Why Do I Need Consulting on Demand?

Most Quality Assurance (QA) projects have varying workloads. When the development team releases a new build to the QA team, a large amount of testing must usually be completed in a limited amount of time. When the testing is completed, it is returned to the development team for further work, and the QA team is left with a greatly diminished workload.

But what happens when the current QA staff cannot meet the workload requirements during testing cycles? In most circumstances, a project can be outsourced to a testing lab to handle these peaks. However, in some situations this is not a viable option. Because of special equipment needed and a desire for the developers to verify bugs on the spot additional help must be brough to the client QA lab to assist with testing. Adding consultants or temporary employees may be a risky proposition at best, and can be both costly and time consuming at its worst.

Expanding the QA staff for short-term projects, or a longterm project with multiple workload “peaks and valleys” only compounds the problem. When the workload is large the additional resources are helpful, but when the workload shrinks the additional resources become an additional expense. In addition, many other issues appear when temporary employees are brought in to solve short-term problems:

• Quality of added resources may be questionable; the contractor may not be a “good fit” for the current project or team.
• Finding an experienced engineer that is willing to work on short-term projects or on a sporadic schedule can be difficult.
• Funding an experienced engineer for a contract means he/she is paid for a full day of work every day, regardless of actual workload.
• When a contract expires, the engineer usually moves on taking the knowledge and experience they have obtained from your project. When another build of the project returns, the QA team is back to square one: not enough resources and a constrained schedule. This time the originally trained contractor may not be available. Is there a way to avoid this cycle? Is there a way to scale up a QA staff to meet the needs of a current project and scale down to your original group as soon as the testing cycle is completed?

What about the redundant cost of training new engineers every time temporary help is needed?

And how about retaining the knowledge of a project from build to build, test cycle to test cycle?

In response to this reoccurring dilemma, nResult has developed a new service, Consulting on Demand (CoD). With CoD, a QA staff gets the benefit of a fully trained and experienced test engineer working on site every time he/she is needed. You train once and request the same engineer(s) whenever you ramp up again. CoD provides fully scalable QA engineers with the benefit of retained knowledge and the full power of nResult’s expansive testing resources, infrastructure and experience. Multiple engineers can be brought onsite when they are needed, and scaled down when the need is over. In today’s highly agile product development world, having a nimble and flexible QA staff is key to producing a quality product on time and on budget.

How CoD Works

The concept of Consulting on Demand is simple: nResult sends an experienced QA engineer to your location for onsite product training and familiarization. Your newly trained engineer returns to nResult to provide cross training to other nResult engineers, giving you the ability to scale up with additional resources when required. Whenever you need on site QA assistance, your QA engineer heads to your location and becomes part of your team. If the workload increases, nResult can provide multiple engineers to assist as needed. When the workload decreases, your onsite resources are scaled down, and your QA engineer(s) return to nResult.

All nResult QA engineers are permanent employees at nResult, and will be made available to you when you need them. This means that all training and product knowledge is retained, eliminating the redundant startup and training cost associated with the hiring of new contractors and temporary employees.

You only pay for the time nResult engineers are working for you, nothing more. nResult takes care of:

• Training time outside of your project, including cross training of new engineers.
• Sick time, vacation time, holidays.
• Taxes, benefits, and all associated overhead costs of employees.

Benefits of CoD

Consulting on Demand provides benefits across the board when compared to the traditional way of hiring internal consultants and temporary employees:

Retained Knowledge

• All work is archived in nResult’s Knowledge Base. This allows all nResult engineers easy access to your project.
• Engineers with experience working on your project will always be available to return to your QA group, bringing with them the benefit of prior project experience.

Reduced Training Cost

• After an initial project with CoD, engineers will not need to be retrained for each work cycle.
• Additional engineers needed will be trained by PCTest and provided only on demand.

Scalability

• When multiple engineers are needed, they can be provided on a moment’s notice.
• When workload decreases, engineers can return to PCTest and not be a charge to you.

Flexibility

• Some aspects of a project can be outsourced to improve turnaround time and reduce cost.
• With CoD, the entire nResult lab is available to extend testing off-site when necessary.
• All hardware, software, and infrastructure
• Proprietary tools: real time web reports, testing tools, hour tracking
• Additional QA engineers will be trained by nResult, reducing cost and turnaround time.

Cost Savings

• Reduced training time.
• All the QA engineers as you need, when you need them.
• Pay for what you use, not for down time or project delays.

Learn More

To learn more about Consulting on Demand and how it can save you time, money, and improve your QA efficiency, contact nResult today.