Towards Elimination of Testing Debt in Outsourced IS Development Projects: A View from the Client Side

Abstract

Although issues connected with outsourced information systems (IS) projects as well as origins of software project failures have been a part of research literature for several years, software testing is still sometimes viewed as “ugly duckling” in the field of IS research. In this paper software testing is presented as a key part of IS development projects and as a potential source of project failures. From the perspective of client organizations, potential sources of testing debt and consequent project risks in an outsourced project environment are identified. Also, initial findings how to eliminate these problems are presented. Several key principles of recommended client IS development project management practice are proposed, as this paper generally advocates for better test and quality governance from the client side than current observed practices. Additionally, the role of cognitive and psychosocial factors is briefly introduced and some proposals for further research are presented.