Mobility and its advantages need no more elaboration. As an integral part of an enterprise, mobile technologies need to be increasingly better, smarter and of course infinitely more efficient.
To keep them at the cutting edge of efficiency, performance testing has to be much crisper and cost effective than before. The traditional T&M models we discussed in my last blog may not be the best choice in the new scenario of much higher connectivity which leads to higher demands on efficiency. The way to go forward would be a new delivery model that ensures highest value per dollar of investment.
Most enterprises find it prudent to outsource the testing process, for various reasons, internal technology adoption challenges being one of them. Obviously the choice of the vendor then needs to be extremely smart. Today the outsourcing industry is maturing, but so are the customers. In the SLAs, greater focus is being placed on optimization and productivity improvement. It is no longer an intelligent or viable option to hire dedicated employees to perform development or testing in- house. These skills can be put to much better use for product innovation or even market studies.
Today, performance testing is not merely about the testing skills or outcomes, but about the cost it entails. Then the measurement of a good testing process is not merely the testing activity but also about how cost effective it is, so most successful organizations rely on a set of measures to bring down the overall cost of testing:
- Resource rationalization
- Sufficiently lean core team
- Alternatives for idle time
- Uniform process
- Test automation
Increasingly, the way to go for most enterprises is the pay-per-transaction, pay-per-use, and outcome based billing models. These not only help avoid high upfront investments, but also support in the new business motto – faster, better, cheaper. So the best possible price models for testing range from a fixed price per test case, to costs as per number of defects filed. While these models may not necessarily be lucrative in the short-term for service providers, they are definitely a better approach from a long-term perspective since they allow better resource utilization.
However, as with everything, these models too, come with their own set of challenges. Some operational challenges include the need to continuously monitor the delivery efficiencies and determine if they match with the demand. Enterprises will also need to constantly supervise the engagement to ensure the test objects are optimized, organized, and refined. This is a key deliverable because intellectual property is critical and so is archiving test ware, test data, and test infrastructure for knowledge management. Managing these challenges is critical to an organization’s long-term success.
