When hiring someone to develop something for your company, the agreement in place is between the company and the contractor. Both of you will be seeing the product as it is being developed, tracing its progress through the stages from the initial brief to the final finished specimen. However, being so closely involved with a project can be a hindrance.
Third party testing is crucial for helping developers and clients to spot problems which they have missed. Much like authors have editors and proof readers to check their work, it’s vitally important for the product to be looked over by a fresh pair of eyes to find mistakes and potential problems before it is released to a wider audience.
Depending on what you employ your third party tester to do, they may be looking for different things. The testers may be looking for bugs and fixing them, reviewing the logic and flow of the code, attempting to break the product in order to show where its weak spots are, run testing from a user’s perspective, check through code for any logical or technical issues, or even read through copy for improvements in wording. Regardless, testers will be looking for areas of improvement across the board.
Third party testers may also be used to check products against certain standards or guidelines which need to be met. Depending on the final use of the product, make sure to check if there are any legal guidelines you have to adhere to or standards that need to be met.
Testers can be employed to exclusively run testing from a user’s perspective, whereas others may be able to also check through code for any logical or technical issues, or even read through copy for improvements in wording, or even BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Make sure to stipulate in your terms of agreement whether a tester is being hired to fix any problems and bring your product up to standard, or merely to highlight where the problems lie. Depending on their skill levels and specialities, some third party testers may feel comfortable improving code themselves, while others may pass the job back to the original developers with notes and comments.
Finally, your product benefits from third party testers because it provides a test-run on how end users will experience it. Someone with no input in its creation will eventually have to use your product, whether it’s a company intranet or a start-up mobile app or a multi-million pound game. Third party testers give you an insight into how the eventual consumers will react to the technology – if the interface is user-friendly, whether the progression through the product makes sense, and so forth. And don’t be afraid to hire as many as you need!
