The success of an outsourced product testing effort is a function of a number of factors, not all of which are easily measurable. Traditional metrics used for this have tended to focus on objective attributes such as “productivity per tester” but have generally ignored more subjective factors such as “quality of communication between client and vendor teams”. This paper describes a methodology used at Aztecsoft named ‘Service Measurement Methodology’ that seeks to address these shortcomings of traditional approaches. We outline limitations of traditional approaches and describe the “Test Quality Index (TQI)”, a metric that addresses many of these limitations.

Over the past few years we have collected large quantities of data to test the efficacy of the approach described here. We conclude by presenting this data and comparing the efficacy of our approach with that of traditional approaches such as “Customer Satisfaction Index”.