Independent Testing Services

Independent test organizations are organizations or companies that test the software and product materials according to the agreed requirements. The test organizations are sometimes affiliated with the government or universities or can also be an independent testing laboratory.

The degree of independence generally avoids the author bias and is more effective at finding failures or defects. There are several levels of independent tests that are listed from the lowest level of independence to the highest level

• Tests by the person who wrote the item.
• Tests by another person who is within the same team like some other programmer.
• Tests by the person from some other group like an independent test team.
• Tests by a person from an entirely different organization like outsourced testing by an external body.

It becomes a really very important task to understand if the independence is not a condition but a range. One end of the range consists the absence of freedom where the programmer performs testing within the programming team. And moving toward independence there are integrated testers who work alongside the programmers but are still within the development manager. Then moving a little bit closer to freedom it is found that a team of testers who are independent and outside the development team report to the project management. At the other end of the continuum is complete independence. A separate test team reports into the organization at a point equal to the development or the project team.

Some of the benefits of independent testing:

• An independent tester repeatedly finds out more and gets different defects than a tester working within a programming team who is by profession a programmer.
• Whereas the marketing staff, programmers, designers and business analysts bring their own assumptions to the specification and implement to the item under test. An independent tester obtains a different set of assumptions for testing which often helps to expose the hidden problems.
• An independent tester is the one who reports to the senior management and can report his results honestly and without any concern for reprisal that might result from pointing out problems in coworkers’ or, worse yet, the manager’s work.
• Additionally in some organizations, testers in an independent test team find it easier to have a career path which leads up to more senior roles in testing.

Risks involved in independent testing:

• There is a slight possibility that the test team and the testers can get isolated. This takes the form of interpersonal isolation or sometimes it can take the form of isolation from the broader view of quality.
• The above leads to hostility, communication defects and feelings of unfriendliness.
• Support for the project goals and lack of identification spontaneously blame political backstabbing.