Colocated Testing Teams – What are they? And how do I benefit?

Think colocation and the first thing that springs to your mind is – personal interaction and easier management. While most IT organizations go for a distributed or offsite structure that is often spread over continents, there is a growing section of the industry that is leaning towards colocated teams.  While distributed structure has its own advantages, the emerging industry trend now is to engage a colocated structure for some services while still retaining the overall distributed structure, thus reaping the benefits of both. Read on to see how your business benefits from collocated testing teams.

Why colocated testing?

Testing is unarguably the most crucial step in the software life cycle. It ensures that the final product meets customer expectations. Having the development and testing team colocated results in higher productivity and a highly efficient testing cycle which translates to higher return on investment (ROI) for the organization. Agile teams often mandate colocation of testing teams. This is why:

1. Early involvement of testers: Colocation enables the testing team to be involved in the development life cycle right from the requirements gathering stage. This helps them gain a good understanding of the requirements and also raise necessary questions regarding the testability of a requirement, sometimes even resulting in requirements being redrafted. This also helps them to draw a detailed and effective test plan. The result? A well-tested product.
2. Better communication through face to face engagement: Colocation enables frequent meetings between the development and testing teams to understand expectations, iron out differences and work cohesively as a team. This ensures the work gets carried out smoothly and deadlines and targets are met.
3. Effective unit test plans: Testers can review unit test plans thus ensuring adequate test coverage during development. The earlier a bug is found in the development cycle, the less costly it is to fix it. This means the organization can save thousands of dollars by detecting and fixing bugs within the unit testing phase.
4. Quicker resolution of issues: Colocation helps in faster communication and resolution of defects.  Delays arising out of geographical differences in working hours or time taken to set up teleconferences to resolve testing issues can be avoided. Needless to say, time saved is money saved.
5. Less operation costs: Having the entire testing team at a single location helps in avoiding overhead costs arising from the installation of multiple data centers, test drivers and stubs. Also face to face meetings help the organization to avoid charges incurred on lengthy teleconferences and video conferences.
6. Easy to manage: Managing and motivating a colocated team is easier compared to teams spread across different locations. Managers are able to pin-point ground issues and resolve them quicker. This helps in boosting team morale and results in higher employee satisfaction. Managers spend less time resolving people and environment issues and more time on building business for the organization.

Sounds perfect? Colocated testing teams offer unimagined ROI for your business. However, the biggest hurdle for a colocated team is of course the availability of local talent. And this is where Cigniti’s comprehensive software testing specialists can help. But don’t take our word for it – read our client’s success stories!