Software testing is a technologically sophisticated form of software quality evaluation and might require high levels of programming expertise. Hiring a professional freelance software tester or even a specialized software testing company might be a way to go. But what if the provider does not live up to a company’s expectations? This blog entry outlines what you should know before hiring a freelance software tester or even a professional software testing company.

Test-driven software development is not only a technical tool but also a crucial component of agile software development. Here, testing serves the purpose to create a safety-net that ensures the quality of a development product and represents a highly sophisticated programming activity. The art lies in automating the processes most efficiently and streamlining the effort.

Companies that are lacking the IT professionals in-house to accomplish such high-end IT tasks, often outsource their software testing projects in line with other IT solutions to an external software provider. No matter if businesses decide to outsource to a specialized software testing company or hiring an IT engineer in-house to accomplish software testing tasks, they should pay attention to the tester’s qualification.

In order to determine if a software tester has sufficient expertise, two different certificates serve as a guarantee. On the one hand there is the ISEB certification and on the other hand ISTQB. A software testing company should be equipped with programmers that hold at least foundation levels of these certificates.

Another important issue is the variety of software testing services a software testing company offers> Usually buyer companies should pay attention to providers that offer a great variety of different testing processes as the chance is low that the a company possesses expertise in all these services.