STARWEST 2007: The Hard Truth about Offshore Testing

If you have been a test manager for longer than a week, you have probably experienced pressure from management to offshore some test activities to save money. However, most test professionals are unaware of the financial details surrounding offshoring and are only anecdotally aware of factors that should be considered before outsourcing. Jim Olsen shares his experiences and details about the total cost structures of offshoring test activities. He describes how to evaluate the maturity of your own test process and compute the true costs and potential savings of offshore testing. Learn what is needed to coordinate test practices at home with common offshore practices, how to measure and report progress, and when to escalate problems. Jim shares the practices for staffing and retention, including assessing cultural nuances and understanding foreign educational systems.

• Practices and techniques of successful offshore testing
• How to compute the true cost and potential savings of offshore testing
• The cultural nuances of overseas organizations and their cultures