Offshoring Test Automation: Double Benefit or Double Backlash

Although software testing can be an exciting challenge, testers often are bogged down in voluminous, manual testing and re-testing with relatively shallow requirements-based test cases. This old approach costs projects time and money while stealing resources away from more creative testing. Organizations look at two ways to reduce these repetitive testing costs-automation and offshoring. Combining these two approaches has the promise of even more savings to the organization. However, the reality of off-shored test automation can be disappointing and even lead to a "double backlash" instead of a "double benefit" because both automation and offshoring are complex operations in and of themselves. Hans Buwalda, a test automation pioneer, presents his key elements for success-clear direction, good methods, appropriate tools, and effective supervision- and explores the most common pitfalls to avoid.