Testing Center of Excellence (TCOE) is a model of a centralized testing platform that ensures the standardization of testing processes and the optimal use of resources for testing purposes. The platform combines infrastructure and resources to achieve high quality testing functions.
Testing Center of Excellence (TCOE) fulfills a triple function in the process of testing activities. TCOE is a framework that (1) defines, (2) implements, and (3) measures testing controls and standards within an organization.
In this framework, the testers themselves have shared resources across teams, but testing protocols, toolkits, and KPIs are defined centrally. Therefore, TCOE allows organizations to quickly reassign testers to another team while maintaining quality assurance principles and processes at the organizational level.
The 2022 European Software Testing Benchmark Report also dealt with the TCOE practices of European IT companies. In the course of the research, among the total of 170 interviewed professionals, they tried to find out what level of quality assurance resources are available within an organization, and how they are used and evaluated.
Research conducted by Software Testing News indicated that in 2022, the majority of European companies use TCOE, 63% of respondents had a TCOE centralized testing platform, which is a relatively high percentage. Slightly more than a fifth of the enterprises have not yet developed a TCOE. It is an interesting fact that almost 12% of the interviewed IT professionals had no information about whether TCOE is used in their company or not, which can also be attributed to the lack of internal communication in the organizations.
Of respondents who definitely use TCOE, 40% found the centralized testing platform extremely useful, and 25% found it very useful. Only 5% believe that having a TCOE does not contribute to improving the overall quality and testing processes of their business.
To achieve high quality of testing functions, a standardized TCOE unifies testing infrastructure and resources. It is hoped that several European companies will introduce TCOE centers in the near future.
When an organization commits to creating a TCOE, it must go through the following three steps in order to successfully implement and operate it:
1. Standardization of tools and processes. In addition to these steps, TCOE includes discovering and implementing new technologies, defining and measuring KPIs, and hiring and implementing new quality assurance resources.
2. Development of TCOE management. A dedicated team should manage the testing center that adequately represents the organization's testing goals. Some organizations outsource TCOE management to a testing expert vendor, while others manage it entirely in-house.
3. Outline the TCOE roadmap. Determine the needs of your organization and the most important results you want to achieve, and then prioritize them accordingly.
TCOE requires an organization to take a more comprehensive view of testing protocols, but a significant improvement in quality assurance can be achieved by using a centralized testing platform to optimize your testing process.
