Discussing responsibility and management of the process of production, let’s discuss questions of interaction with the test agency. Considered scenario of work suggests that it will be assigned the responsible managers as at the part of the customer, and by the test agency. Please note that the team of testers had a permanent staff, since frequent changes of personnel will require additional costs for "understanding" the product because it is either reduce the quality or increase the time of software testing.
The main issue of interaction will be to ensure the timely exchange of relevant documents, materials and software between the teams of developers and testers. Test agency must provide the customer with status reports on the work and the error as well as recommendations for improving the software. It is necessary to provide conferences to adjust test plans, aimed at identifying the most critical software defects.
In fact, management of external testing team is similar to the management of internal team of testers, except that it should be developed a reliable channel of communication and information exchange. It should be given special attention to this issue, because during the interaction between different organizations communication should be more formal and precise than when using the internal divisions of one company. Note that at the same time this fact is a major obstacle to outsourcing of software testing, and one of the key elements that enable the high quality of testing.
Therefore, considering the outsourcing of testing, you first need to ask the test agency sample documents that you intend to share, and make sure they fit you for work. Such documents typically include: "Test Plan", "testing strategy," "The format of the report of the status of the project," "The format of the report of the found defects". These documents must contain all the information you need to work and be understandable for the staff. A good test agency works with many clients, has a whole set of similar documents, which allows quick and seamless integration of production processes of customer and agency.