Let’s face it: to the unfamiliar eye, software testing can seem to be a bit abstract. And while a testing company may convincingly “talk the talk”; it can be tough to tell if they’re really “walking the walk”. That’s why transparency matters so much for software testing companies. If you’ve got nothing to hide, why hide it?
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Everyone’s going to tell you that they alone can deliver high-quality testing as quickly as possible at the lowest cost to your organization. |
Don’t you just hate working with pushy salespeople? Whether you’re shopping for an appliance or a new car, nothing makes you feel more powerless than some fast talker spitting out a million words a minute—of which you can barely comprehend about 10 percent.
But the truth is that a whole mess of CIOs can feel that way about vendors too. Heck, we’ve even had a client that was up to their eyeballs in defect-riddled code from an offshore developer that claimed to by CMMI Level 5. It turns out their code was actually CMMI Level 1! And while we were able to help remedy the situation, it did come at a significant cost to the client: their expensive new eCommerce site missed its holiday launch—and didn’t wind up releasing until the next year’s holiday season.
Situations like these underscore an incredibly-important trait of IT vendors: transparency. And while we’ve seen our fair share of companies that don’t hold it in very high regard, it’s something we’ve always hung our hat on at Lighthouse.
When looking to outsource software testing, a prospective company will have a great many things to consider. Be it quality, efficiency, cost, location, or performance (normally, it’s a combination of all of these), savvy companies are looking for software testing companies that shine in all aspects.
But that leads us to a bit of a problem. Everyone’s going to tell you that they alone can deliver high-quality testing as quickly as possible at the lowest cost to your organization. But while it’s easy to make claims, some of those companies have a harder time backing it up.
That’s where transparency comes in. If they’re going to try and seduce you with data, there’s no shame in asking them to provide the source. Just think about what might’ve happened if that aforementioned company had vetted their offshore developer a little more—perhaps they might have realized that they were too good to be true.
When you work with a transparent vendor like us, you don’t get empty claims and smoke and mirrors. You just get cold, hard data. It might not be as “sexy” as a bunch of too-good-to-be-true-sounding claims, but it we’re mighty proud of that.
It’s that commitment that’s led us to up that ante with our new metrics dashboard—which gives our clients complete visibility into our testing team’s progress. Visibility like that doesn’t just help you better understand how your project is being managed, either; it also helps you manage us.
In fact, you could easily argue that kind of transparency’s really the ultimate sign of trust for a software testing company. By letting you into the process, warts and all, we’re not telling you that we’ve got nothing to hide—we’re showing it.
Cheers,
Mike Hodge
Lighthouse Technologies, Inc.
Software Testing | Quality Assurance Consulting | Oracle EBS Consulting
