Can anyone describe to me what Onshore / Offshore team is and what Onshore / Offshore testing is? Because i am studying this article and I can’t find anywhere the specific meanings about the above phrases.
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First you need to start with the terms “in-house” and “outsourced” with respect to development.
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In-house means software development performed by employees of the company that is paying for development.
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Outsourced means software development performed by employees of a different company that is paying for development. Outsourced development frequently stills requires an in-house employee to oversee the outsourced development.
With those two concepts, you can extend to the geographic location of the developers.
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On-shore development means that the developers are located in the same geography of the company that is paying for the development.
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Off-shore development means that the developers are located in a different geography, and more specifically in a different country, than the company that is paying for the development.
Note that you can have in-house development that is also off-shore. Large multinational development firms (IBM, Microsoft, various consulting agencies, etc…) have branches in multiple countries and can share development tasks across those different teams.
More often than not though, off-shore generally refers to outsourced development.
As far as on-shore and off-shore testing, it’s the same model as development. The on | off shore aspect refers to the geographic location of the testing with regards to the company paying for the project.
It’s not uncommon to see hybrid combinations of those teams. For example, there may be a smaller, core development team that is in-house and on-shore that guides the work of a larger off-shore team that may or may not be out-sourced. Some of the testing may be handled by the off-shore team, with key tests handled by the in-house, on-shore team as a means of additional QA on the work being done.
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