Offshoring Test Automation: Observations and Lessons Learned

Offshoring (offshore outsourcing) is increasingly used in software-centric projects, specifically in the development phases of software projects. Using a mixture of onsite local staff and remote offshore staff in business-centric projects, such as business consulting, requirements elicitation and software testing, put many challenges to team organizing, charter definition and offshore personnel skills. This study considers challenges of test automation in a company which has been doing offshoring before. The challenges were studied with three test automation offshoring cases that were carried out by Nokia Oyj. Although the subcontractors fulfilled the expectations set by the customer in all cases, subcontractors’ unfamiliarity with test tools to be used and with software to be tested caused extra meetings and training sessions. Lack of resources in the customer’s side also caused additional maintenance work onshore.