Testing times

Software testing as a domain has been subject to step-motherly treatment in
the past and testers are not part of the development team. In the past only when
there is a bug or a problem after the solution or a product has been implemented
that these testers were called.Moreover, the developers themselves test the
solutions and this gave rise to many oversights. The defected products go to the
Release To Market (RTM) phase or the solution gets deployed with coding
anomalies. But since the mid 2000, there is growing momentum toward
comprehensive software testing and this segment is on the threshold of boom.

Why Testing?

According to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), software
non-performance and failure are expensive, and millions of dollars are lost. The
economic impact of faulty software becomes quite evident as we look at disaster
episodes like the one that happened at the New York Mercantile Exchange and
telephone service to several East Coast cities due to software failure. NIST
says that estimates of the economic costs of faulty software in the US range in
the tens of billions of dollars per year. Given this backdrop, software testing
assumes critical proportions in our age of dynamic and diverse business. This
scenario demands agile solutions meeting the unique requirements rather than
addressing generic base line computing problems.

Entities like NIST attribute the need for proactive testing procedures
because users place different values on each attribute depending on the
product's use, it is important that quality attributes be observable to
consumers. However, with software there exists not only an asymmetric
information problem where a developer has more information about quality than
the consumer, but also instances where the developer truly does not know the
quality of his own product. It is not unusual for software to become technically
obsolete before its performance attributes have been fully demonstrated under
real-world operation conditions. Software testing is the critical pre-market
function that determines the credibility of the solution in the long run.

Clearly the key drivers for software testing are arriving at more qualitative
products or a solution.

Market Dynamics

According to experts, India has the potential to acquire 70 percent share of
the outsourced testing market. Software bugs cost the US economy an estimated
$59.5 bn annually, which is equivalent to 0.6 percent of its gross domestic
product. The companies that cannot invest in a specialized testing division have
turned to independent software testing providers in offshore locations like
India. Additionally, most organizations are also gradually realizing that
software testing is an independent professional discipline.

According to industry sources offshore testing will increase from around $3
bn in 2007 to $16 bn by 2011. As per market estimates testing could make up to
25-50 percent of software budgets. Independent testing is growing at 50-65
percent. Offshore testing is growing at 35-40 percent. The deal sizes are
getting bigger and the engagement time lines are getting longer-these will
likely be around $5mn per annum, but there will be many more mega deals in the
future. However, these are estimates from various research and industry sources
and the actual market size might slightly vary.

Edista Testing Institute is set up with a purpose of providing quality
education in the field of software testing. Edista Testing Institute is setup by
QAI as an independent industry-academia collaborative venture, with focus on
training, certifications, and assessment and is designed to operate as a single
largest academy for software testing excellence in the ecosystem.

Says Sai Chintala, vice president, testing services, “Over the past few years
we have seen increased interest in outsourcing testing services form India,
prior to this, the trend was to get everything done by the developers and
business users, and invest very little in testing, and that often came very late
too. Now, most companies in India understand the importance of testing and agree
that testing must be started very early and must be performed by professionals
who are trained in testing methodology and aware of mature test processes.”
Vendors are also seeing a new trend, for instance, in the past the market in
India was centered outsourcing testing in niche areas such as in test
automation, security testing, and performance testing. Now we see increased
interest in end-to-end testing, and test processing consulting. According to
Ananda Rao Ladi, VP-testing practice (IT services), MindTree, “Testing today has
become a critical part of the product life cycle. In the past, only after coding
did the solution went for testing. But now the trend has changed and testers are
involved right through product development.”

Almost all IT service providers provide some testing services and some have
specialized divisions. But there are companies that predominately focused on
testing. Take the case of AppLabs, over the years it has matured into one of the
largest independent testing, quality management and certification solutions
company. In April 2005, AppLabs acquired US-based KeyLabs and in September 2006,
acquired UK based IS Integration, to deliver the entire gamut of world-class
testing services. Meanwhile, companies like QA InfoTech analyze the precise
requirements and plan for strategies that are essential to carry out expert
testing and high quality standards on the client's products. Mindtree also
provides testing across domains. However, these are just few of the many
companies that dot the testing space which provide a plethora of services.

The HR Angle

With the market for software testing demonstrating buoyancy the employment
opportunities are exploding on this space. It is estimated that 350,000 testing
professionals will be required by the industry every year for the next few
years. Nasscom estimates one million jobs to be filled this year by the
industry. With testing all set to take off in a big way one only hopes that the
academic curricula in engineering institutes will incorporate testing as a key
subject area. Experts say that the formal education curricula that most
universities follow has only a representative mention of software testing and
probably very little subject matter and time is devoted to this field of study.
However, with the software testing industry looking up and seeming to be one of
high growth potential, there is some professional training that is available in
terms of finishing schools that are at least bridging a bit of the
academia-industry gap that exists today.

Shrikanth G

(shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in)