THINKPIECE: Quality counts, especially in outsourcing

By venkates v. swaminathan spent in the United States each year 1.6 billion US dollars of custom application development services from overseas suppliers in 2003, and that will grow 23 percent a year clip, according market research firm IDC.

For many companies, outsourcing work, it is be seen as mandatory, in order to maintain the competitiveness of Hong Kong, and even software products companies outsourcing product development and maintenance work, to reduce costs.

But many experts will tell you, outsourcing software development with greater risks, the most noteworthy is that quality. Quality issues, said Meilisha Webster, a research director of IDC, similar to what the manufacturing sector is facing many years ago. At the same time, we can easily tell time, certain things can be manufactured overseas low-cost manufacturing Centre. Low-cost means low quality.

But all of this, because of the change, in no small partly because of the specific processes and the quality of measured in each stage of the production process.

Outsourcing software development - especially outside of work - to meet quality and function, in-house work, we need a stronger quality assurance processes. Without them, can be outsourced Pennys, pound foolish.

One of the solutions, and get more and more interested is the quality of the agreement, which Webster said, is a service-level agreement for application development.

A qla has two main components: a set of metrics and measurement process to determine the quality of contract language, which defines law enforcement and punishment.

The concept is straightforward, but it is difficult to define, because measurement quality software has been a long-standing problem.

Test end-to-end processes, often rely on the configuration and personalization This is not well defined, and performance and load testing requirements pattern and infrastructure costs rather and more time and money. In addition, write test code is laborious, expensive, and difficult to maintain .

But advances in technology make concept. For any CIO or vice president of engineering, management and the team from afar, simple project status report pointed out that "ontrack" or "behind schedule" is not enough.

What is the need is a good feeling degree of risk: the number of scenarios ? How good is the code? How to handle? Boundary conditions? How good What is a book? How and whether the tests? This should include the qla 5 provisions: 1. Requires the seller to provide comprehensive test suite and applications.

As IDCs Webster said, "If you think software as an asset, if not a series of tests, you have an uncertain assets." Outside suppliers, she bonds, to be provided by the test suite the document and verify functionality.

2. Provisions for testing and sharing test results, development throughout the country process. Software testing has been a long time, the waterfall model, in which testing is done near the end of the process. Having said that, as a continuous process, the production is essential high-quality code in the end of last year and management models in the entire risk.

3. Base test covers the requirements of the risk, not only code coverage metrics. Only code coverage metrics (requirements of each production line of code for testing), missed too many areas (boundary conditions, dust circumstances, performance). Need a good test early and systematic assessment of the risks associated code quality, as well as business processes and performance.

4. Need white box and black box testing . Historically, the vendors have been In "br> reluctant to do a systematic white box tests or to share these results. But National standards and Technology said that such testing is key to the delivery of high-quality code, especially when the development team is a great distance requirements analysis team.

5. Need to be tested, independent were verified. More customers are requiring that the test not only by the seller, but also by independent groups. These tests must cover the quality - simplifying dispute settlement, and to ensure that requirements specified thoroughly and test, and complete records.

These technologies, and other similar them to help chief information officer to determine a reasonable complete sets quality standards, by which to judge the delivery of products, and measuring , accurate and sufficient in a contract. Customers Find new ways to resolve the risks associated with outsourcing and offshoring, qlas might be useful.

- Certification Nostalgia
- Honey, I Shrunk the IT Budget: Companies Scaled Back W2K Rollouts in 2001
- Microsoft Gives Roadmap for 2002
- MIT Extends OpenCourseWare to High Schools
- NetIQ Ships Group Policy Administrator v5
- Microsoft Releases Open XML SDK
- Chinese Arrest Three in Wi-Fi Exam Cheating Caper
- A Peek Into the Sounds of Windows Vista
- Vista Market Share On Steady Growth Curve
- Evans Data Survey Finds NT-Based Workstations Popular
- Microsoft's Annual Report Touts .NET Initiative
- JP Morgan, Syracuse Partner on Financial IT Curriculum
- Cisco’s Evolution: From IP Bigot to Interconnect Evangelist
- Computer Consultant Hacked Secret Passwords of FBI Director, Others
- Best Buy is First National Retailer to Get Gold Certified
- SunGard Launches Banner Enrollment Management Suite
- LTAs – Replacements for the Missing “Professional Development�
- CA's Dev Tool Supports SOA and Legacy Systems
- ODF Split Shakes Up Document Battle
- Microsoft Foresees More Suits in Japan