The most common and corrosive form of software technical debt is insufficient test automation. A lack of appropriate automation slows down development, reduces quality, and increases R&D costs. A manager who has a backlog of test automation work has three choices: let it continue to accumulate, redirect energy away from development of new features, or – ideally – find additional engineering capacity that does not take away from new development. Engineering capacity is readily on offer from contract engineering firms, but managers are often reluctant to engage such firms, for three reasons:

• The risk of not getting a successful result,
• The effort required to manage an additional team,
• The high cost of onsite contractors vs. the low efficiency of remote teams.

These three issues can be solved.

This paper outlines how eInfochips clients are attacking their test automation challenges without stalling internal development efforts. It describes the best practices we and our clients follow to achieve a project success rate above 98%.