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Urgently required: Software Testers! (View Comments)
Sheetal Srivastava
Posted On Monday, December 22, 2008 at 11:58:07 AM
With the software testing industry gearing up to be one with high growth potential, the demand for software testers has shot up dramatically
According to Gartner, independent testing as a business globally is growing at 50-60 per cent and there is a 35-40 per cent growth in offshore testing services. Software testing market in India is now at 2 billion USD and is pegged to be 4.5 billion USD by 2010.
While testing predominantly was done as part of software development earlier, it has now become a mainstream business in India. This is evident from the fact that all IT majors now have testing centres of excellence and offer independent testing service. “Till a few years back, the average deal sizes in outsourced testing projects were about $50-60,000 requiring a few testers to be on the job. Only certain parts/types of testing were being outsourced to India. Currently, independent software vendor’s (ISV) are outsourcing end-to-end testing projects and the average deal sizes are around 2-4 million USD,” notes Pradeep C, CEO, Edista Testing Institute.
For India, to be prepared to grab a 4.5 billion USD pie of the outsourced testing market, the major challenge is to overcome the shortage of skilled resources. As per estimates, there is a shortage of 18,000 testers and potentially there will be a shortfall of 25,000 more in the years to come.
“While Indian IT services is expected to grow around 25 per cent this year, testing is estimated to grow more by over 40 per cent, and is slated to continue to outpace overall industry growth rate for next three years at least,” avers Arun Rao, VP, HR, Applabs.
The Challenge
“The rapid growth has translated into a rise in demand for software testing services professionals across the levels. Our view is that 35,000 testing professionals will be required in India every year for the next few years to support this growth,” adds Rao.
In the above scenario, how is the industry planning to tackle the shortage of software testers? Is there enough training provided? Is the salary package offered to freshers lucrative enough?
According to Pradeep, “The current education programs provided by independent training institutes in the market do not meet industry expectations. While the industry ideally looks forward to a resource that is truly industry-ready and with minimal intervention of further training which can be deployed, most programs provide superficial knowledge and do not concentrate on testing skill development, thereby not capable of providing industry-ready software testers.”
There are several institutes which claim to create industry-ready resources by training the students for mere 12-16 hours on manual testing. While these programs look very affordable they do not yield the right result for neither the student nor the recruiter. “The challenge is in devising a curriculum that teaches enough and that includes relevant topics that are covered in depth,” adds Pradeep.
The Solution
It’s time stake-holdes woke up and took some proactive measures. Citing his firm’s case, Pradeep says, “Currently, we run a Software Testing Finishing school in Bangalore which has supplied more than 100 resources to the industry. We are launching Finishing Schools in Q3 in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and UP. We plan to build enough capacity to supply 1800 resources to the industry by March 2009.”
AppLabs provides an intensive training program – ACE (AppLabs Centre of Excellence) for a fresher. The internship is a rigorous, two-month exclusive training where the freshers get hands-on experience on CMMI Level 5 appraised software testing processes, tools, technologies, and methodologies. Subsequent to program conclusion, the members are inducted in AppLabs as Software Testing Engineers.
Considering the present growth and potential in the software testing industry, the opportunities for software testers are enormous. While there is not enough training available to them, the pay package is certainly very encouraging. “Entry level salaries range anywhere between 1.4-3.6 lakhs,” confirms Pradeep.
A career in testing can be as challenging and interesting as a development job. In fact, in a few companies these days, software testers get paid even more than software developers.
Customers will want to ensure that software bugs don't eat up their dollar investments, and will demand better testing. With the current industry practices, it is going to be tough to achieve but with a growing focus towards approaches like Rapid Software Testing, Agile Testing, etc. A lot of organisations have started to practice and get prepared for what customers might soon start demanding.
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