Success of a software project strongly depends on efficient teamwork. The latter, in its turn, requires a proper level of communication within the team. The bigger the project team is, the more focus is needed on the processes of interaction and knowledge sharing within it. And even more – if it is an offshore team.
While it is usually a PM’s responsibility to engage the teammates and to resolve any issues they come across, there are certain areas where customer’s impact is decisive. If you are considering employing an offshore team for your project, the following typical problematic situations might be useful for you to take into account.
**Typical blockers on the top level
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Insufficient requirements for the product
Quite a widespread situation, sadly. Requirements can be scarce or even missing at all. In such a case, when it comes to hiring an outsourcing QA team, there is usually no time to amend it and the offshore team has to handle it. Naturally, the following risks are introduced for such a project:
Of course, there would not be a substantial lack of requirements if the project would be properly planned through and managed before the outsource QA team jumps in. Yet, some quick solutions could improve the situation even now:
Proactive approach:
Reactive problem-solving:
Outdated documentation
A different problem with a similar outcome: the project documentation has been perfectly completed a while ago, yet it is not helpful today because no one bothered to review it lately while the product was rapidly evolving.
Risks:
Misunderstanding. Expect even more confusion on the outsourced QA team side (and more risks for your project). Existing requirements are likely to be used to start writing test cases prior to exploration of the product itself. As a result, a good deal of this work will appear to be worth nothing.
Lots of false alarms. This can be a huge problem that can slow down the QA process and possibly your business activities. After the discrepancy between the documentation and the actual state of the product is understood, the team will rely on exploratory testing mostly.
The outdated project documentation might not be your #1 problem. However, it can eventually become completely irrelevant if you continue to neglect it, so at this point it is strongly recommended taking some measures:
Proactive approach:
Reactive problem-solving:
Frequent changes
Unplanned changes, small and big, as well as unforeseen limitations, needs for library or driver upgrades, belated decisions to get rid of some legacy code and so on – some of these things could hit a smoothly planned project anytime.
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Risks:
Business processes don’t work perfectly. No matter how good your planning (in particular, test planning) is, some changes are inevitable. But it is not the end of the world. All you need is to improve the mood and closely collaborate with everyone involved to try adapting to the situation:
Proactive approach:
Reactive problem-solving:
If changes have already occurred, engage your QA team to be proactive and flexible. No one wants a failed project or wasted effort, so initiative from your QAs to mitigate risks on their level might turn out to be very helpful for your project (thus, for your business).
Issues with the environment
The problems with the test environment are quite common too. These may include various types of issues: from a shortage of devices (when two testers both urgently need to test some fixes on that specific iPhone X) to test servers going down right before the release to production. As usually, this happens when least expected so just get braced for:
Problems like this are trivial though rather annoying. Unlike with other issues, the problems with the environment are easy to predict, therefore, to take countermeasures.
In other words, you should use proactive approach and:
Lack of availability or openness
Efficient collaboration with your QA team is one of the factors affecting the success of your project. Therefore, you should maintain a stable communication flow with them. If you have noticed at some point that most of the questions and suggestions from remote QAs get answered after a long pause or get lost among other information, it might be time to pay high attention to this problem. Otherwise, it may lead to the following issues:
Small issues that keep on coming may grow into an avalanche at a crucial point. To fix the above problems we recommend the following:
Proactive approach:
Reactive problem-solving:
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