Testing - Anyone ever outsource

yop

Folks
Apologises if I am in the wrong section of the forum but I am looking for a little advice.

We are a start-up and have about 3 weeks of testing to do, thats a dog rough estimate and doesn't include retesting and documenting.
From my own experience I think we are looking at double that and we then also require someone to support the software.
Also if things go well we will have another large project, its adding to the first phase mentioned above, so the testing will be on going.

The boss is pushing to outsource or get in a contractor (got rates of 300-350) for the tester.

Has anyone got any experience in outsourcing or getting in contractors. In all companies I have worked in (14 years IT) we have always had in-house testers so I can't give an idea of what it would be like.

I am pushing to get in a junior IT person full-time, they can develop and run the test scripts and also do the support, it would be local (Mayo) and easier to manage.
In saying that it might be damn hard to get someone down here!!

Appreciate advice.

Trojan

I've outsourced a lot of stuff, but not testing on it's own because a) I include testing in the development spec and b) I'm usually doing QA on the end result to guarantee quality in any case.

That said, it shouldn't be a problem to outsource it once you have the task clearly defined. Are you looking for a team or an individual? The outsourcing sites online are a good start - Elance etc. If you need some advice on those, give me a bell.

Another option, and I don't know much about this, would be to check out http://www.jobbridge.ie - there might be something useful there, but of course may require a lot of supervision.

yop

Trojan wrote: »

I've outsourced a lot of stuff, but not testing on it's own because a) I include testing in the development spec and b) I'm usually doing QA on the end result to guarantee quality in any case.

That said, it shouldn't be a problem to outsource it once you have the task clearly defined. Are you looking for a team or an individual? The outsourcing sites online are a good start - Elance etc. If you need some advice on those, give me a bell.

Another option, and I don't know much about this, would be to check out http://www.jobbridge.ie - there might be something useful there, but of course may require a lot of supervision.

Cheers buck, I have a notice on jobbridge but a lot of bad CV's coming in, not a lot of testers down here!
I must look at Elance and see what I can see.

Any idea of rates for contractor testers? Ballpark even for a full-time tester, I can work out a rough rate then.

Thanks for that.

Trojan

yop wrote: »

Cheers buck, I have a notice on jobbridge but a lot of bad CV's coming in, not a lot of testers down here!
I must look at Elance and see what I can see.

Any idea of rates for contractor testers? Ballpark even for a full-time tester, I can work out a rough rate then.

Thanks for that.

What are they testing? Is it black-box end user testing or are they writing regression test cases or what?

Piece of string really when it comes to pricing.

yop

Trojan wrote: »

What are they testing? Is it black-box end user testing or are they writing regression test cases or what?

Piece of string really when it comes to pricing.

The site is brand new so they will developing test scripts to run the tests on this, then as new work is done doing regression testing.

I got a price of 350 pd for a tester, she will do up the test scripts and write a small automation test on 1 section.

Thanks

Trojan

yop wrote: »

The site is brand new so they will developing test scripts to run the tests on this, then as new work is done doing regression testing.

I got a price of 350 pd for a tester, she will do up the test scripts and write a small automation test on 1 section.

Thanks

Cool. Yeah the main issue there is the range of testers is from paying for a self-managed coder/programmer types, all the way down to unskilled folks verifying that what they see on the screen looks like what's on the sheet of paper.

Let me know if you need help with any outsourcing issues.