'We offer testing on a standalone basis'

BANGALORE, INDIA: G Sumithra, senior VP, testing practice, Cognizant in an interview with PC Suraj of Dataquest talks about their testing platform, practices and hiring plans.

What is iZone all about?

Cognizant's innovative ecosystem for testing, iZone, was launched in July 2009. This platform was built with an objective to catalyze the ideation process, streamline innovations and enable effective knowledge sharing.

Within six months of the launch, this platform was already being used by more than 75 per cent of testing professionals in Cognizant from across the globe. Currently, this platform has more than fifty innovations and seventy-five solution accelerators available for the testing community to deploy in their projects, and thereby make testing more efficient and effective. The platform is helping us identify new service offerings and new ways to deliver offerings to our clients.

Currently there is a shortfall of 15,000 testing professionals in India? How would Cognizant address this market situation?

To meet this resource challenge, Cognizant has put in place an elaborate recruitment and training program for its testers. At Cognizant, we recruit a mix of engineering, science and commerce graduates from various colleges; business analysts from premier B-schools; and also hire testing professionals from the industry as laterals.

Cognizant Academy, our in-house learning center, helps our testing professionals to continuously upgrade their skills by offering a variety of training and certification programs. We have invested significantly in external certification programs aimed to help our professionals obtain international testing certifications such as ISTQB, CSTE, PMP, and so on; and domain certifications such as LOMA, AICPCU, NCFM, AHM, and others.

We have defined three definite career paths for our testing professionals, including the project management track (where a tester progresses to become a test manager handling delivery), the domain track (where a tester specializes in a specific industry), and the test architect track.

What are the opportunities in the testing market for end consumers?

Traditionally, companies offered testing services in an integrated fashion, bundling them with application development and application maintenance services.

Today, companies such as Cognizant offer testing services on a standalone basis, focusing on supporting the testing needs of enterprises and product companies through IVV of their software. Hence, the testing teams are physically and logically separated and are given full independence to report the test results to the customers. More importantly, the testing team directly reports to the business teams and not to the project managers or development heads, thereby giving them the independence and objectivity to deliver value.