Independent test organization

Independent Test Organizations

Typically, the companies would have a small test team which would coordinate the entire testing activity. During the testing cycle, the test team is supplemented with the readily available developers. Though there are some benefits in this approach, overall the cons outweigh the pros.

Pros

*The turnaround time for test activity is much shorter because they themselves have written the code and they would have tested the application while coding it
*Management and Accountability remains with just one team instead of two (Development and Testing) thus making it simpler and easier to control and manage the project

Cons

*Developers may not always be the best testers. They lack specialized testing skills and expertise on various test tools and technologies.
*The testing activity would be biased. The end-user perspective is mostly absent.
*Test coverage would be low; not all the scenarios are explored and tested. This is especially true in case of integration testing.
*Testing is a relatively less appealing activity for a developer and that reflects clearly in the quality of testing done.
*Developers are relatively less effective over Test consultants at identifying and testing exception flows.

Another group that is involved in the testing activity is the business analysts/users. Their time is precious and for obvious reasons, they should not be involved in testing the application before the PLM application is relatively complete and stable.

Independent testing is the solution to this problem. The benefits of this are numerous.