change.
The QA team should be involved in planning the quality plan and creating the test cases from the beginning so that overall quality levels can be upheld throughout the project tenure. In other words, it is the QA team that acts as the torchbearers of great quality in deliverables.
Project management methodology
A project management methodology is an approach to project management. There are five popular project management methodologies that are followed all over the world.
They are:
- Waterfall methodology
- Agile methodology
- Scrum methodology
- Kanban methodology
- Lean methodology
There are several other project management methodologies.
However, these five are usually preferred above others since they offer the best utilization of resources and are also proven to deliver better quality output.
The upside of following a specific project management methodology is that QA becomes integrated as part of the development process. Quality is not postponed as an afterthought but made as a check at all levels of the development. Each phase of the software development has a quality check to ensure that it meets the requirements of the overall quality plan.
Also, since these methodologies break the bigger project into smaller chunks or individual sprints, it is easier to take corrective actions to maintain the quality of work.
Resource management
The IT industry is one of the industries that face the highest attrition rates. Talent moves in and moves on with a steady phase. This puts enormous pressure on companies as they have to ensure that there is a proper replacement for existing resources.
Also, care must be taken to ensure that new resources are capable of delivering quality work at par with what existing resources have been delivering. It calls for an elaborate interview process that scouts for talent and not just a number of filler resources. Similarly, their onboarding and training during the initial few weeks or months must also be well-planned so that they can ramp up and start delivering a quality output.
Final Thoughts
The global IT outsourcing market is projected to hit $410.2 billion by 2027. The industry is undergoing a sea change, a positive one at that similar to the early 2000s. However, there is one concern that is stopping clients from taking outsourcing seriously. It is the fear of reduced quality.
Any enterprise can leverage the maximum benefit out of offshore software development only if certain quality controls are put in place. As discussed above, there are certain factors that determine how quality is ensured in offshore software development.
Understanding these factors and taking proactive measures to comply with them will help deliver great quality in offshore software development projects.
Perfomatix | Offshore development Company
Perfomatix being a top offshore development company constantly focuses on identifying the best resources and maintaining a pool of software developers in India, Singapore, and the United States for developing software applications. We use very niche technologies like Angular, React, Node, Java, Android, and iOS for developing web and mobile applications.
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