Encyclopaedia Britannica is one of the world’s most trusted sources of information. With the company’s reputation for quality, Encyclopaedia Britannica must be confident that the technology it uses to run its website and DVDs/CD-roms is flawless.

In order to reduce development costs and ensure quality, Encyclopaedia Britannica began looking for a quality assurance and testing partner a year ago by searching the Internet and interviewing a number of candidates. Terence Boyle, Executive Producer, was impressed with QA Labs' flexibility and passion for quality assurance.

“The obvious reason for outsourcing software testing is cost savings, but you also benefit from a higher level of specialty and expertise than you’d ever have in-house. I also value the flexibility of being able to scale the number of testers from two to 10 at a moment’s notice,” said Boyle. “I think the key to successful outsourcing is getting the right fit, which we’ve found with QA Labs.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica trusts QA Labs to de-bug all of its CRM software including customer authentication and registration, billing and subscriptions, as well as the software that runs its flagship product, the Ultimate Reference Suite.

To find out more about Encyclopaedia Britannica, visit www.britannica.com.

QA doesn't get enough industry attention, and QA Labs wants to change that. We’ve created QA Podcast, a bi-weekly show covering quality assurance issues in software, to stimulate discussions and create an information exchange. Each show is 15 to 20 minutes, and features an informal conversation between two or more software professionals.

QA Podcast enables us to share our software testing expertise, and creates a space for technical people to have indepth conversations about QA strategies, issues and technologies. QA Podcast kicked off in July 2005 and we’ve produced eight shows so far. Here are links to a couple of our most popular episodes:

• Exploratory Testing with James Bach
• A Software Outsourcing Primer with Geoff Flamanck

Visit the QA Podcast website for more information, or subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed. If you have a suggestion for a guest or topic, contact us.

In November, Software Test & Performance magazine published an article by QA Labs co-founder, Trevor Atkins. Entitled "Cut Your Defect Management Costs", it discusses how careful defect life cycle management can make a big difference to the bottom line. Here's an excerpt:

Tracking the real costs of software failure, such as patches, support, and rework, can be difficult, but it’s clear that effective testing can help optimize the Cost of Quality. Within the activities of testing, defect management needs thoughtful consideration to ensure that communication and turnaround time is as efficient and collaborative as possible.

Read the complete article at STPMag.com.