It’s not just hype; it’s government policy.  That phrase could describe Malaysia’s announced ambitions to become a software testing “hub.” Hub seems to mean a preferred software test outsourcing destination, but it might also have other connotations that are less obvious.

In his opening remarks at the SOFTEC 2010 conference, government minister Mohamed Yakcop made the point again and again.  Come to Malaysia (or stay in Malaysia) and help us build the country into a worldwide, premier venue for software test outsourcing. 

It’s a nice ambition for a country to have. As another fellow foreign testing dignitary who was sitting next to me as Yakcop spoke (and who shall remain nameless) asked after Yakcop’s speech, “Can they pull it off?”  The answer to that question depends on a number of factors.  With 20+ years of experience with outsource testing, I can identify some key enablers to outsourcing success that help a country establish itself as a powerhouse:

• People:  Certainly the history of high tech outsourcing is about what is politely referred to as “labor rate arbitrage,” which, more franky expressed, means, lots of people who will work comparatively cheaply.  Malaysia has about 30 million people, slightly smaller than the population of California. 
• Education:  Since software testing, like all software engineering, is brain work, said cheap workforce must also be an educated workforce.  The Malaysian Software Testing Board has announced a goal of taking 10,000 people (including recent college grads) through the ISTQB certification program (using materials licensed from RBCS).
• Location: As I’ve said for years, outsourcing requires jet fuel.  Key people will need to visit, in both directions, for outsourcing to work.  Malaysia is a long trip from just about any North American or European city, but certainly there are plenty of flights to Kuala Lumpur.  Malaysia’s not quite as clean as Singapore, but it’s as clean as Taiwan or China.  And it is a charming place to visit, with friendly people and a culinary capacity that almost surpasses Taipei.  Don’t come expecting to lose weight, unless you wire your mouth shut before arriving!
• Infrastructure: It’s really helpful to outsource to a country that works.  Malaysia works, infrastructure-wise.  The roads work.  The internet works.  The power works.  The planes run on time.  The airports don’t look like a cross between a landfill and the waiting area of the visitors lounge in a prison.  You can safely drink the water in the parts of Malaysia that I’ve visited (you’ll never underestimate the value of potable water after you’ve had a bout of water-borne illness in a foreign country). Infrastructure is an enabler that is often missing from other countries, which can make doing business in those countries a real hassle.  Malaysia’s infrastructure makes it about as easy to get work done as in any western country.
• Political stability: Outsourcing doesn’t require laissez-faire capitalism to work (cf., China for a case in point), but it does require a set of rules, enforced with reasonable transparency, that don’t change all the time.  Anxiety about revolutions, full-scale civil war, or major hostilities with neighbors can create obstacles, or at least hesitancy, though Taiwan’s, Korea’s, and India’s success proves that the potential for war is not as scary to outside businesses as you might think it would be.  Malaysia, a constitutional, parliamentary democracy, has been governed by the ruling party, UMNO, since it’s founding, and has maintained a business-friendly environment.
• Time: According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master any intellectually difficult field.  Software testing certainly is intellectually difficult.  10,000 hours comes to about five years.  This factor is probably one of the bigger challenges for Malaysia, given the relative paucity of experts currently available to mentor and lead the software testing hubfolk (hubizens? hubinots?), though there’s plenty of evidence that the market will overlook issues of experience if the price per hour is low enough.  An attempt to overcome this challenge by importing foreign mentors was an subtext of Yakcop’s remarks, at least as I heard them.
• Anchors:  As someone who has run an international consultancy for over 15 years now, I know that it really helps to have a few strong, anchor clients.  The same is going to be true for Malaysia’s testing hub.  Getting a few multinationals to establish testing centers of excellence in Malaysia and getting a few large, successful Malaysia testing service providers off the ground will be key.
• Buzz: Let’s face it.  When it comes to following fads, the tech industry is second only to the fashion industry.  (For example, check out Gartner’s venerable hype cycle.)  If Malaysia obtains the industry buzz that India had in 2001 or that China has today, at least in terms of software testing, then they can probably expect to get all the software testing hubbiness that 30 million people can handle–and then some.  Which brings us back to people and education, and the need to be ready to scale the software testing workforce quickly.

I’ve been to Malaysia about a dozen times now over the last few years.  From what I’ve seen, from the hundreds of people I’ve talked to and trained there, and from the leaders behind this hub concept, it certainly looks like most of the enablers are there.  Malaysia is a place to watch in the software testing industry, and it would be unwise to bet against people like Mohamed Yakcop and Mastura abu Samah, President of the Malaysian Software Testing Board.  To paraphrase Lenin, the Malaysians involved in this Malaysian Software Testing Hub initiative are software testers in a hurry.

Tags: malaysia, software testing

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 9:40 PM by Rex Black and is filed under software test outsourcing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.