Digital products do not only operate in the pristine lab environment where code functions perfectly. Users access software via damaged screens, outdated browsers, unstable 3G connections, and customized OS skins. One release should survive thousands of these chaotic combinations.

Ignoring this variance leads to failed logins, abandoned checkouts, and overloaded support channels. Global cart abandonment rates sit at nearly 70 percent, and industry data indicates that approximately 17 percent of those users leave specifically due to technical errors.

This is where compatibility testing becomes essential by verifying that a product functions correctly in the fragmented environments of real users.

To make that complexity manageable at scale, teams rely on a compatibility matrix that acts as a comprehensive risk map for the project.

The compatibility matrix

A compatibility matrix is a simple table that lists the device, browser, operating system, and network combinations you commit to support, ordered by how important they are for your users and revenue.

Since testing every combination is impossible, teams should use analytics to identify their main revenue drivers and structure testing across layers such as:

Cross-browser: can customers complete key journeys on the primary desktop and mobile browsers in use?
Cross-platform: does the layout remain usable and consistent across the main operating systems in the customer base?
Device capabilities: do features that rely on hardware, such as cameras or sensors, interact correctly with the operating system on different device types?

If analytics show that, for example, 70 percent of revenue comes from mid-range Android devices using a particular browser, those combinations become top priority. Other environments receive best-effort status. This approach creates a shared, explicit definition of “supported” before any testing begins.

With that foundation in place, a disciplined compatibility testing strategy delivers six practical benefits for the business:

1. Stopping surprises before launch

Launch day is the least optimal time to discover a defect.

If a bug slips through, it often forces a delayed release or a risky hotfix. Teams should adopt a shift-left approach to compatibility, moving key checks earlier in the lifecycle so high-risk devices, browsers, and networks are exercised as soon as a feature is ready in a test environment. Instead of waiting for a final test phase, these environments are built into build pipelines and story acceptance criteria, so issues appear while the code is still being written and adjusted.

This avoids last-minute scrambles to fix broken checkout buttons or layout issues on high-traffic devices and browsers just hours before going live. Instead, engineers pick up and resolve these problems calmly during a standard sprint, before the release date is at ris

2. Reducing operational firefighting

Production bugs consume valuable resources.

When issues leak into production, support and product teams burn hours trying to reproduce reports, checking screenshots, and working out whether the problem is user error, an unsupported setup, or a genuine defect.

Structured compatibility testing reduces this noise. By exercising the priority combinations from the compatibility matrix before release, teams catch environment-specific failures, such as login flows that break on certain browser versions or journeys that stall under slow networks, before customers ever see them.

As a result, support queues shrink, engineering spends more time on the roadmap than on one-off hotfixes, and the organisation moves from constant firefighting to a more predictable delivery rhythm.

3. Safeguarding brand reputation

Consumers possess little patience for fragility. However, the issue is not always a visible crash.

With thousands of Android models in circulation, the same app can behave very differently in the wild. Aggressive battery-saving policies may silently kill background processes, lower end devices may unload apps under memory pressure, and older OS versions may not fully support modern web components. To the user, these behaviours look like random crashes, logouts, or “frozen” screens, even though the device is simply trying to conserve resources.

With testing, teams can implement foreground services to maintain app stability. This protects the brand promise on every device.

4. Protecting revenue streams

A crash is obvious. Defects, such as pages that never finish loading or buttons that appear but do nothing in certain environments, simply look like customers losing interest and leaving.

In practice, funnel analysis may show that drop off suddenly increases for a particular slice of the audience, such as mobile users, older devices, or a specific region. Structured compatibility testing against the agreed matrix helps teams replay those journeys, uncover usability or behaviour issues that block progress, and restore performance for that segment once they are fixed. This is one of the most direct ways compatibility testing protects existing revenue streams.

More broadly, teams should routinely verify that critical paths such as sign up, authentication, account access, search and payment work end to end across their priority environments, so that high-value customers are not quietly blocked by technical friction.

5. Speeding up delivery

Speed is critical. A perfect release offers little value if it arrives months late.

While some fear that testing slows development, modern strategies actually accelerate it.

Techniques like parallel execution and sharding allow teams to run automated suites across dozens of virtual devices overnight. This replaces the manual effort of testing on physical devices for days.

A well-matched test setup makes this possible. With enough capacity to run suites side by side, teams surface issues earlier, cut rework, and turn compatibility testing into a driver of faster releases and consistent user experience across their priority environments.

6. Securing market expansion

Compatibility testing is especially important when a business moves into unfamiliar environments, such as new regions, new channels, or new platform partnerships. It helps teams confirm that core journeys still work when device mix, network quality, or browser behaviour look very different from the home market.

New and emerging markets often present harsher technical conditions. Expansion plans need to account for older or low specification devices, patchy or congested networks, aggressive data saving settings, and intermediary services such as proxy browsers or corporate gateways that modify traffic in transit. These factors can quietly break journeys that looked stable in lab conditions.

For example, a company launching a new digital service into a bandwidth constrained region might find that sign up or payment journeys regularly time out on common Android handsets over 3G. Focused compatibility testing across representative devices and networks allows teams to spot these bottlenecks early, reduce payload size, strengthen offline and retry behaviour, and confirm that critical flows still succeed before committing budget to a full market launch.

Conclusion

Compatibility testing turns a chaotic ecosystem into a controlled business discipline.

With a clear compatibility matrix and the right mix of real devices, networks, and automation, teams remove guesswork from releases, cut rework, and keep critical journeys open for every high-value segment.

Instead of reacting to incidents after launch, organisations can release with confidence, knowing that sign up, verification, and payment work as intended where it matters most. This protects revenue, brand, and customer trust.

Lab checks alone are no longer enough. Products must prove they can withstand the real conditions your customers live and work in.

Contact a1qa specialists to review your current approach and design a compatibility strategy tailored to your customer base.

Welcome to the now that, not long ago, felt like a distant possibility. Still doubt we live in the future? Just watch. 3D bioprinting is revolutionizing the world of personalized healthcare, allowing the first woman ever to receive a 3D-printed windpipe generated from living cells of another person. Meanwhile, Gartner states that a new wave of innovation, physical AI, is pushing intelligence out of the cloud and directly into the machines – robots, drones, industrial equipment, and connected infrastructure – redefining how physical operations function. Deloitte highlights that next-gen satellite internet is reshaping connectivity by embedding direct-to-device satellite links into everyday gadgets.

What do all these novelties have in common? Advanced tech, for sure. This means the road to adopting these innovations won’t always be straightforward. But it may be simplified with thorough quality assurance.

As we are stepping into 2026, the mandate for QA is to become the architectural compass of the enterprise, helping it to adapt quickly, innovate confidently, and turn technology complexity into a competitive advantage.

1. Switch the focus by 180 degrees

Shift-left testing has long been an indispensable part of projects dedicated to developing software within multiple industries. But what about its opposite? It turns out production testing is gaining momentum right now as well. Although it still looks like uncharted territory, 38% of organizations that participated in the latest World Quality Report (WQR) 2025-26 have already started trailblazing it by conducting pilots to explore its possibilities.

By relying on AI for analyzing operational data and leveraging mobile analytics, A/B verifications, canary releases, and other valuable techniques of production testing, organizations of various scales get access to production telemetry and analyze it. Why is it so important? It gives teams insight into user behavior, helps spot issues that never appear in testing, continuously validate system performance, and better understand long-term trends.

Thus, shift-right testing is gradually becoming a strategic priority for 2026, reflecting a broader move toward production-centric quality practices that blend real-time insight with continuous improvement.

2. Make Gen AI the next chapter in ERP reliability

ERPs have become the central nervous system of modern organizations, integrating data, workflow, and decision logic across every function. Without them today, it’s hardly possible to maintain operational consistency or coordinate processes at the speed and scale that modern businesses demand.

And as these systems grow in complexity and criticality, the industry is turning to Gen AI to keep pace, not just in operations or analytics, but increasingly in how ERP solutions are tested and validated. For instance, 44% of the WQR respondents already execute pilots to delve into Gen AI’s QA potential. Meanwhile, the interviewees mention that with its help they have achieved a significant reduction in testing cycles (39%) and provided their software engineers with enhanced possibilities to conduct more QA tasks alongside coding.

AI-enabled ERP testing may play a vital role in creating adaptive enterprise systems. By 2026, organizations that strengthen their QA capabilities with AI may build the process where AI anticipates quality risks rather than relying on reactive firefighting that acts only once disruptions occur.

3. Reinforce automated efforts through next-gen approaches

Test automation is entering a new phase, evolving beyond scattered efforts toward unified, enterprise-level approaches where AI plays a central shaping role. To be precise, almost one-third of the WQR respondents stated they are actively switching to an enterprise-wide test automation strategy, while 10% of the survey participants have already leveraged Gen AI to generate up to 75% of all their scripts.

Source: World Quality Report 2025-26

The increasing role of AI in test automation is quite understandable, as it helps organizations considerably cut QA cycles, decrease operational expenses, and attain more confidence in the overall quality of developed solutions. For instance, by relying on AI-driven test automation, an online social game developer reduced automated test development time by 28%, saving 788 hours over a nine-month period.

However, despite high efficiency, this approach still requires careful governance to ensure that AI-driven outcomes remain accurate and aligned with business priorities, preventing the introduction of hidden risks or falling out of sync with evolving operational realities.

Companies that follow this well-thought-out strategy in 2026 will be able to transform their test automation efforts into a more resilient, adaptive, and scalable process that keeps pace with growing product complexity.

4. Maintain sharp security strategies to lower potential liabilities

Cybersecurity still remains a huge challenge. Just take a look. Recently, a SharePoint on-premises vulnerability allowed intruders to pose as legitimate users, steal authentication data, and navigate through connected systems, which affected 100 businesses globally. Or another example. A cyberattack using ransomware hit M&S, halting their eCommerce activity and causing considerable economic impact and brand fallout.

What can organizations undertake to prevent operational disruption, reputational damage, and legal consequences? Consider the following suggestions:

Create a culture of strong governance. Forrester suggests that as AI becomes a deeper part of software development, security and risk teams will need to match that pace of innovation with stronger and more consistent oversight. They also emphasize shifting from short-term reactions to a resilience-driven security strategy that prepares organizations to withstand and recover from emerging threats.
Craft an enterprise-driven DevSecOps culture. When developers, QA engineers, and security specialists jointly own risk mitigation, vulnerabilities are addressed proactively rather than left to the end of the release cycle.
Build specialized security testing CoE. This unified hub for best practices, tooling standards, and advanced expertise will help ensure that security is consistently applied across all company projects.
Introduce the principle of security-first onboarding. When replenishing your team with new members, focus on secure coding, safe tool usage, credential handling, and privacy basics, establishing expectations from day one.
Invest in continuous security upskilling for all staff. This ongoing development helps employees understand the impact of their daily decisions on overall safety and equips them to actively maintain a secure, risk-aware environment.

5. Uplift quality through a perfect duo of Agile and QA

The upward trend of Agile practices shows no signs of slowing, with 74% of respondents from the latest State of Agile Report confirming their current workflows are governed by hybrid, blended, or “homegrown” Agile models. This continued strong preference stems directly from Agile’s proven ability to boost cross-functional interaction, tightly link development efforts to strategic company objectives, optimize execution speed, and guarantee a consistently high standard of software quality.

However, a new tendency can be clearly seen: the WQR mentions that Gen AI is the number one competency most companies will demand in the future to ensure success of their Agile-driven projects, as it helps keep high development and testing pace.

Even though, over the next two years, 33% of respondents plan to embed up to half of their quality engineers into Agile teams; they still face significant process constraints. These mostly center on a lack of automation, gaps in skills, and a limited understanding of the importance of quality engineering.

To tackle them head-on and ensure QA remains a driving force, organizations may place stronger emphasis on domain knowledge, foster interdepartmental interaction, craft the culture of constant learning, prioritize AI utilization, and most importantly make sure that all project stakeholders recognize QA as a cornerstone of success.

Armed with this blueprint, companies in 2026 can elevate QA into an adaptive, intelligence-driven discipline that accelerates value across every Agile iteration, pushing teams toward faster and smarter outcomes.

6. Attain a new equilibrium of power by supplementing data with AI

Test data is like the foundation of a house: if it’s weak or incomplete, everything built on top becomes unstable. Solid test data keeps the entire QA effort standing. With 95% of the WQR respondents leveraging Gen AI to some extent to pour that foundation faster and more precisely, QA can stand on more reliable ground.

Additionally, more than one-third of all interviewees rely on synthetic techniques for over a quarter of their test data. These smart approaches allow organizations to make QA outcomes more precise, in line with regulations, limit dependence on live system data, and serve as a safe alternative to production information.

Thus, in the upcoming year, organizations that embrace Gen AI-driven and synthetic data as a core part of their test data management strategy will transform test data from a routine task into a strategic asset that drives both quality and compliance.

7. Integrate Gen AI into your testing strategy for maximized efficiency

Think of QA like astronomers scanning the night sky. Gen AI acts as a powerful telescope, bringing distant, barely visible stars into focus. It uncovers details and patterns that would otherwise remain hidden, offering teams new ways to explore and understand the landscape of their systems.

To be precise, the WQR respondents stated that they rely on its support mainly when creating new test cases, working with requirements, analyzing issues, generating test data, automating visual testing, or crafting effective QA strategies.

Although the process may be challenging because of privacy risks, integration hurdles for AI-powered tools, accuracy uncertainties, barriers to leveraging large LLMs, and other problems, still in the years to come companies may introduce AI agents to curtail QA cycles. Of course, their usage should be supported by people’s oversight to ensure decisions remain accurate, context-aware, and aligned with business objectives.

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”

As industries transform at unprecedented speed, adaptability has become essential for QA specialists. Teams that align with modern trends and adjust their strategies in real time will not only maintain high-quality standards but also leverage testing as a catalyst for business growth.

Contact a1qa to ensure impeccable operation of your software solutions.

Moving to the cloud is becoming a standard part of business today. It promises agility, speed, and innovation. However, that promise often comes with complexity.

We have all heard the stories or perhaps lived them. Projects take longer than planned. Final costs are a surprise. And when systems finally go live, users find bugs that should have been caught months ago.

To avoid these issues and ensure project success, quality assurance must be treated as a strategic partner from day one. Rather than acting as a testing team brought in at the end, QA functions as a continuous process to manage risk throughout the project life cycle.

In the article, let’s analyze.

Before the move

This is where you lay the foundation for success. This stage prepares the ground for the entire project. The goal is to identify risks, define success criteria, and build a robust plan. Skipping this step is like migrating blind.

Preventing surprises with a risk-first strategy

QA’s first job is to ask what could go wrong. Together with architects, they identify high risk areas of the application and their critical functionalities, along with complex integrations and key data flows. This collaboration shapes the overall test strategy and specific test plans, and helps define quality gates, which are checkpoints the project must pass. The business benefit is de risking software delivery. By identifying expensive problems early and planning how to mitigate them, the team prevents budget busting surprises later.

Defining what success looks like

How do you know if the new cloud system is an improvement? First, business and technology leaders agree on what success means in practical terms. That might include more reliable customer journeys, stronger brand perception through fewer incidents, or lower operating costs compared with on premises hosting.

From there, the team selects a small set of performance and experience indicators that express those goals, such as response times for key user journeys, availability targets, and the volume of concurrent users that must be supported. QA makes sure these expectations are testable and that there is a clear baseline from the existing system, using results from earlier performance work and production monitoring.

After the migration, results from performance tests and live system metrics show whether the new environment meets or exceeds those expectations. These same measurements also support the ROI story for both the migration and any further test automation and optimisation.

Building the engine for speed and safety

What about legacy test scripts? In most cloud projects, the application and its architecture change significantly, so test automation also has to evolve. QA teams review which existing scenarios are still relevant, then design a focused automation suite for the target cloud environment, reusing only what remains reliable. The benefit is speed and reliability. This framework accelerates both the migration itself and future development in the cloud.

Planning for new cloud-native challenges

The cloud brings unique complications. QA needs to plan for them:

Data and logic integrity. QA validates that data arrives in the target cloud system complete, consistent, and usable. Typical checks include comparing record counts and key aggregates across source and target, and confirming that core business workflows still behave correctly with migrated data. The goal is to ensure that data movements and transformations do not break business rules or reporting.
AI-powered planning. Architects, developers, and QA can increasingly use GenAI tools to scan code bases and integration maps to highlight complex areas that merit extra testing. Similar techniques can support data validation by spotting anomalies or unexpected patterns in migrated datasets. Used alongside expert review, this gives teams an additional signal when estimating effort and deciding where to focus risk based testing.

During the move: the command center in action

As apps and data start moving, QA stays embedded in the command center, validating components in real time as they land in the new environment.

Protecting the crown jewels: automated data checks

This is a critical task during the transfer. As data moves or is transformed, automated tools run checks like row counts and checksums. This acts as a strong safeguard against catastrophic data issues, providing high confidence that the data arriving in the cloud is complete, consistent, and aligned with the migration rules.

Automated functional scans

The process is often too fast to test everything manually. Running everything continuously can be noisy during active migration. QA prioritizes the automation of critical business journeys and the migration runbook itself first, expanding coverage to edge cases only once the environment stabilizes.

Functional and integration testing

While automation runs, human testers perform exploratory and structured functional tests on the target system with migrated data, checking complex connections between services. Together, automated and manual testing ensure core business processes, often supported by multiple applications, remain functional and undisrupted.

Security and compliance checks

Moving to the cloud can open unexpected security gaps across the source environment, the migration channel, and the new cloud platform.

Security and QA teams work together on vulnerability scans, configuration reviews, and, where appropriate, penetration testing. Security requirements and acceptance criteria are defined up front, and test suites are designed to verify them. The benefit is reduced risk of breaches or fines and stronger alignment with regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Migration rehearsals and resilience testing

You do not want the go live night to be your first attempt. QA supports dry runs in a staging environment to rehearse the real migration end to end. These rehearsals validate that source systems can provide data at the expected pace, that the target cloud platform can absorb and transform that volume, and that the migration tools and channels are secure and stable. They uncover hidden problems and validate the rollback plan. QA may also work with SRE teams on resilience testing, including selected chaos experiments, to check that the system can recover from failures. Together, this gives the business confidence in the cutover timeline and the rollback procedures.

After the move: from stable to optimized

You are live. The work now shifts from defense to optimization. The system is running, and the new goal is making it stable, fast, and cost-efficient.

Post-migration validation (automated smoke testing)

The moment the system is live, QA runs fast automated smoke tests to check critical business functions. Can users log in? Can a customer complete a purchase? This provides immediate confidence to stakeholders that critical functions are operational at the moment of cutover.

Performance and load testing (simulated peak load)

The system works, but does it scale? QA compares the new system’s performance to the baseline captured earlier. They simulate peak traffic, like a Black Friday rush, to ensure the cloud environment handles the load as expected. This protects the customer experience and confirms the system is ready for growth.

Conclusion: your playbook for success

Viewing QA as a continuous process through the before, during, and after stages reveals its true value in ensuring project success.

The risks of neglecting this are real: failed projects, data issues, security gaps, and unexpected costs. A strong, end-to-end QA strategy acts as the project’s playbook, turning a high-risk initiative into a controlled, well-executed transition. This approach helps you migrate to the cloud ready to succeed.

Ready to move to the cloud without the headaches? Contact a1qa’s experts today

The Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry has always been about creating memorable experiences. But today, those experiences must happen instantly, seamlessly, and across every device.

Consumers now expect perfect performance, no glitches, no buffering, no delays. They want their favorite show to start without a hitch, their gaming experience to be smooth, and their streaming apps to work whether they’re on a smart TV, tablet, or mobile device.

And if something goes wrong? They don’t wait, they move to another platform.

Consider these key facts:

Delivering great quality at every digital touchpoint can be the difference between keeping a customer and losing them.

Current trends in software testing for media and entertainment

The way software is tested in M&E is evolving quickly. New tools, methodologies, and expectations are reshaping how QA teams work.

Here are the trends leading the way:

AI and machine learning in QA

As a result, QA teams can speed up testing cycles, reduce the number of manual efforts, and ensure consistent quality across the entire development life cycle.

Focus on performance and scalability

Teams are increasingly running stress, load, and soak tests to make sure apps can handle peak traffic, such as:

Major sporting events
Movie premiere nights
Multiplayer game launches.

Omnichannel and cross-device testing

Audiences use a wide variety of devices, such as smart TVs, mobile phones, game consoles, and VR headsets.

Testing must ensure consistent quality across all of them.

This calls for:

Cross-platform compatibility testing
Real-device cloud testing
Adaptive UI/UX validation

Continuous testing throughout the development cycle

Gone are the days of testing only after development finishes.
Modern QA teams integrate quality control into every stage, from design to deployment.

Shift-left: Testing earlier to catch defects before coding.
Shift-right: Monitoring apps in production to catch and fix issues quickly after launch.

Continuous testing supports continuous delivery, essential for fast-paced M&E environments.

Challenges in software testing for media and entertainment

With new opportunities come new challenges. QA teams in M&E must navigate a complex environment where speed, quality, and innovation are all expected at once.

Here’s what they face:

Device and platform fragmentations

Unlike other industries, M&E content must work across a massive range of devices:

iOS, Android, Roku, Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox, Samsung Smart TVs, VR/AR headsets just to name a few.

Making sure quality stays consistent across many different devices is a big challenge. For instance, a streaming app that works perfectly on an iPhone 14 might stutter on an older Android tablet.

Real-time demands

Many M&E services involve live events, concerts, sports, and esports tournaments. There’s no second chance. If performance falters during a live event, it damages trust immediately.

During the 2024 UEFA Champions League final, a major sports streaming platform experienced a 2-minute blackout just as a crucial goal was scored. Millions of viewers missed the moment live, and social media exploded with complaints. Despite issuing an apology, the platform saw a sharp drop in user trust and a spike in cancellations the following week.

Short release cycles

Frequent updates are the norm. Whether it’s a new season of a TV show, a game expansion, or a new streaming feature, time-to-market matters.

QA must be fast, accurate, and thorough, a tough combination. This pressure can lead to mistakes; for example, a new episode of a hit show drops, but a last-minute app update introduces a subtitle bug on Roku devices, resulting in poor reviews and social media backlash.

User expectations for personalization

Audiences expect content tailored to them. Recommendation engines, personalized playlists, and targeted ads all require flawless integration and testing.

QA must account for hundreds of different user journeys, not just a “one-size-fits-all” path. If this goes wrong, the user experience breaks immediately. Imagine a user opening a streaming app expecting horror movie recommendations but seeing kids cartoons because the profile algorithm misfired.

Data privacy and compliance

M&E companies handle large amounts of personal data, including viewing histories, payment details, and user preferences. Complying with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and others isn’t just about avoiding penalties, it’s about showing users that their privacy is a top priority and earning their trust.

A single slip-up can be costly. Consider a scenario where an app update accidentally exposes viewing history between user profiles in a shared household account, leading to a GDPR complaint and bad press.

Best practices and solutions

Despite the challenges, many M&E companies are using smart QA strategies.

Here’s what works:

Early and continuous testing

Embedding QA early (shift-left) helps catch issues when they are cheapest to fix. Monitoring live environments (shift-right) helps catch real-world issues and react fast before they hit the majority of the users.

Together, they create a strong feedback loop.

Real device testing

While emulators help during early stages, real device testing is essential for:

True network conditions (like 3G drops, Wi-Fi fluctuations)
Hardware-specific issues
Authentic user experiences

Real-world validation builds confidence.

Smart automation

Not everything can or should be automated.

Smart automation targets repetitive, high-impact tasks, such as:

Login flows: Automating tests for user authentication processes, including sign-up, sign-in, multi-factor authentication, and social logins, to ensure secure and smooth access.
Video playback tests: Validating that video streams load quickly, play without buffering, and maintain quality across different devices and network conditions.
Payment system validations: Testing the entire transaction flow, from selecting a payment method to confirming the purchase, to ensure accuracy, security, and compliance with payment regulations.
Cross-device coverage: Automating tests across a wide range of devices and configurations to ensure consistent performance and user experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and smart TVs

Meanwhile, exploratory and UX testing still benefit greatly from human testers.

Best practice: Combine automation with human insight to handle edge cases, usability challenges, and complex scenarios.

AI-powered testing

AI helps prioritize testing efforts, identify high-risk areas, and even auto-generate tests. It makes QA more proactive rather than reactive.

Result: Higher coverage in less time.

Chaos engineering for resilience

Instead of hoping systems never fail, companies inject controlled failures to test resilience.

Example:

Randomly shutting down servers during a live streaming event simulation.
Forcing API timeouts.

Finding weaknesses early helps teams build truly robust systems.

Building QA and DevOps collaboration

QA is no longer a separate function. In top-performing M&E organizations, testers, developers, and ops teams collaborate daily.

Shared metrics
Common goals
Faster issue resolution

Building loyalty through quality

In today’s M&E landscape, users have endless choices. Switching to a competitor is easy and instant if an app, game, or service underperforms.

Software quality isn’t just a technical achievement anymore. It’s a brand promise.

Companies that invest in smarter, faster, and more resilient QA strategies will be the ones who retain loyal users, build strong reputations, and lead the future of entertainment.

At a1qa, we bring over two decades of expertise to help Media and Entertainment companies deliver flawless digital experiences.

Whether you’re launching a new platform, scaling to millions of users, or aiming to build trust through quality, we’re ready to help.

Let’s make your next release your best one yet. Contact us

Releasing software should be an engine for growth, but for many organizations, it’s a bottleneck that costs revenue, customers, and market share. If your releases are slow, critical bugs are slipping into production, and your QA team is burned out, it’s not a people problem. It’s a process problem.

Test automation is the practical fix. By building reliable, repeatable checks into your CI pipeline, it shortens feedback loops, raises risk-based coverage, and prevents defects from reaching customers, so you can ship faster with confidence.

5 clear signals your team is ready for test automation

But how do you know when it’s time to make this strategic shift? The clues are often hiding in plain sight.

This post explores the 5 critical signs that your organization needs to seriously consider test automation.

#1 Your time-to-market is s-l-o-w-i-n-g down

Does this sound familiar? Your development team finishes a two-week sprint, but the features sit in a two-week manual regression testing queue. Your “agile” process grinds to a halt. This “hurry up and wait” culture is a critical QA bottleneck that delays your release velocity and costs you first-mover advantage.

This problem is solved by integrating automated tests into your CI/CD pipeline, which can provide feedback in minutes and shrink release cycles from weeks to days.

#2 Critical defects are reaching production

It’s 10 PM on Friday. Is your development team firefighting a critical production bug a customer found? Every defect that slips into production is a failure of process and a direct hit to your brand. The financial impact is severe: an issue that reaches production costs considerably more than one caught during testing. Worse, a production outage can cost an average of $300,000 per hour.

A comprehensive automated test suite acts as a critical safety net, catching these regressions before they escape. This is further enhanced by AI-driven predictive analytics, which can identify high-risk modules before they fail.

#3 Your QA team is trapped in a regression rut

Are your skilled QA engineers creatively trying to break the application, or are they just manually checking the same login functions for the 100th time? This monotonous work is a waste of skilled talent.

The first step is automating these repetitive tasks. However, this can create a new problem: test maintenance. Modern platforms use AI as an element to solve this. “Self-healing” scripts understand a test’s intent and can reduce the maintenance burden significantly, freeing your team for high-value work like exploratory and usability testing.

#4 Your test coverage is dangerously inadequate

A new customer tries to buy your product on their new iPhone. The “Buy” button is broken on Safari. You just lost a sale — and you probably don’t even know it. It is logistically impossible and financially prohibitive for a manual team to test every feature on every browser, device, and OS combination for every release.

This is a logistics problem that only automation can solve. Using automated cross-browser testing on a cloud platform, you can run one script in parallel across hundreds of combinations in minutes, finding platform-specific bugs before your customers do.

#5 Your DevOps pipeline is hitting a wall

Your organization invested heavily in DevOps tools and agile frameworks. You hired developers to be your innovation engine. So why are they digging through six-week-old code to fix bugs just discovered by manual testers? This “context switching” is a notorious productivity killer. Your CI/CD pipeline flows beautifully until it hits the “Ready for QA” wall. ‘

This “DevOps lifecycle friction” is solved by a “shift-left” approach, integrating automated quality gates directly into the pipeline so developers get immediate feedback and can fix their own defects in minutes, not weeks.

The risk of inaction

Recognizing these signs means understanding the high stakes. The business impact is a destructive combination of delayed revenue, lost market share, and a damaged brand.

Internally, it causes high employee burnout and ensures your DevOps investment fails to deliver value.

But the strategic cost is eclipsed by the direct financial one. Maintaining a manual-centric testing team carries a significant, ongoing financial burden. This cost isn’t just in salaries; it’s a combination of the high expense of fixing production issues and the mounting opportunity cost of every delayed release.

Even a traditional automation strategy, while a massive improvement, can carry a heavy maintenance burden. The real financial win comes from a modern approach. An AI-enhanced blueprint can deliver a massive cost reduction compared to manual testing and a further reduction compared to older, high-maintenance automation frameworks.

The return on investment for this strategic shift can be transformative.

Conclusion: from bottleneck to engine

If you recognize these signs, your QA function may be operating as a liability. Transforming from a manual checkpoint to an intelligent, automated engine is today’s competitive priority.

Start with an honest assessment of your QA maturity, but don’t try to automate everything at once. Launch a high-impact pilot project focused on your most critical, repetitive regression tests to prove the business case and build momentum.

As your strategy matures, integrating AI-powered elements will be the key to maximizing that ROI. Your teams are building a race car; it’s time to stop testing it on foot.

Ready to transform your testing? Contact our team of QA experts to discuss your specific challenges.

AI is changing how people learn. Platforms personalize content, guide learners through adaptive paths, answer questions in real time, and grade at scale. The upside is obvious: faster time to market, lower cost to serve students and higher retention rates.

The risk is that quality problems now hide inside models, data pipelines, and opaque decision logic. eLearning companies need a strategy that keeps promises to learners and protects the brand. The good news. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. You need a disciplined approach that keeps quality high and results clear.

In this blog we will cover the complexity AI adds and five practical tips for making AI-powered eLearning reliable at scale.

What changes when AI enters the stack?

Outputs become variable. The same input can produce a different answer tomorrow. Use small, clear tasks tied to learning objectives that you can test one by one.

Tiny edits to prompts, content, or the model version can shift tone and grading. Add regression checks so you see the change. Accuracy alone is not enough. Check that answers are grounded in the course pack, on topic, and readable for the target level.

Retrieval adds a new failure mode. Verify that the system pulled the right passage and actually used it.

Quality is no longer a one-time sign-off. Sample real interactions, score simple signals, and watch for drift. Drift is a gradual change in inputs or model behaviour that lowers quality over time. It can come from new content, a prompt tweak, or a vendor model update.

Keep the focus tight: define the job, guard against change, measure what learners feel, ground generation in approved content, and monitor production so issues surface early.

Five steps to test AI in eLearning

Start with small, testable learning tasks

List the smallest tasks your AI must handle for real learners and teachers.

Examples

Explain a concept at A2, B1, and C1 reading levels.
Generate five practice questions tied to a syllabus outcome.
Grade a free-text answer against a rubric and give one useful hint.

Turn each task into a simple requirement with examples, edge cases, and a clear definition of “good.” Build a compact reference set of prompts, inputs, and expected outputs. Test each task on its own before you test the full flow. This gives clear pass or fail signals and faster root cause analysis when something drifts.

Tight task-level tests aligned to objectives cut rework and help learners reach proficiency sooner. Time to competence is a key driver of learning ROI. When teams track it and design to improve it, releases are cleaner, support tickets drop, and managers spend less time unblocking confused learners.

Treat every change as a regression risk

In learning apps, a prompt tweak can change tone, clarity, and grading. A new model version can alter how hints are worded. Add automated regression that re-runs your job suite on every change. Track results over time and fail the build if safety, grading consistency, or reading level slip below baseline. Keep prompts, datasets, and models versioned so you can roll back quickly.

Unplanned behaviour after silent model or prompt changes can spike support tickets and churn. Systematic regression cuts incident costs and avoids reputational damage. Strong regression protects revenue and brand.

Add AI-specific quality signals, not just accuracy

Accuracy matters, but students also need answers that are grounded in the source, on topic, readable, and similar to a known solution when you have one. Use a lightweight scoring harness to rate groundedness, relevance, coherence, fluency, and similarity. Set thresholds and alerts. In plain terms, the system should stick to the provided materials, answer the question, read well, and align with the marking guide where it exists.

Grounded, readable answers reduce learner confusion and cut back on repeat attempts and help-desk load. Better answer quality drives completion and satisfaction. When answers are not grounded, the risk is bigger than a wrong fact. In education, poor grounding can spread misinformation on sensitive topics. That can create legal and PR issues.

Ground generation in trusted content and test the chain

Many eLearning features use retrieval-augmented generation. You fetch passages from a textbook, syllabus, or policy, then generate an answer. Test retrieval and generation together. Check that the retrieved passages actually support the answer and that the answer uses them. Require citations for fact-based outputs.

Grounded experiences lower the cost of expert review and speed up localisation because reviewers can trace claims to sources. That shortens release cycles for new markets and reduces penalties tied to compliance errors in regulated subjects.

Monitor AI elements in production like a product, not a project

Do not stop at UAT. Run continuous checks on real use. Regularly sample a set of live interactions and score them with the same signals you used in testing: groundedness, relevance, coherence, fluency, and similarity. Verify reading level and citation accuracy. Check grading against the rubric and watch variance by cohort and language. For retrieval, confirm that the right passages were fetched and actually used. Track operations that shape the experience such as p50 and p95 latency, timeouts, error rates, and cost per interaction. Tag every sample with the model, prompt, and content versions. Set alerts on thresholds. Review results weekly with product and teaching staff. Keep a tested rollback ready.

Early drift detection stops slow quality leaks. You fix issues before they affect grades, cohorts, or renewals. Continuous quality data helps you invest in work that lifts completion, time to mastery, and satisfaction, rather than chasing vanity metrics. The outcome is steadier learner results and more predictable revenue.

Conclusion

Testing AI in eLearning is not about catching bugs at the end. It is about small, testable learner jobs, protection against regressions, AI-specific quality signals, grounded generation, and live monitoring.

Follow these five steps and you will ship features that are safer, clearer, and more useful. The financial upside is faster proficiency, higher completion, lower support cost, fewer compliance mistakes, and steadier renewals. The risk if you do not is just as clear. Drifts, misinformation, and uneven grading will erode trust and revenue far faster than they were gained.

Picture this: it’s the final dress rehearsal before the big performance at the theater. The stage is set, the actors are in costume, and the crew is making sure everything runs smoothly. This rehearsal is crucial because it can make or break the show.

Load testing is akin to dress rehearsal. It’s the final check before the big debut, determining whether the system is ready to operate stable. Just like actors rehearse their lines and movements to perfection, load testing helps ensure that software or websites can cope with the required target load for an extended period of time.

But why is load testing so essential for businesses? In this article, we’ll explore 7 compelling reasons why businesses should adopt load checks to release high-end IT solutions.

Reason #1. Optimized performance

In the competitive online landscape, speed is key. 1 in 5 users expect the app’s main flows to load in less than 5 seconds. Or they get frustrated and uninstall the software. However, velocity isn’t the only issue they face. As statistics show, 83% of consumers are concerned about app crashes, 65% — about slow software startup, 50% — about memory issues.

Source: The State of Mobile Experience

Recent studies indicate that mobile page load times significantly impact user behavior and conversion rates. In 2023, approximately 70% of mobile websites took longer than 5 seconds to fully load.

Additionally, every second of delay in mobile load time can lead to a 12% decrease in conversion rates. That’s why consistent performance across all devices is critical. Load testing can help pinpoint device-specific or browser-related slowdowns before users ever notice them.

Let’s take, for example, the case of an eCommerce platform gearing up for a flash sale event. Here, load tests allow companies to identify potential bottlenecks in the system, ensuring that the website will handle the surge in traffic without slowing down or crashing. Ultimately, this helps deliver seamless customer experiences and increase revenue-generating opportunities.

Reason #2. Improved scalability

As businesses grow, their user base expands, placing greater demands on the system’s operation. In such cases, load testing is critical to enable organizations to predict how their infrastructure will scale as traffic increases.

By relying on load checks, they assess whether their servers cope with the influx of users without compromising software performance. By anticipating scalability issues in advance, they can guarantee uninterrupted service for clients.

Load testing also supports cloud-native architectures, helping businesses evaluate the behavior of containerized or microservices-based systems. This is particularly important when dealing with auto-scaling mechanisms that need to respond quickly and effectively to fluctuating traffic volume.

Reason #3. Minimized cost of failure

System failures can have dire consequences, ranging from lost revenue to damaged reputation. However, by identifying potential performance bottlenecks and system vulnerabilities early in the SDLC stages, companies mitigate the risk of expensive downtime, service disruptions, and data breaches while boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Additionally, load testing enables businesses to optimize resource utilization, reducing unnecessary infrastructure expenses and operational overheads.

A proactive approach to performance testing also reduces the risk of SLA violations, especially in B2B environments. Failing to meet promised uptime and performance guarantees can lead to penalties, contract disputes, or lost clients. Load testing helps ensure compliance with performance-related service agreements.

Reason #4. Eliminated downtime

Load testing allows organizations to uncover issues that could lead to downtime during peak usage periods. For instance, by performing sustained 8-hour load testing sessions, a US-based appliance company successfully optimized its eCommerce platforms ahead of Black Friday, cutting download speeds by 30%. By simulating thousands of concurrent users attempting to make purchases simultaneously, the company can identify and address any performance degradation in their system, such as slow response times or server errors.

It also helps validate infrastructure failover mechanisms. For example, load tests can confirm whether backup servers, load balancers, and database replicas activate properly during traffic surges or unexpected outages. Without this validation, systems that appear redundant on paper might fail under real stress, resulting in costly service interruptions. Ensuring these recovery paths function as intended is key to building resilient, high-availability architectures.

This approach helps guarantee flawless shopping experiences for customers, minimize the risk of downtime, and maximize sales opportunities during critical business periods.

Reason #5. Enhanced end-user satisfaction

With load tests, businesses ensure that their applications are fast, reliable, and user-friendly. Improved performance leads to higher customer satisfaction, increased engagement, and positive word-of-mouth referrals. It’s obvious that a software product that consistently delivers uninterrupted customer journeys is likely to attract and retain more users over time.

For instance, by conducting load testing on a B2B marketplace powered by SAP Hybris, the automotive service provider identified resource-intensive database queries that were impacting system performance. Once they were optimized, users benefited from quicker page responses and a more seamless experience, resulting in higher satisfaction levels and stronger customer loyalty.

Moreover, studies show that users judge digital product quality within seconds. A PwC survey found that nearly one-third of consumers stop engaging with a brand they previously loved after only one bad interaction. By investing in performance reliability through load testing, businesses reduce friction points in the user journey, which directly improves retention and customer lifetime value.

Reason #6. Accelerated releases without quality compromise

By incorporating load testing into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can detect and address performance bugs early in the development lifecycle. Thus, each release undergoes rigorous testing under simulated load conditions, enabling experts to identify and fix potential challenges before deployment.

As a result, businesses can maintain a rapid release cadence while upholding quality standards, meeting customer expectations, and staying ahead of the competition.

Integrating load tests as part of shift-left testing strategies ensures that performance issues are caught before reaching staging or production. This helps teams prevent late-stage delays and avoids last-minute release rollbacks that can disrupt business plans.

Reason #7. Streamlined resource utilization

Efficient resource allocation is essential for controlling costs and maximizing performance. Load testing helps enterprises analyze how their systems utilize resources under different load conditions. For example, a cloud-based software provider may use load checks to determine the optimal number of servers needed to support varying levels of user activity.

By optimizing resource utilization, businesses can reduce infrastructure costs and improve the scalability of their applications.

Load testing also enables DevOps teams to fine-tune auto-scaling rules, allocate memory and CPU more efficiently, and prevent overprovisioning. Without these tests, companies risk paying for idle resources or suffering performance degradation during traffic spikes.

Summarizing

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, where user expectations are higher than ever, load testing emerges as a critical practice for businesses striving to deliver exceptional experiences.

By adopting load tests, organizations can optimize performance, improve scalability, minimize the cost of failure, eliminate downtime, enhance end-user satisfaction, accelerate releases without quality compromise, and streamline resource utilization.

Need support in establishing load testing workflows? Reach out to a1qa’s team.

In test automation, there are several ways to define how services are priced and delivered. Traditional models focus on time and materials: you pay for the hours worked and the number of people involved. Outcome-based models set the fee according to the results achieved, such as reducing defects or speeding up releases.

What is output-based engagement?

Output-based engagement sits between these two. It links payment to tangible, agreed-upon deliverables. For example, the number of automated test cases created or scripts executed. You are buying a measurable unit of work, not just effort, and not an abstract business promise.

Why does that distinction matter? Because it shifts the focus from simply keeping a team busy to delivering defined, trackable outputs. For leaders managing complex digital initiatives, that can be the difference between a project that drifts and one that delivers exactly what is needed.

Advantages of this model

Cost predictability

Once the unit price is signed, every additional automated case or executed cycle costs the same. Budget variance falls. Predictable spend means less risk of late-night finance meetings trying to explain why QA costs have blown out.

Efficiency incentive

A vendor cannot charge extra hours when effort spikes. Profit depends on delivering more units from the same resource pool. The incentive is clear: work smarter, not just harder.

Scalability

Testing-as-a-Service lets teams purchase only what they consume, which is ideal for projects with uneven demand. Why pay for idle capacity when the work simply isn’t there?

Risk transfer

If the vendor under-delivers, invoice prices fall. Performance risk is on the supplier side, not with the client’s budget. In other words, underperformance stops being the client’s financial problem.

Transparency and accountability

With pricing tied to deliverables, both sides have a shared understanding of what success looks like. This reduces the risk of misalignment during execution and makes vendor performance easier to evaluate against agreed output targets.

Simplified contract management

Fixed unit pricing streamlines procurement, invoicing, and reporting. Instead of tracking hourly logs or debating time spent, teams focus on whether agreed outputs were delivered, reducing the administrative overhead.

Challenges worth addressing early

Quantity replacing quality

When payment depends on the number of units delivered, the focus can shift to producing more for less. That might mean running cheaper, shallow tests just to meet the target. Without safeguards, this reduces the ability to detect real defects. Setting clear acceptance criteria, running random audits, tracing each test back to requirements and also having a clear and sound testing strategy and testing model helps keep attention on meaningful coverage.

Accurate pricing

Agreeing on a fair unit price is critical. Undervaluation squeezes quality. Overvaluation erodes savings. A short pilot with 5-10 tests provides the data both parties need before scale-up. Why guess when you can measure first?

Scope fluidity

When requirements change often, a fixed list of priced units can quickly become outdated. This can leave important new tasks outside the agreed scope. One way to handle this is with a hybrid contract that includes a small budget for ad-hoc work. This keeps flexibility while still giving price certainty for most of the project.

Who benefits most from output-based contracts?

Enterprises with strict compliance or audit needs

In finance, healthcare, gaming, and other regulated sectors, the ability to prove that testing meets agreed standards is a legal and operational necessity. Output-based automation supports this by documenting the exact number of tests executed, maintaining consistent coverage for critical workflows, and providing traceable evidence that can stand up to audits. This transparency is especially valuable when industry standards or laws mandate specific testing thresholds. If the regulator calls tomorrow, could you produce the evidence without panic?

Organisations managing large, stable systems

For mature applications whose core functionality changes rarely, a stable regression suite is often the best defence against defects. Output-based automation ensures predictable test coverage across releases, reduces the chance of critical errors slipping into production, and scales efficiently when new modules or integrations are introduced. This makes it particularly well-suited to long-lifecycle systems such as ERP platforms and core banking applications, where quality must remain high over years, not months.

Businesses that need budget predictability

In many enterprises, CFOs and programme managers rely on models where spending and deliverables align clearly. Output-based contracts link cost directly to test volume, making forecasting straightforward and reducing the risk of uncontrolled scope creep. For organisations working within tight or fixed budgets, this clarity enables more confident planning and resource allocation without sacrificing quality control. Who would turn down the chance to lock in both cost and coverage?

Leaders driving efficiency gains

For managers tasked with cutting manual testing effort without increasing risk, output-based automation can be transformative. By setting a defined number of automated runs, teams can significantly lower repetitive workload, freeing skilled QA engineers to focus on higher-value activities such as exploratory testing, usability reviews, and complex scenario validation.

Global programmes seeking consistent execution

In multi-region or multi-vendor environments, maintaining consistent QA standards can be challenging. Output-based automation establishes a uniform baseline of automated coverage, ensures each release passes through the same measurable checks, and reduces variability between distributed teams. For brands with a global presence, this consistency safeguards both product quality and customer experience across markets.

Conclusion

Deliverable-linked pricing is not a universal solution, but it closely reflects the direction many organisations are moving in. Higher levels of automation, faster release cycles, leaner teams, and a focus on measurable value are becoming standard practice. As tools continue to evolve, these models may expand beyond regression and performance testing into areas such as accessibility and security.

However, strong governance remains essential. Without it, output-focused approaches risk turning into script-counting exercises rather than supporting real quality improvements.

When calibrated correctly and managed well, output-based engagement aligns spending with visible progress. It offers cost predictability, promotes vendor accountability, and adjusts smoothly to shifts in demand. While it is not suited to every situation, particularly where requirements change frequently or exploratory testing dominates, it can be a powerful model for repeatable, automation-friendly work.

In the right context, unit pricing transforms testing from a fluctuating cost into a planned investment directly tied to delivery.

Reach out to our experts to see how a1qa can help keep your QA costs predictable.

In just 5 years the worldwide video game market size is expected to double and reach $600.74 billion according to the experts of Grand View Research, Inc. And it’s not surprising as modern gaming solutions offer engaging experiences that captivate users through a blend of visual sophistication, deep immersion, interactive storytelling, and well-thought-out reward systems. All of these cannot but influence user preferences, creating an emotional bond and encouraging frequent returns.

Behind these magnificent experiences lie highly intricate systems. Open-world adventures, real-time multiplayer universes, live-service models — they all require continuous updates and must operate like clockwork. Within this landscape, meticulous testing has become the need of the hour. Yet classic QA approaches often can’t keep pace with the speed and constant change.

That is where AI-powered support comes in: it spots risky code, server components, features, and gameplay loops before they cause trouble, then automates the repetitive work, tests at scale, adapts in real time, and more.

In this article, we’ll analyze the complexities of modern game testing, the growing role of AI in boosting QA efficiency, and positive outcomes of its implementation.

Analyzing the pressure of present-day game testing

Before exploring how AI is transforming modern quality control processes, it’s crucial to understand specific hurdles QA professionals encounter in today’s game development:

Expansive content ecosystems

Modern blockbuster games like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and the Assassin’s Creed series immerse players in expansive, highly detailed worlds. These titles often feature vast landscapes to explore, lifelike character models, sophisticated animation systems, and countless interactive elements. To ensure a smooth and cohesive experience, teams must rigorously test not just individual assets, but also how every system interacts within the larger game environment.

Regression testing amid frequent updates

Game developers often release new content, fixes, or adjustments on a near-daily basis. Even the smallest modification can unintentionally disrupt existing features, prompting QA teams to revisit previously verified systems. For example, changing vehicle physics in one part of a racing game might unexpectedly affect AI opponents in a different mode. As the rate of updates grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with the full scope of necessary testing.

Endless possibilities in player behavior

Today’s games offer players immense freedom — whether it’s open-world discovery, narrative choices, unpredictable mechanics, or community-created content. While this flexibility enhances the player experience, it also introduces countless paths where defects can surface, including critical issues like softlocks that trap players without crashing the game. From a QA perspective, anticipating and replicating every possible player interaction is nearly impossible without robust approaches.

Significant costs in testing processes

Although manual testing is essential in game development, its drawbacks grow more apparent as projects become larger and more intricate. This approach demands considerable time and effort, often involving sizable teams of experienced testers who carefully execute predefined scenarios. Whenever changes occur, these test plans must be updated, repeated, and expanded to cover new requirements, adding to the overall expense and workload.

Challenges with rare and unpredictable defects

Some issues only appear under unusual or specific conditions, making them tough to find. These scarce problems might arise after extended gameplay or from unique player actions. Even trickier are bugs that don’t occur consistently, often caused by timing or memory problems, which are hard to catch using standard testing methods.

For instance, in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, certain quest-critical NPCs occasionally vanished or failed to respond after extended play or specific decisions, halting progress. Similarly, in Grand Theft Auto V, some players experienced vehicles spawning beneath the map or inside structures after loading, leading to crashes or immobility.

Toolchain burden

Modern game development relies on custom toolsets, but when slow, unstable, or poorly tested, they become a hidden liability. Inefficient toolchains can bottleneck production, introduce unpredictability, and contribute to defects in the final game experience.

Necessity of AI validation

AI-generated content introduces new challenges around both the tools used to create it and the assets themselves. QA must evolve to validate not only functionality, but also the quality of the output and the reliability of the systems behind it.

Revolutionizing game testing with an intelligent approach

With video games becoming increasingly complex, traditional testing methods alone can no longer guarantee quality and performance. This calls for a closer look at how AI is transforming key aspects of quality assurance while boosting efficiency, scaling testing efforts, and ultimately improving player experience and market competitiveness.

Test automation

While automated testing has long played a role in software quality assurance, modern video games introduce levels of complexity that often overwhelm traditional tools. These systems struggle with the unpredictable and dynamic nature of today’s interactive experiences. AI brings a new, more flexible layer to the process by using machine learning, visual recognition, and natural language models.

By learning from actual gameplay, user decisions, and ongoing code changes, AI can generate test scenarios without manual input, capturing a broader range of gameplay variations, including unusual edge cases. It can also assist in analyzing failed tests by pinpointing root causes faster and more accurately, reducing the time spent on debugging and issue triage. For example, by leveraging GitHub Copilot, the developer of online mobile games managed to cut the development time of an automated test by 28%, which in a nine-month span helped save 788 hours of manual testing.

Additionally, using reinforcement learning, AI-driven agents can explore game environments on their own, surfacing defects or inconsistent behavior with greater speed and precision than human testers.

On the visual side, AI models can track screen activity frame-by-frame, catching visual flaws such as misaligned UI elements, broken animations, or graphical glitches that might slip through human review.

Performance testing

Ensuring strong performance is essential in game development, especially for online multiplayer titles where both server efficiency and client responsiveness are key to maintaining a positive user experience.

AI now makes it possible to emulate vast numbers of players to rigorously stress-test server capacity and evaluate network stability under extreme conditions. Machine learning algorithms help distribute these virtual users in ways that closely reflect actual player behavior and traffic trends.

Furthermore, QA engineers can leverage AI systems to monitor performance data in real time and offer actionable insights, such as recommending better resource management or pinpointing areas in the codebase that need refinement. These optimizations can lead to smoother gameplay, lower latency, and the mitigation of issues like memory leaks.

Additionally, AI-driven user modeling simulates real usage patterns and predicts how performance may degrade under future workloads or code changes, enabling proactive quality assurance.

Failure forecasting

Instead of waiting for defects to surface during testing or after launch, predictive error detection uses AI to anticipate where problems are likely to occur, enabling smarter planning and early intervention.

By analyzing patterns in historical issue reports, version control changes, and developer activity, QA specialists can leverage machine learning models to highlight code areas with a high likelihood of future issues. Factors like code churn, complexity, or frequent edits can signal instability, guiding QA teams to focus efforts where they’re needed the most.

AI can also monitor live gameplay logs and telemetry data, learning to recognize subtle warning signs such as irregular frame rate shifts or repeated input sequences that lead to failure states. When specific in-game behaviors frequently correlate with performance issues or crashes, the system can flag these trends before they escalate into major defects.

What’s more, with the help of AI QA engineers can assess the potential severity of predicted problems. By understanding how defects affect core mechanics or player experience, it helps QA and Dev teams prioritize fixes that matter the most for stability and player satisfaction.

Decision-making process

AI can assist QA teams by evaluating and ranking defects based on factors like severity, frequency, and impact on gameplay, helping focus on the most pressing issues first. This streamlines the decision-making process and prevents important defects from slipping through the cracks.

By reviewing testing patterns and historical results, AI can also pinpoint which parts of a game have been adequately examined and which remain under-tested, helping QA engineers allocate resources more strategically.

In addition, teams can leverage AI-driven dashboards that visualize test coverage, highlight problem areas, and track progress. With natural language generation, these tools can even convert complex test data into clear, readable summaries tailored for non-technical stakeholders.

Why level up game quality assurance with AI?

Let’s analyze key benefits studios can derive from embracing AI in the quality control process:

Accelerated testing at scale. AI takes over tedious, manual tasks, speeding up feedback loops and surfacing defects earlier in the development cycle. This enables teams to release updates faster and more often, shortening delivery timelines while maintaining high product standards.

Expanded validation breadth. Manual and scripted testing can miss unexpected player behaviors, especially in expansive open-world or multiplayer environments. AI-driven tools overcome these limits by generating thousands of dynamic gameplay paths, uncovering edge cases and rare interactions.

Reduced QA overhead. By shifting repetitive tasks to AI-driven test automation, teams can significantly cut down on manual effort, translating to leaner budgets and streamlined workflows. Early defect detection also prevents costly post-release fixes, ensuring a smoother launch and more efficient use of resources.

To be or not to be

AI is actively reshaping how studios approach quality assurance today. By automating repetitive tasks, expanding testing coverage, and surfacing edge-case issues early, AI is transforming QA into a driver of innovation. While it won’t replace human testers completely, it enhances their capabilities, freeing teams to focus on creativity, balance, and player experience.

Reach out to a1qa’s experts to maintain peak efficiency and quality in your game software operations.

When musicians from around the world play as one, despite differences in style, character, and tempo, they create harmony through collaboration. The same can be said about modern IT ecosystems that have evolved into intricate networks of multiple vendors, platforms, tools, and service providers, each playing a critical role in delivering unified user experiences.

However, with different testing providers bringing their own tools, standards, and workflows, coordinating quality across such a distributed environment may become a tricky task. This is where a skilled QA provider steps in — not just as another vendor, but as the orchestrator of all testing efforts — ensuring alignment, accountability, and unified direction across all testing efforts.

In this article, let’s delve into the essence of a multivendor quality ecosystem, operational challenges it may bring, and the strategic role of a QA partner in establishing robust, coordinated testing frameworks that drive success across every stakeholder.

Understanding multi-vendor IT ecosystems from the QA perspective

Today, many companies prefer multi-vendor ecosystems, integrating solutions from numerous suppliers into a unified whole. This approach is particularly common in large-scale digital transformation initiatives, telecom infrastructure modernization, and financial services platforms where legacy systems must seamlessly coexist alongside cloud-native services, APIs, and third-party tools.

What drives this approach? Well, enterprises want the flexibility to select best-of-breed tools for each function, reduce dependence on a single vendor, and balance innovation with the need to support long-standing legacy systems. This diversity enables speed and agility.

The multi-vendor technique doesn’t stop at software or infrastructure. Organizations are also applying it to quality, engaging different vendors for test automation, performance testing, QA strategy development, and more. As a result, quality itself becomes a multi-vendor domain, requiring thoughtful coordination to ensure consistency, coverage, and efficiency across all contributors.

Here’s where challenges can slip through, as each QA provider may apply their own workflows, tools, methodologies, timelines, and even operate from different locations.

For instance, when test activities lack a single, agreed‑upon framework, documentation and traceability deteriorate. One QA team might work from lightweight checklists, while another maintains detailed test cases linked to requirements, making it tough to judge coverage, track progress, or confirm that critical scenarios are fully validated. Or another example. One QA vendor may log defects in Jira with customized workflows, while another — in Azure DevOps with different severity criteria and resolution standards. This leads to unreliable visibility of issues, delays in root cause analysis, and confusion over ownership, especially when issues occur at integration points.

These challenges may multiply as more vendors are involved, each introducing their own release cadences, environment constraints, and reporting formats. Without centralized oversight, the testing process may become prone to misalignment, resulting in quality gaps that often occur too late in the delivery cycle.

This is precisely where the most experienced QA provider can bring value. Acting as an independent coordinator, they can not only execute meticulous software testing themselves, but also implement shared quality standards, harmonize defect management practices, and ensure traceability across vendors and tools. By aligning disparate QA efforts into a unified process, they help reduce risk, accelerate delivery, and raise overall product quality.

Best practices for multi-vendor quality management

Let’s have a look at how it’s possible to effectively organize end-to-end quality process that meets business objectives and technical requirements within such an environment:

Establish a centralized QA coordination led by the most experienced vendor

In multi-vendor projects, the vendor with the deepest QA expertise can assume a leadership role by establishing a unified supervision that oversees quality processes across all participating vendors. Leveraging accumulated knowledge and best practices, this primary vendor together with the client can standardize workflows and ensure all parties are promptly updated on changes in scope, requirements, or approaches.

This helps distribute testing tasks efficiently among vendors, reducing the risk of missed deadlines or duplicated efforts. It also enables proactive risk identification and continuous monitoring of key quality metrics. By setting up effective communication channels, the key vendor facilitates transparency, alignment, and standardized practices across the entire testing landscape.

For instance, while helping the developer ensure failsafe operation of online mobile games, a1qa oversaw task distribution across multi-vendor engineering teams, facilitated the client’s transition to a shift-left testing framework, and contributed to 600 stable, production-level software updates.

Determine an allied testing strategy

The primary QA provider jointly with the client can define a unified testing strategy that brings all vendors into alignment with the project’s business objectives. It clearly outlines ownership of testing responsibilities, establishes smooth handover protocols, and sets shared expectations through common definitions of done and acceptance criteria.

By prioritizing risk areas and integrating each vendor’s testing efforts into a cohesive test plan, the strategy ensures that quality assurance is both comprehensive and coordinated. The result is a streamlined, goal-oriented testing process that minimizes gaps, reduces redundancy, and keeps all teams focused on delivering value where it matters most.

Create unified test management and reporting

Managing test activities across multiple teams can quickly become disjointed without a unified system in place. To address this, the coordinating QA provider in collaboration with the client may suggest implementing a centralized test management platform that acts as a single source for all quality-related data. This shared environment can streamline test planning, execution, and defect tracking, allowing each vendor to operate within a common framework.

This way stakeholders can gain real-time insights into testing progress, bottlenecks, and risks across the entire delivery landscape. Defects are logged and analyzed in a consolidated manner, enabling faster root cause identification and cross-team resolution. Additionally, the centralized system supports transparent reporting, ensuring leadership has a clear view of quality status across the board.

Deliver targeted training and knowledge sharing

To maintain consistency and elevate overall quality of testing across vendors, the most seasoned QA provider can take the initiative to deliver focused, role-specific training sessions. These may include practical workshops on advanced QA topics such as QA for digital transformations, testing in DevOps, shifting QA left, performance engineering, AI-driven quality control, and many others.

By tailoring content to each vendor’s function within the project, this effort helps bridge knowledge gaps and ensure all teams are equipped to meet both technical demands and regulatory expectations. It also fosters a shared understanding of tools, practices, and project goals, thus reducing misunderstandings and boosting delivery efficiency across the board.

Drive continuous improvement across all QA vendors

To maintain long-term quality and efficiency in a multi-vendor setting, a structured approach to continuous improvement is essential. QA leaders from the most experienced vendor can initiate and facilitate post-release retrospectives or milestone-based review sessions with all participating QA teams. These collaborative discussions should focus on evaluating recent efforts, identifying inefficiencies, and exploring opportunities for process enhancement.

Beyond isolated reviews, the lead QA function can implement ongoing feedback loops by collecting insights from day-to-day testing activities to inform iterative improvements. This fosters a culture of learning and adaptability across the QA ecosystem, ensuring that all vendors evolve in step with project needs, industry standards, and emerging technologies.

Afterthought

Within multi-vendor ecosystems, achieving quality isn’t just a matter of rigorous testing but a question of overall orchestration. This is where a seasoned QA provider can deliver exceptional value. Beyond executing various tests, they serve as the linchpin for establishing shared standards, aligning disparate practices, and unifying quality objectives across teams.

Feel free to reach out to a1qa’s experts to bring structure, consistency, and measurable value to every release.

As the global banking sector is undergoing a significant digitalization, the digital transformation market within it is projected to reach $419.45 billion by 2034. What was once an industry built on paper documents has now turned into a complex web of digital infrastructure and real-time processing.

At the center of this change is ISO 20022 — an internationally recognized financial messaging standard that can become the universal language of payments. It unlocks new opportunities for automation, innovation, and cross-border connectivity.

Transition to this standard is a radical overhaul of how banks handle and exchange payment information. This transformation requires meticulous planning, implementation, and quality assurance support.

Lack of testing can expose institutions to operational risk, data loss, and regulatory non-compliance, undermining the objectives of ISO 20022.

Today, let’s delve into the essence of this vital standard, analyze probable challenges, and pinpoint the most essential QA activities helping banks ensure quality migration to ISO 20022.

The next generation of financial messaging

With the ongoing evolution of the global financial ecosystem, the regulations underpinning it must also advance it. For years, banks have relied on SWIFT MT messages for cross-border payments and communications, but they no longer can handle complex information required for modern financial operations, which decreases their productivity.

That’s why a new international standard for electronic data interchange emerged. With ISO 20022, financial bodies and their clients can interact more effectively, reducing the chance for errors and accelerating transaction speed.

Reliance on this standard allows banks to transfer richer, more detailed data that can include reference numbers, compliance details, and transaction intent, contributing to better decision-making. For instance, if cross-border transactions provide recipient details and payment instructions, their tracking and confirmation become simpler.

This standard also provides possibilities for incorporating compliance requirements into financial transactions, helping banks maintain financial security, prevent fraud, and prevent legal exposure.

For example, with ISO 20022, global money transfers from Australia to Canada can be processed in compliance with both countries’ AML regulations through a streamlined, automated process.

Moreover, banks can trim down operational expenses, as the standard’s automation reduces the need for manual handling and speeds up remittances. For instance, a customer can see their money arrive almost immediately, as ISO 20022 streamlines much of the verification and settlement work.

It’s planned that by the end of this year, this standard will become an obligatory global norm for all SWIFT cross-border payments, allowing for streamlined international transaction handling and a more structured data exchange across jurisdictions.

Common roadblocks within the ISO 20022 journey to be aware of

The transition to ISO 20022 marks one of the most significant transformations in the BFSI industry in recent decades. While its benefits are substantial, during migration, organizations may grapple with several challenges:

Cybersecurity risks

Detailed payment data often contains confidential elements, underscoring the growing need for enhanced data privacy safeguards. Increased data management must also adhere to legal frameworks, such as GDPR or AML.

However, beyond these risks, proactive spotting of any probable vulnerabilities should remain key for banks. For instance, with the help of thorough security testing, a financial institution identified flaws in digital software that allowed brute-force retrieval of API access tokens and enabled denial-of-service exploits via manipulated HTTP requests.

Issues with legacy software

Many banks still depend on outdated systems that don’t seamlessly support a modern standard, often requiring middleware or costly system adjustments to keep pace.

Lack of seasoned experts

This intricate transformation process requires professional talent. Nurturing them can be time-consuming and costly, which is a serious problem, especially if the deadlines are tight.

Geographical factor

While the standard aims to create a unified approach to financial messaging, different countries and financial institutions may adapt it to suit their local regulations or technical constraints, causing fragmentation and interoperability issues.

Considering these challenges and the fact that banks upgrade or redesign their systems to comply with new requirements, QA becomes a pivotal factor in validating message formats, ensuring data accuracy, and safeguarding against various issues.

Comprehensive QA support for banking software in the new realm

Let’s analyze what software testing activities can help financial organizations across the globe ensure alignment with the new standard, mitigate business risks, and deliver robust financial services regardless of the changing circumstances.

Cybersecurity testing

Modern payment messages are packed with personal, transactional, and regulatory information, increasing the role of security testing for shielding critical data from unauthorized access, preventing legal repercussions, and strengthening end-user loyalty.

QA engineers can run comprehensive penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to identify weaknesses in how messages are stored, processed, or transmitted, as well as prevent potential disruptions or data breaches that can be exploited by malicious intruders. This approach can enable early identification of problems jeopardizing confidential payment information or interfering with essential banking functions.

Performance testing

Over two years, nine top UK banks experienced 33 days of IT disruptions, preventing access to funds for millions of people, the Treasury Committee states. Meanwhile, The Times reports that digital banking problems have doubled in four years. Such outages underscore the need for performance testing, especially as financial institutions shift to a newer standard involving larger, more complex messages and real-time payment processing.

To address these challenges, banks can bring in QA engineers to carry out various forms of performance testing, such as load, stress, spike, or benchmark verifications. They help evaluate how systems cope with normal traffic, react to unexpected surges, withstand extreme load conditions, and work in comparison to pre-migration indicators when transitioning to a new standard.

Functional testing

As organizations move away from legacy messaging formats, functional testing serves as a key validation activity, confirming that new message types are technically sound, aligned with business rules, compatible with previous systems, and integrated smoothly throughout the entire payment process.

By creating positive and negative test scenarios as well as considering probable edge cases, QA engineers can check that ISO 20022 messages are properly received and processed, interpretation of both mandatory and optional fields is done in the right way, data is converted into appropriate internal formats, the entire transaction life cycle remains error-free and consistent, and more.

Integration testing

The move to a new standard marks a substantial change for the financial industry, requiring adaptation across banks and related infrastructure. Integration testing is one more essential phase that checks whether systems inside the company and those of external partners communicate correctly using the new protocol.

With the help of experienced QA engineers, organizations from the BFSI sector can confirm that their systems operate cohesively and in alignment with the new norm, uphold regulatory compliance, and provide high precision in cross-bank messaging processes.

Test automation

Regardless of the software product, thorough testing focused on verifying the entire functionality takes time, which project teams may often lack because of high market competition and tight deadlines. Additionally, a lot of tests simply can’t be run only manually, as they are too complex, time-consuming, or may require simulation of user behavior that manual testing can’t effectively replicate. That’s where test automation is of high value.

By relying on QA automation engineers, financial institutions can cover a large volume of regression tests necessary to safeguard the stability of components that were previously working as intended, facilitate CI/CD pipelines, and significantly cut testing time.

For instance, with the help of image-based and data-driven test automation, a famous US-based company from the BFSI sector managed to reduce script code smells from 190 to 1, streamline QA processes, and enhance release quality by preventing high-impact defects from entering the production environment.

No room for error

Migration to ISO 20022 isn’t optional, and the deadline is fast approaching. The shift to this comprehensive messaging standard is essential, but with new challenges come new risks. Meticulous QA support should become a vital step in this process, preventing costly post-launch repairs and raising banks’ confidence in delivered digital platforms.

Reach out to a1qa’s specialists to ensure the failsafe operation of banking software after implementation of the new standard.

These days, the financial sector never sleeps, staying online and connected around the clock while facing a myriad of digital threats. Banks, FinTechs, asset managers, crypto exchanges, and insurance providers have all harnessed technology to improve how customers access and manage their money. But what happens when critical systems fail, or hackers find a weakness? That’s where the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) comes into play.

DORA ensures that any financial entity operating in the European Union can withstand and recover from technology-related disruptions. While it touches on governance, third-party risk management, incident reporting, and more, a crucial aspect is the way organizations must rigorously test their systems. This is where QA can play a crucial role, helping companies make sure their digital operations are as resilient as possible.

In this article, we’ll review role of QA teams ensuring compliance with DORA’s stringent regulations.

DORA’s pillars and where testing fits

A brief look at the regulation

DORA harmonizes the rules around digital operational resilience across all EU member states rather than letting each country set its own guidelines for financial entities.

DORA has 5 main pillars:

ICT risk management
Focuses on essential standards for addressing technology threats and maintaining a proactive risk framework.

ICT-related incident reporting
Streamlines processes and expands obligations, ensuring all financial institutions disclose major incidents.

Digital operational resilience testing
Requires foundational resilience checks and advanced methods (for example, red teaming) to validate digital integrity.

ICT third-party risk
Sets principles for governing external ICT providers, outlining key contractual requirements and oversight of critical services.

Information sharing
Promotes voluntary industry collaboration and the exchange of cyber threat intelligence.

The role of QA teams

A QA team typically checks that software does what it’s designed for, in accordance with requirements, with the aim to fit desired quality gates. By designing and documenting resilience mechanisms as system requirements, QA teams gain a strategic framework for testing these critical aspects. That includes proactively searching for vulnerabilities, verifying the strength of disaster recovery processes, and even simulating real-world attack scenarios. By conducting security testing and collaborating with security and DevOps colleagues, QA teams become a linchpin in demonstrating regulatory compliance to both management and external regulators.

QA and DORA

Testing as part of Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)

Building security into software from the start is far more effective than scrambling to fix issues before launch. A Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) approach ensures security is considered at every stage of development. From planning to release, early detection reduces risks and strengthens resilience against cyber threats. This approach emphasizes continuous security validation instead of one-time compliance checks.

QA’s role:

Help define security priorities by working with security teams to identify key risks and ensure business-critical applications meet compliance and security expectations.

Support security checks during development, making sure vulnerabilities are flagged and addressed early in the process.

Ensure security is tested during integration, confirming that data exchanges, authentication systems, and external connections are secure.

Oversee re-tests after fixes, ensuring that previously identified issues are resolved before moving forward.

SSDLC reinforces the ICT risk management pillar by embedding security into every stage of development and bolsters the digital operational resilience testing pillar through continuous system validation, thereby enhancing overall resilience.

Performance testing (ensuring service continuity)

DORA’s scope isn’t limited to cyber threats. A major system overload can also jeopardize financial stability. Think of a trading platform meltdown at peak market hours or a payment gateway crashing on Black Friday.

QA’s role:

Simulate high-traffic scenarios by utilizing a user behaviour approach.

Monitor system performance by tracking key metrics, including:

Response time of major transactions

Number of requests per second

Number of transactions per second

Early warning signs of resource exhaustion

Provide data to management about how close the system might be to critical load or resource exhaustion.

Service continuity is an important aspect of the operational resilience testing pillar. Testing ensures you’re better prepared to handle sudden spikes and can meet the service availability thresholds demanded by regulators and customers alike.

Integration testing

DORA places strong emphasis on ensuring financial entities can maintain seamless operations across all interconnected systems. This includes third-party vendors, internal platforms, and cross-departmental data flows. Failures in internal integrations—not just external dependencies—can disrupt critical services, affecting compliance, customer trust, and financial stability.

QA’s role:

Map out all integration points, e.g. customer onboarding to KYC (Know Your Customer) checks to payment gateways.

Continuously test the data exchange and error-handling routines between your system and external APIs.

Conduct fallback scenario testing. If a key third-party service is offline, does your system fail gracefully, queue transactions, or switch to a backup provider?

With integration testing organizations can prove they can sustain operations under disruptions, whether from internal failures or third-party issues. This approach supports the Digital operational resilience testing pillar by validating system integrity and maps to the ICT third-party risk pillar by ensuring that integrations on external providers remain robust.

Patch management and release testing

DORA obligates that financial institutions must actively manage their technology assets to maintain security, stability, and compliance with evolving regulations. Outdated systems create unnecessary risks, leaving organizations vulnerable to cyber threats, operational failures, and regulatory scrutiny. Regular updates are crucial, as they often resolve critical security flaws and enhance performance, yet improper implementation can lead to disruptions.

QA’s role:

Test patches in controlled environments to confirm they don’t break existing functionality or degrade performance.

Work with release engineering to define staging protocols, so that every update—no matter how minor—goes through a documented test cycle.

Maintain patch logs as evidence for internal auditors and for supervisors who want to see proof of thorough patching efforts.

Adopting a structured approach to patch management and release testing aligns with DORA’s ICT risk management pillar by ensuring that technology assets remain secure, stable, and compliant. It may also support digital operational resilience testing by verifying that changes do not introduce unintended disruptions.

Disaster recovery (DR) drills and tabletop exercises

One of DORA’s focal points is resilience under stressful or catastrophic events. If your data center is flooded or a massive cyberattack encrypts your files, can you bounce back quickly?

QA’s role:

Assess DR software. Verify that software used as part of disaster recovery systems is functioning according to requirements.

Participate in disaster scenarios. Join live drills or tabletop exercises based on formal DR requirements to confirm the relevant software works as intended.

Document outcomes. Record results of testing, including timing and performance against set benchmarks, to verify that recovery objectives are met.

By confirming that the implemented disaster recovery mechanisms meet key recovery targets, organizations are supporting DORA’s digital operational resilience testing pillar. Moreover, the insights gained from these exercises may also boost the ICT risk management pillar by identifying vulnerabilities leading to proactive mitigation measures.

Documentation and ongoing oversight

Robust documentation and oversight are essential. A clear, formal testing plan aligned with DORA’s risk criteria gives management precise evidence of compliance and resilience. Recording test scopes, outcomes, and identified gaps not only boosts ICT risk management but also enables effective information sharing across teams and with industry peers, reinforcing DORA’s Information sharing pillar.

The bigger picture

It can be tempting to view a major regulatory framework like DORA as an extra chore. In reality, many organizations may find that adopting a strong testing approach leads to tangible benefits:

Heightened customer trust. Your users—whether corporate clients or everyday consumers—value reliability. Being able to show robust testing and operational resilience increases confidence.

Reduced downtime costs. Frequent testing, including vulnerability scans and DR drills, helps prevent surprises that might otherwise result in large-scale losses.

More efficient development. When QA, security, and development teams collaborate closely, new features roll out more efficiently. Issues get caught early, leaving more time for creativity and customer-focused improvements.

Ultimately, the message behind DORA is straightforward: if you’re handling critical financial services, you must be prepared for every type of disruption. A culture of proactive, rigorous testing is one of the best ways to deliver on that promise.

Embracing DORA through QA testing

DORA uses regulation to help financial institutions keep up with today’s fast-moving tech landscape—ensuring they’re prepared, not just compliant. By making testing a fundamental part of daily operations, financial institutions keep their promises to clients, meet regulatory demands, and mitigate the risk of catastrophic incidents.

A QA team plays an important role in that endeavor. Testing measures such as vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, sit squarely within DORA’s framework.

Compliance, security, and reliability don’t have to be competing priorities. DORA shows us they are all interconnected. The payoff is resilience—a financial entity that keeps running smoothly, no matter what challenges the digital landscape throws its way.

If your company needs help meeting DORA requirements, reach out to us for specialized QA support.

Your software performs flawlessly in ideal conditions — pages load in the blink of an eye, transactions go off without a hitch, and all servers are reliable. However, the harsh reality is that normal conditions aren’t what counts when disasters hit.

Let’s look at a few examples. Several years ago, during the post-New Year work rush began, users of a famous messenger faced notable slowdowns and errors as the service struggled to manage the surge in post-holiday visitor volume. Or another unpleasant incident. A company providing content delivery network and security services suffered an outage caused by a new rule in their security system, which led to high CPU usage and widespread 502 errors on various websites. What can we infer from this?

A viral social media post, a successful product launch, or even celebrity shoutout can quickly flood your system with users without warning, giving you no time to prepare in advance. If your infrastructure isn’t prepared, it can face a complete crash, lost revenue, frustrated customers, and damaged trust. That’s why spike testing — checking that your systems can withstand sudden bursts of user demand — is crucial for any modern business.

In this article, we’ll delve into the fundamental idea behind spike testing, its value for companies, and essential steps to effectively perform it.

In the spotlight: what you should know about spike verifications

Spike testing, being one of the types of tests conducted as part of performance testing, involves assessing how the system responds to sudden and sharp changes in the real-time user count, queries, and operations (referred to as “spikes”), and evaluating its capacity to recover and maintain fault tolerance. It aims to evaluate the system’s adaptability, confirming it can expand to meet the demand and contract once the spike fades.

A well-developed load testing script emulates the rapid spikes on the system, which in the real world can lead to immediate unexpected system behavior. The described spike testing model helps teams of QA performance engineers quickly observe how — and whether — the system recovers once the load decreases.

When do companies need spike testing? Well, the short answer is: “Companies need spike testing whenever there’s a possibility of sudden surges in traffic or system usage, whether anticipated or not.” Here are just few examples:

Scenario #1. Salaries hit employees’ accounts at the same time. As they flock to their banking apps to check their balances, the system gets hit with a jump in visitor activity.

Scenario #2. After rigorous testing, a company is convinced a new feature is ready for prime time, so they spread the word, inviting users to take it for a spin, thus provoking an abrupt load surge.

Scenario #3. Well-executed marketing campaigns, including special promotions, limited-time discounts, and new product launches, often create a ripple effect, drawing in not just immediate traffic but also boosting long-term user engagement.

Scenario #4. IT products that nudge users to hydrate, work out, or read can go through a classic boom-and-bust cycle, with users flooding in and then vanishing just as quickly.

Scenario #5. It’s almost the end of the working day, and all the employees of the company using your product start saving their work simultaneously before going home.

By effectively managing sudden traffic surges, organizations across industries can reap significant business benefits.

Spike testing applies pressure by simulating real-world surges, exposing weak links like disabling the message queue, misconfigured load balancer, ineffective system auto-scaling rules, or response time struggles. By uncovering problems early, organizations can fortify their applications, ensuring they don’t crack under pressure — an essential requirement for banking, healthcare, and real-time trading platforms.

Additionally, identifying and fixing slowdowns from the start helps prevent customer churn and negative brand perception, leading to smoother user interactions.

Organizations can leverage spike testing results to fine-tune their infrastructure investments. Whether it’s boosting server capacity, optimizing caching, or streamlining database performance, these insights help allocate resources more efficiently, cut unnecessary costs, and ensure seamless scalability as demand grows.

For businesses that depend on their online presence for revenue, unexpected load surges can lead to costly downtime and lost sales. Spike testing acts as a safety net, uncovering vulnerabilities before they turn into full-blown failures. By proactively identifying weak points, businesses can prevent costly crashes, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted service that keeps sales flowing.

Don’t let traffic spikes take you down! Talk to a1qa’s specialists for a tailored testing strategy.

Nail your spike testing: 6 steps to get it right

Now, we’d like to walk you through the essential steps to conduct an effective spike test and ensure your software remains resilient during a big sale, a viral event, or any other high-traffic occasion.

Analyze the software

Before testing, a comprehensive analysis of the software and its expected load is essential. This understanding guides the creation of a practical and effective test strategy.

Software applications vary in nature—some emphasize content, others facilitate transactions, and some depend on real-time interactions. For instance, online retail platforms may encounter high traffic volumes during promotional events, whereas streaming services might experience surges upon new episode releases.

By analyzing user behavior and identifying key functions and system architecture, teams can set performance benchmarks and realistic testing goals.

Equip yourself with optimal tools

Selecting the right testing solution is crucial for conducting an effective spike test. The selection process should be thorough and consider multiple factors, among which I’d mention:

Budget. While open-source solutions such as JMeter or Gatling are cost-effective, they often require additional setup and customization. In contrast, commercial solutions such as LoadRunner and BlazeMeter provide advanced capabilities and enterprise support, though at a premium price.

Ease of use. While some testing tools require scripting knowledge, others prioritize usability with graphical interfaces. For instance, LoadRunner is ideal for teams with limited coding skills, whereas JMeter is better suited for those who prefer script-based flexibility.

Configurability. An effective spike testing tool should simulate traffic surges by generating significant loads. Some tools allow creating a very flexible model and load profile, while others offer basic settings only.

Realistic user simulation. Some tools can cover only separate APIs, while others can emulate the real user behavior on the HTTP requests level by reproducing real users’ actions in the system.

By evaluating these criteria based on their unique requirements, organizations can choose a tool that delivers precise and actionable insights into system performance under sudden load surges.

Get prepared

Setting up a separate test environment that replicates the production one is vital to ensure spike tests are meaningful and indicative of the system’s performance. Such similarity helps reduce the risk of failures or outages in the production. Prior to testing, QA performance engineers in collaboration with DevOps or development teams should review factors like CPU, RAM, disk space, network bandwidth, OSs, software versions, and configurations to ensure the test environment is properly configured.

Conduct tests

Now, it’s time to apply a sudden and extreme load to the system. During testing, it’s wise to evaluate a range of patterns to ensure your software can handle various traffic surges. Some spikes emerge suddenly, while others grow steadily over time. By testing both rapid bursts and gradual increases, project teams can better understand how well the system adapts to different escalation scenarios. Additionally, it’s important for teams of QA performance engineers to pay attention to how the system behaves after the traffic surge ends, as a delayed recovery can still affect user experience, even after traffic returns to usual levels.

Examine outcomes

During test execution, it’s important to investigate the system behavior using a real-time monitoring. After running the spike test, ensure you analyze the data and match it against your performance benchmarks to see how the system responds to extreme loads. Look for any unexpected behaviors and failures and make note of key results like the peak load before failure, performance slowdowns, recovery time, and any other important observations. This lays the foundation for a further important step.

Pursue excellence

Based on the findings from the test results, it’s important to focus on optimizing system performance to effectively handle spikes. For example, enhancements may include boosting server scalability with auto-scaling, refining backend logic to manage sudden traffic surges, or using caching to reduce the need for repeated data retrieval from diverse sources.

In a nutshell

Spike testing gauges how an IT product behaves when subjected to sudden and extreme increases or decreases in load, thus helping organizations across industries ensure software’s boosted robustness, improving end-user reviews, decreasing operational expenditure, and ensuring business continuity regardless of the circumstances.

To maximize spike testing efficiency, companies can carefully analyze the expected load, choose project-specific tools, dedicate effort to setting up a test environment, run verifications, analyze results, and do not bail on further optimization.

Are you facing system slowdowns? Contact a1qa’s experts to get professional consultation and support.

With the proliferation of smartphones and mobile apps, the online gambling industry has become a multi-billion-dollar field that continues to grow rapidly. The experts at Research and Markets state that the global gambling market, encompassing both traditional casinos and online platforms will reach $224.1 billion by 2030. According to Statista, the worldwide count of online gambling users is expected to increase to 291.4 million by 2029.

Source: Casinos – Global Strategic Business Report

But what makes a game truly stand out? Is it breathtaking graphics or satisfying mechanics? While these features elevate the software, they mean little if crashes occur. Additionally, the gambling industry is one of the most dynamic and heavily regulated sectors in the world, meaning that successful expansion into new markets depends largely on complying with regional regulations.

Therefore, a region-specific approach to quality control can ensure that new gambling software works flawlessly and meets strict legal and technical requirements.

This article provides an overview of the role of QA in game development and an optimal strategy for rolling out resilient solutions for diverse markets.

QA as an essential addition for any game development project

The iGaming industry has witnessed a variety of different solutions — video slots, table games, poker, sports betting platforms, bingo, live dealer services, just to name a few. In such a competitive environment, a single error can cause end user dissatisfaction, resulting in poor reviews, user churn, and even lost profit.

A comprehensive quality assurance approach applied early in the SDLC can help organizations turn the tide and derive numerous business perks, the most vital of which are:

Compliance with legal demands

Regulatory authorities in the EU, USA, Singapore, Macau, and other jurisdictions enforce distinct official standards to ensure fair play, transparency, and the protection of players, which all gambling software developers must comply with. Consistent and recurrent software testing helps adhere to these norms and avoid financial penalties, legal repercussions, or license suspension despite the evolution of regulations.

Strengthened software reliability

Thorough quality control serves to detect issues of differing severity and helps prevent any downtime or lost revenue, especially during traffic spikes. For instance, by relying on comprehensive performance testing, a developer of an online casino game integrated with Facebook, managed to handle 10,000 concurrent users while keeping the response time below 0.2 seconds.

Improved cost-efficiency

If testers initiate QA activities early in the development phase, software engineers can mitigate them easier and quicker before they escalate into full-fledged problems. Such a proactive approach reduces financial concerns surrounding late fixing of post-launch failures and prevents unwelcome interruptions.

Accelerated time to market

When automated testing reinforced with AI is introduced, organizations can not only attain high-quality software but significantly expedite its deployment. For instance, with a1qa’s test automation support, another developer of online mobile “social games”, managed to reduce development time of an automated test by 28%, which in a nine-month span the QA team saved 788 hours.

Enriched brand perception

When gambling software is highly intuitive and operates without a hitch across diverse devices and OSs, it has more chances to retain end users, make them trust the brand, and recommend solutions to other players.

Bespoke QA strategy for navigating diverse regulatory landscapes

Let’s have a look at a region-specific evaluation process that can help organizations address unique demands of each market and launch a gambling product both enjoyable for users and complying with stringent regulations.

Compliance testing

This is a mandatory move for any organization that wants to guarantee the software is legally and ethically sound across all targeted geographical areas.

For instance, in the UK, licensing is overseen by the Gambling Commission, while in Malta, companies must comply with the Malta Gaming Authority, each with its own set of regulations. The taxation system in each country also differs, meaning that financial reports must correspond with local demands. Additionally, it’s essential for gambling software to meet internationally accepted standards and certifications, such as eCOGRA that prioritizes game fairness.

QA engineers delve into targeted regulatory guidelines, check for regulatory changes, create a test plan that addresses critical areas, and run compliance tests to ensure that no legal pitfalls will arise after software launch and save money for additional attempts to pass certification.

Localization testing

Before releasing gambling software in any geographical region, it’s vital to conduct localization testing to make sure that it adheres to regional laws or cultural practices.

QA engineers check that the application accommodates regional currencies, symbols, and date and time formatting. They also verify that text adjusts seamlessly to buttons, menus, and UI components, avoiding truncation or alignment issues. Additionally, they confirm that licensing and certification data is accurate and regionally valid as well as review compliance with area-specific gambling laws, such as age limitations.

Through this a1qa’s encompassing localization quality control approach, the developer of online social games managed to successfully ad a pt the software for international markets, including the EU, the USA, Canada, Australia, and parts of Asia.

Security testing

A cyberattack in November 2024 targeted a leading gambling technology provider, disrupting its internal IT systems and applications. Upon discovering the intrusion, the company took immediate action by taking certain systems offline. Although the extent of disruption is unknown, such an incident is bound to affect the company’s reputation.

Therefore, security testing is a pivotal aspect for any gambling operator striving to enter new markets with minimized business risks. Detailed testing enables companies not only release software resilient to DDoS and bot attacks, account takeovers, ransomware threats, or other fraudulent activities but ensure the IT products adheres to the technical and legal requirements within GDPR, PCI DSS, CCPA, ISO 27001, and other regional standards.

By executing penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, pre-certification security audits, QA engineers identify weak spots and confirm the gambling software and user data are fortified against known problems.

Performance testing

For online gambling platforms, ensuring fast, scalable, and responsive performance is crucial. Setbacks in its operation can directly affect user contentment and lead to severe financial consequences, legal complications, and a tarnished reputation.

Companies may supplement their QA strategies with performance testing to ensure that millions of players from multiple geographical locations can seamlessly leverage such platforms for their entertainment and successful financial transactions fulfilled in the real time.

By conducting server- and client-side verifications, QA engineers subject applications to conditions beyond their limits, evaluate how they function under pressure, and detect imperfections.

Functional testing

Whether we’re talking about a slot machine, roulette wheel, card game, or any other gambling software type, players must be assured that all its crucial features work as intended and deliver robust user experiences.

Therefore, QA specialists can apply diverse functional testing types to verify the entire application flow (registration, placing bets, calculations, live streaming, withdrawal, etc.) and evaluate operational, graphical, and integrity aspects of the game to pinpoint any problems before the release when they are easier and cheaper to resolve.

Mobile app testing

The gambling industry has experienced a major shift in recent years, as mobile devices have become the go-to platform for many players. This transformation is driven by a variety of factors, such as round-the-clock accessibility, faster payments, biometric authentication, and others.

Testing these mobile apps is vital, as it helps create a dependable environment that users can trust, mitigating potential risks, increasing player satisfaction, and strengthening the app’s market superiority.

Therefore, QA engineers leverage real mobile devices specific to each geographical region and verify application life cycle, performance, security, reaction to various interruptions, network connectivity, and many other aspects.

Summing up

Launching gambling IT products across various markets demands a comprehensive, carefully crafted validation framework that ensures compliance, regulatory alignment, and region-specific testing. A structured quality assurance approach helps mitigate risks, build user trust, and drive long-term success in the competitive gambling industry.

Are you planning to launch new gambling products? Contact a1qa’s experts to get professional QA consultation and support.

A study by Verified Market Research showed that the software outsourcing market has experienced significant growth and is projected to reach $897.9 billion by 2031. A dedicated team model (DTM) — widely used in the world of outsourcing — is one of the key solutions for businesses to manage such growth.

In this article, we will answer some common questions about this model and summarize some specific issues one should know before deciding on the DTM.

Curious? Let’s start.

What’s a dedicated team?

Just as with the time & material (T&M) or fixed price (FP), the dedicated team is the business model. Its essence lies in providing the customer with an extension of their in-house team. The scope of works, team structure, and payment terms are specified in the client-service provider agreement.

Deciding on this model enables the client to shift the focus on business-critical competencies by cutting expenses spent on management as well as searching, hiring, and training new QA specialists.

The team fully commits to the needs of the customer and the vision of business and product, ensuring alignment with long-term goals. Dedicated QA experts work closely with the development and product teams to ensure seamless communication and integration, timely identify potential risks, and apply best practices to ensure alignment with the highest standards. At the same time, the QA vendor provides its administrative support, monitors the testing environment and infrastructure, measures KPIs, and proposes improvements.

Before making a step toward DTM, you might ask yourself whether it is suitable in your particular case. Here are seven signs that you need a dedicated QA team:

You aim to keep QA costs to a minimum.
The project requirements are dynamic.
You have no resources to train or manage your in-house QA team.
Your project has significant scalability potential.
You need to meet strict release deadlines and are looking for a team solely dedicated to upholding quality standards throughout accelerated development cycles.
You transit toward Agile or DevOps methodologies and need QA experts equipped with expertise in test automation, continuous integration, and fast feedback loops.
You are interested in building long-lasting relationships with a QA vendor.

Dedicated team model at a1qa

Vitaly Prus, a1qa Head of testing department has extensive experience in managing Agile/SAFe teams. He knows how to set up and maintain successful DTMs for both large corporations and startups.

Vitaly, is the DTM popular among a1qa clients?

It is. In fact, the DTM is the most popular engagement model at a1qa — about 60% of the ongoing projects are running this model.

DTM clients: who are they?

Traditionally, the model is more popular with North American and European clients. For example, a Canadian real estate company reached out to a1qa in search of a dedicated QA team to ensure the quality of its flagship software that required rigorous testing to meet diverse user needs.

a1qa’s specialists conducted functional, performance, localization, and compatibility testing, as well as test automation, to detect issues early, guarantee the system’s failsafe operation, and accelerate testing cycles. Additionally, a1qa implemented smart team scalability, dynamically adjusting the team size to align with workload fluctuations and optimize resource utilization throughout every stage of the project.

From my experience, customers choose dedicated teams when they want to extend their in-house crews but have no time to hire or no resources to train new QA talents.

Comparing to the fixed price or T&M models, the DTM is about the people, I would say. Applying for the dedicated team, most clients seek not just additional testing hands, but they rather want to get a pool of motivated specialists who will commit to the project, have the flexibility to adapt to changing business demands, stay proactive, and do their best to make the final solution just perfect.

And I can’t but stress it that the DTM is used mainly for long-term projects. For example, we currently maintain teams that have been providing software testing services for 5, 7, and 10 years.

For instance, a1qa assigned five dedicated QA teams to assist one of its clients — a global provider of on-premises and cloud solutions for cyber protection — in accelerating the development of new products and enhancing existing QA practices. The teams focused on core IT products, conducted functional and automated testing for multiple subprojects, provided actionable recommendations for improvement, and verified mobile applications.

To ensure seamless integration, a1qa also developed a comprehensive training program for new team members, equipping them with a strong understanding of technical features. Additionally, a QA manager was assigned to maintain consistently high performance among the dedicated specialists. As a result, the client reduced time to market and accelerated the release of complex software solutions. This successful partnership has now been ongoing for over nine years, reflecting the client’s trust in a1qa’s support.

The dedicated team is about dedication.

Could you list the top 3 main advantages for the client?

Besides the inherent commitment resulting from the model’s nature, I would highlight improved software quality through meticulous testing and cost and time efficiency achieved by identifying issues early and eliminating the need for extensive rework. At a1qa, we also provide smart team scalability by rapidly adjusting to the clients’ demands of expanding or decreasing the team size.

Our teams can work on-site at the client’s premises or operate remotely, as is the case for many of our customers.

We offer a vast pool of specialists with diverse tech skills and industry-centric expertise (continuous and shift-left testing experts, test automation specialists, security and performance testers, UX testers across telecom, BFSI, gaming, eCommerce, eHealth, and more). Our clients also get an independent software quality evaluation along with a variety of testing means and access to the latest technological achievements.

Drop us a line to discuss whether DTM is the right decision for your business.

What are the key factors for DTM success?

The success of any dedicated team depends on how well a service provider takes care of its resources and on the quality of the infrastructure and environment provided.

At a1qa, we’ve built a well-structured approach to set up dedicated teams considering all clients’ requirements. For instance, to help an innovator in advanced analytics and data usage automate QA, a1qa assembled a dedicated QA team able to not only speed up testing time in line with tailored automated QA files but create databases operating under the client’s requirements as well as reshape QA processes for improved efficiency. Our customers consistently praise the expertise and efficiency of our teams.

In addition, we continuously strengthen QA expertise and leverage innovations in proprietary R&Ds and Centers of Excellence. Our team members are willing and ready to get and expand QA knowledge in our QA Academy which provides a unique approach to the educational process. All of this aligns with a1qa’s culture of excellence, elevating our processes to the next level of quality.

Does it take long to set up the right team?

Some clients trust our project managers and pass the responsibility to us. Others are more attentive to this matter and take part in all interviews and check CVs of all possible engineers. On average, it takes from a week to a month to set up a team that will be ready to start.

If a team requires 10 engineers, we usually recommend assigning only 2-3 specialists at the very start and gradually expanding the team as the project grows. This is more effective than setting up a team of 10 software testers from the very beginning.

Additionally, at the client’s request we can assign a QA manager who will take control over QA tasks and activities to get the maximum value from the DTM.

We can also offer a try-before-you-buy option if a client is not sure that a proposed candidate fully meets their requirements. It’s like a test drive for QA specialists: if there are any doubts, clients have some time to form their opinion and decide whether to continue cooperation with the team member or not.

How can clients be sure that the team delivers the expected results?

At the start of the project, establish relevant metrics to track the team’s success. Use KPIs to ensure that skilled professionals deliver the required results on time.

As I mentioned earlier, you have full control over your team and can customize the management approach to your preference. Request daily stand-ups and regular status reports to align the communication process with your specific needs.

What is the billing process?

The dedicated team is paid for on a monthly basis and the pricing process is quite simple. The total of the bill depends on the team composition, its size, and the skillset.

When discussing the model with a client, we warn them about the downtime expenditures: if there happens to be downtime and the team has no tasks to perform, the client will keep paying for this time as well.

But as a matter of practice, QA and software teams rarely have idle time. Even if the team has technical issues blocking the testing work (e.g. test servers or defect tracking system on the client’s side is temporarily unavailable), they can proactively suggest and do some tasks useful for the project, like preparing test data files, etc.

Summing up

In short, the dedicated team model can help achieve the needed goals and contribute to business success in the market. When working with your team (yes, it is fully yours), you can get a range of benefits:

Full commitment to your project needs and methodology.

Adjustment to your time zone.

Opportunity to interview all specialists.

Complete control over all project flaws.

Comprehensive reporting and smooth cooperation.

Rapid resources onboarding.

Long-term value through accumulated expertise and knowledge retention.

Regardless of the industry, business need, or software product, you can have a decent crew working most suitably: be it a remote, on-site, or mixed collaboration.

Contact the a1qa experts to get a dedicated team bringing the best possible QA solutions implemented into your business.

The rapid adoption of digital banking has transformed the way consumers interact with financial services. Adjust’s 2023 report highlights a 45% year-over-year increase in finance app installs, with banking apps experiencing a notable 55% growth compared to 2022. According to Adjust’s 2024 report, finance apps, including banking platforms, experienced a remarkable 119% increase in revenue year-over-year during the first quarter of 2024, showcasing strong sector growth. This surge reflects the growing reliance on mobile platforms for secure and efficient financial transactions. Ensuring these apps meet users’ expectations requires a strong focus on performance, usability, and security, making robust Quality Assurance (QA) practices essential for eBanking and financial solutions.

Source: Statista

To meet clients’ expectations and enhance their digital experience, financial service providers must ensure high levels of security, stability, and integrity in their mobile and web software. QA plays a critical role in achieving this.

In March 2023, Latitude Financial Services experienced a cyberattack that compromised the personal data of millions, including 7.9 million driver’s license numbers and 53,000 passport numbers. This breach exposed critical security vulnerabilities, highlighting the urgent need for stronger safeguards and robust QA practices.

The attack led to significant financial losses and reputational damage, reinforcing the importance of quality assurance in safeguarding sensitive customer information and maintaining trust in financial services.

To help protect your business, we invite you to explore 5 key reasons why quality assurance is mission-critical for your services and solutions.

Reason #1. Safeguarding confidential data

The financial sector remains one of the top targets for cyberattacks, with a sharp rise in incidents since the pandemic. In 2023, cyberattacks have more than doubled since pre 2020 levels, leading to potential losses of $2.5 billion. Banks and financial organizations must prioritize integrating security into their Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and conduct regular penetration testing to address system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive assessment of issues like broken authentication and excessive data exposure helps mitigate risks. These measures are essential to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.

Let’s see how a1qa’s specialists helped a well-known bank to ensure high reliability and safety of numerous solutions. The QA team started with an assessment based on OWASP API Security Top 10 Project and OWASP Web Security Testing Guide, involving the list of the most recent severe vulnerabilities. They thoroughly tested injections, broken authentication and authorization, security misconfiguration, excessive data exposure, and session management issues.

The next stage included penetration tests to reveal system loopholes and prevent their exploitation by hackers. Thus, they identified a number of flaws that could allow cyber criminals to gain access to a list of users, their passwords, and accounts as well as steal access tokens.

Reason #2. Guaranteeing high quality within cloud-based software

Banks and financial organizations are increasingly migrating their applications to the cloud, but they face challenges such as complex data migrations, server interruptions, and security concerns.

The data migration process involves transferring large volumes of sensitive information, and automated testing plays a crucial role in simplifying and accelerating this task. These tests ensure that the software functions seamlessly with cloud-based data after migration. They validate the accurate transfer of customer accounts, transactions, and records while checking data integrity and confirming proper placement within the cloud. Furthermore, automated testing verifies that apps continue to operate as intended post-migration, ensuring smooth functionality. By addressing these critical aspects, automated testing guarantees high data accuracy and minimizes the risk of data corruption or loss.

Reason #3. Ensuring system reliability and high performance

The last thing users want is to encounter issues with their banking or financial app—be it connection problems with the server, transaction errors, or delays in processing payments. These issues often arise because the server infrastructure cannot handle the load, whether due to a high volume of server requests, a large number of concurrent users, or inadequate system scalability. This unavailability to make or receive payments can lead to significant problems, such as missed credit payments, late fees, and even damage to users’ credit ratings.

During a project with a similar issue, a1qa’s professionals introduced load validation to guarantee smooth system functioning with the target load for an extended period as well as stress testing to determine the upper limit of the solution capacity. They also analyzed software dependence on the number of concurrent users, requests, and transactions. It helped the client expand operational volume and provide first-rate services to its customers.

Reason #4. Adjusting software for various platforms

In the second quarter of 2024, Android continued to dominate the mobile operating system market with a share of about 71.65%, while iOS held approximately 27.62%, and other platforms accounted for the remainder. Given the wide range of devices, operating systems, and browsers, it can be challenging to predict which ones consumers will use. To provide a seamless experience and ensure that financial solutions are compatible across diverse devices, we recommend our clients leverage compatibility testing.

In such cases, our experts gather regional statistics for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. Using this data, they create a compatibility matrix that reflects the most commonly used browsers and platforms. This matrix is then used to test financial apps across these environments, ensuring optimal performance for users on various devices and operating systems.

Reason #5: Ensuring regulatory compliance

The financial industry operates under strict regulations to protect sensitive data, maintain customer trust, and prevent penalties. QA plays a critical role in ensuring compliance by validating that regulatory and technical requirements are met at every stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Collaborating with Business Analysts (BAs) and product architects, QA translates requirements into test cases to ensure that software functions align with the necessary standards.

In financial applications, regulatory demands often dictate the implementation of specific functionalities. These include:

Secure data handling and verification: Features such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes ensure data security and regulatory compliance.

Transaction tracking and monitoring: Systems that create detailed audit trails help organizations monitor financial activities and fulfill regulatory reporting requirements.

Access control and encryption: Role-based access control and robust encryption methods protect sensitive information and ensure secure data storage and communication.

These functionalities are core requirements and QA ensures their proper implementation by rigorously testing each aspect of functionality against defined requirements.

Beyond functionality testing, QA teams strengthen security and compliance through focused security assessments. These assessments typically follow one of two approaches:

Minimum security plan: Full vulnerability assessments are performed before major releases, and regular penetration tests are conducted to simulate potential attacks.

Maximum security plan: The SSDLC approach integrates security testing into every development phase, proactively addressing risks.

Through these methods, QA not only validates compliance with regulations but also ensures the software is resilient against potential threats.

All in all

In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, quality assurance is essential for delivering reliable banking IT products. It safeguards sensitive customer data from breaches, ensuring trust and security.

Comprehensive testing supports smooth cloud migrations, validating accurate data transfer and minimizing risks like corruption or loss. By addressing performance bottlenecks and preventing server downtime, it ensures uninterrupted functionality and a seamless user experience. Testing also optimizes applications for compatibility across various devices, operating systems, and platforms. Finally, QA ensures compliance with stringent industry regulations, validating critical features like data protection, transaction monitoring, and access control to help financial organizations meet legal standards and avoid penalties.

For professional QA support to ensure first-rate quality within your banking software, feel free to contact a1qa’s team.

In early 2023, T-Mobile experienced a significant data breach that impacted 37 million customers. Hackers accessed personal information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails. This breach highlighted the dangers of overlooked security vulnerabilities and the importance of strong cybersecurity measures to protect user data.

According to the 2022 “Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US” report, software failures cost US companies $2.41 trillion in 2022, a significant increase from previous years. These failures result in not only financial losses but also higher expenses for defect fixing and the risk of customers moving to competitors.

However, what are the reasons behind the overlooked bugs from the QA side? Let’s reveal them in the article and share the ways to fix them.

Problem #1: Lack of test automation

Manual testing remains a key component of any project, but it often falls short when speed, frequency, and consistency are critical. While manual testing can be effective in some cases, it becomes less feasible for larger, more complex projects due to budget and time limitations.

In such cases, efficient test coverage is difficult to achieve, leading to an increased likelihood of missed defects. Under tight deadlines, the time-consuming nature of manual tests can further slow development, exacerbating the risk of overlooked issues as teams may sacrifice some tests to meet deadlines.

How to fix it?

Test automation can address many of these challenges. According to the World Metrics Test Automation Report, 70% of companies are now investing in automation tools and services, which help identify defects up to 20 times faster than manual testing.

Automation can also cut test cycle time by up to 75% and boost team productivity by 60%. Furthermore, 83% of organizations report improved test coverage through automation, leading to better software quality and faster product releases.

Source: World Metrics Test Automation Report 2024

Problem #2: Deadlines, speed, and costs put before software quality

Consider a scenario where a company aims to release a new version of its eCommerce app for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Due to tight deadlines, the team decides to skip critical testing phases, thinking, “What could possibly go wrong?” The app crashes under the influx of visitors, leading to significant revenue loss. This illustrates how skipping even certain types of testing, such as performance testing, to save time and money can backfire, resulting in even greater financial losses and damage to a company’s reputation.

How to fix it?

Delivering quality at speed is a key requirement for most enterprises. Companies must strike a balance between tight deadlines and maintaining high software quality. Here’s how:

Ensuring enough flexibility

Flexible methodologies, like Agile, help shorten development cycles, ensuring software updates are verified early and swiftly delivered to the market. Agile also enables companies to adapt to ever-changing customer demands and modify project requirements effectively. According to the 17th State of Agile Report, 71% of surveyed organizations indicated that Agile improved their ability to manage changing priorities, and 64% reported that Agile accelerated software delivery.

Furthermore, 42% saw improvements in software quality, and 35% cut QA costs by adopting DevOps. By ensuring this flexibility, companies can avoid compromising software quality while meeting tight deadlines.

Shifting to CI/CD

How about detecting bugs in real time and fixing them as they occur? You don’t have to wait and put defect verification away until the last stage. All this is feasible by implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) within a test automation strategy.

The software undergoes changes and updates during its entire lifecycle, and CI/CD facilitates ongoing testing, deployment, and delivery. And all this happens without sacrificing quality ― isn’t that a dream?

Introducing parallel testing

Let’s look at another example. The deadline is tight, but there is a strong need to test the application across multiple devices and browsers. Not having time, you test only on the latest Google Chrome versions. This is how many bugs are missed!

If you run the tests sequentially, it does take time. However, there is a solution: parallel testing, which allows you to run the same tests simultaneously in different environments. Meanwhile, the QA team can focus its resources on other mission-critical tasks.

Problem #3: Lack of required specialists, skills and expertise

Having an in-house QA team is beneficial, but is your team large enough to handle the demands of a large-scale project? More importantly, do they have the necessary skills in areas beyond basic functionality, such as performance testing, cybersecurity, and compliance?

Additionally, having domain knowledge and experience in similar systems is crucial. When testers are familiar with the systems they are testing, they better understand the processes and patterns, resulting in more comprehensive tests and fewer missed defects.

Consider a scenario where a company has only two QA specialists, both focused solely on functionality. As a result, critical issues might be missed — like the 2022 Ticketmaster failure, where the platform crashed under the strain of high demand. Similarly, without cybersecurity expertise, vulnerabilities could go unnoticed, leading to breaches like the 2023 Latitude Financial data leak, where millions of personal records were compromised and millions of dollars were lost by the company.

If your team lacks specialists in performance and security testing, these types of defects can easily be overlooked, resulting in major consequences for user experience, company reputation, and compliance with data protection regulations.

How to fix it?

Outsourcing software testing

To avoid budget overruns, cut QA costs, and find a perfectly suitable QA team, companies increasingly turn to QA outsourcing, which is projected to grow from $342.6 billion in 2023 to $770.98 billion by 2032, driven by the demand for scalable and efficient IT infrastructure.

When to onboard extra QA experts? Let’s see 5 common cases:

If you look for an effective and flexible team. Outsourced QA specialists are quick to incorporate into your infrastructure, adjust to any request, and easily scale up or down when needed.

If you want to save time and budget. Independent experts fine-tune QA processes at the very beginning of a project, which facilitates easy and cost-effective defect detection and fixing in the early development stages.

If you strive to accelerate time to market. A dedicated QA team designs the most optimal QA strategy, which helps speed up the workflows and release the IT product faster.

If you need to ensure safety standards compliance. An unbiased assessment by offshore professionals allows not only the detection of system minor, major, and hidden defects but also assuring the agreement with all relevant global protocols, such as HIPAA, FDA, OWASP, etc.

If you need specialized knowledge and proven testing experience. Bringing in external QA experts means you get a team of skilled testers who understand the specific requirements of your software. They are experienced in similar projects, allowing them to begin testing effectively from day one. Their industry know-how ensures that they quickly identify potential issues, providing immediate results and high-quality outcomes.

Onboarding the right in-house team

Since technologies are constantly evolving, QA experts should keep track of the IT environment and topical trends. This helps implement software testing approaches (e.g., shift-left and continuous testing) and methodologies (e.g., Agile and DevOps) as well as apply best practices to solve QA-related challenges of any complexity.

Don’t forget about the time management skills of your team members — this is what guarantees that the work is going according to plan, assists in meeting deadlines, and ensures that quality gates are met.

Even if your team is staffed with QA gurus, ongoing training is still a critical step that involves running specialized seminars and obtaining proficiency in new QA areas.

Problem #4: Lack of testing strategy and plan

A common issue in QA is the absence of a structured testing strategy, which not only leads to gaps in test coverage but also makes it difficult to predict what types of tests, resources, and test data will be needed during testing — resulting in missed bugs. Without a well-defined plan, ensuring full test coverage becomes challenging, increasing the risk of defects making it to production. Additionally, this lack of strategy often leads to missed deadlines, and as deadlines approach, critical test types may be omitted, further contributing to missed bugs.

Solution: Implementing a comprehensive test strategy

A comprehensive test strategy is developed according to the goals of the project and the required workload, addressing business issues, scope, deliverables, metrics, and risks.

It’s also good to have a test model that outlines all system functionalities and user behaviors, ensuring that no key areas are overlooked. During this process, roles and responsibilities across the team, communication methods, a reporting plan, and the client’s expectations are clearly defined. This structured approach helps create test cases that thoroughly cover all the necessary parts of the system.

To optimize test coverage and ensure all functionalities are properly tested, apply various test design techniques, such as:

Equivalence class partitioning.

Boundary value analysis.

State transition testing.

Pairwise testing.

These techniques enable us to optimize test coverage, ensuring that all critical areas are adequately tested without missing any key functionality or behavior.

Bottom line

Missed defects can cause major issues for product owners, developers, and QA teams, but they can be avoided by focusing on key approaches.

Test automation enhances coverage, speeds up processes, and reduces errors, while modern methodologies like Agile, CI/CD, and parallel testing enable faster and more flexible cycles. A skilled QA team — whether in-house or outsourced — supported by efficient processes and the right tools, is crucial. An effective QA strategy that outlines roles, communication, and ensures comprehensive testing of critical scenarios is essential for delivering quality outcomes.

You can achieve this by either hiring skilled personnel, investing in your internal processes and tools, or outsourcing to experts who already have established practices in place. These approaches collectively reduce missed bugs and ensure high-quality software.

If you want to ensure high quality within your IT products, turn to a1qa’s experts and get professional QA support.

The evolving work environment now places significant value on business skills. Research indicates that soft skills contribute to 85% of overall job success, and projections suggest that by 2030, up to 40% of all jobs will require well-developed social-emotional competencies. Additionally, studies show that companies investing in the development of their employees’ soft skills can expect a 250% return on their investment within less than a year.

So, what are the top business skills that can enhance workplaces in 2025 and beyond? How can they be improved? These questions will be addressed in this blog.

What pros can soft skills bring to the table?

First-class soft skills and their improvement can lead to an organizations’ prosperity and benefit companies in many ways:

Enhanced productivity. Strong interpersonal abilities foster effective teamwork, contributing to efficient task performance, streamlined problem-solving, professional conflict resolution, and improved time management.

Superior quality of service. Employees who excel at building relationships can create meaningful connections with both current and potential clients, ensuring professional communication and making clients feel valued throughout the collaboration.

Increased employee satisfaction. Organizations that invest in their employees’ growth and provide opportunities for personal development are more likely to have engaged and loyal staff who feel appreciated and motivated to stay long-term.

Improved communication. Clear and accurate communication allows employees to express their thoughts without misunderstandings or biases, enabling them to focus on achieving business objectives effectively.

Sought-after competencies to improve workplace

There are dozens of soft skills that can positively impact the quality of QA specialist’s work. The focus here will be on those that are most beneficial to business.

Critical thinking

It’s essential to analyze incoming data, question the facts, research, and use relevant information to solve problems and make informed decisions. For instance, QA engineers can use it to not only identify software issues but think of potential aspects and risks that can negatively impact the correct operation of IT products. They can also more accurately prioritize detected defects, better plan activities in the long run, and more productively navigate challenging situations.

Emotional intelligence

When emotions aren’t interpreted in the right way, they can have devastating consequences. Emotional intelligence at work helps QA specialists better understand various project stakeholders’ point of view, manage stressful situations (e.g. related to pressing deadlines) in a more effective way, correctly respond to constructive criticism, and be able to decrease tension in the workplace.

Troubleshooting

The ability to analyze situations from multiple perspectives and address problems with confidence is a crucial soft skill. Strong problem-solving capabilities enable QA engineers to more comprehensively articulate problems, think creatively and identify the best solutions even under pressure, leading to more effective time management.

Adaptability

The global landscape is constantly changing, impacting our working conditions. Adaptability is a crucial skill in this dynamic environment. It enables QA teams to swiftly and effectively respond to shifting project requirements or organizational changes, quickly learn new tools and technologies, and show greater flexibility when taking on new responsibilities.

Conflict resolution

Conflicts are natural and form an indispensable part of life, so it’s important not to be afraid of them. QA engineers who actively listen to each party to understand different perspectives and demonstrate empathy can successfully resolve defect-related disagreements (e.g., regarding severity levels), solve problems more effectively to prevent project delays, and maintain clear communication in any situation.

Ability to work in a team

Teamwork is among the most sought-after soft skills that HR managers prioritize in candidates today. This is unsurprising, as complex tasks are rarely accomplished by a single individual. When a QA specialist can effectively collaborate with developers, business analysts, product owners, and other project stakeholders, they can brainstorm creative ideas, share the workload, and reduce the risk of project delays.

Being an effective leader

When acting as proficient leaders, QA managers can establish a straightforward vision for the entire team that matches the company’s goals, create effective multi-year strategies, take accountability for mentorship, and refine testing workflows when they see space for improvement. They also inspire and motivate other team members and encourage open communication between everyone to foster the development of novel ideas and accept different opinions.

Innovation and creativity

Sometimes, solving a problem requires examining it from all angles. This approach allows for the generation of new, creative ideas, the conduct of experiments, and the continuous exploration of ways to improve the situation. When QA engineers think outside the box, they can better predict potential risks, more effectively grasp end-user experience, handle project alterations easier, and leverage a unique approach when reproducing and addressing issues.

Persuasiveness

To get a stakeholder’s buy-in (e.g. the introduction of a new technology or approach such as continuous testing), sharpened presentation and persuasion skills are essential. When QA specialists confidently and clearly articulate their point of view, using visuals, facts, statistics, and evidence to support their arguments, they are more likely to influence colleagues, as well as current or potential clients, and achieve their desired outcomes.

Digital fluency

The current pace of the digital landscape evolution is enormous — new technologies, frameworks, tools appear literally every day. QA engineers should quickly delve into their essence, be able to leverage them at work, swiftly analyze whether they match the current project environment, so as to accelerate testing processes, boost efficiency, and develop the culture of innovation within a company.

On the way to perfection

Let’s see how soft skills can be improved:

Prepare. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses and determine which areas need improvement based on your work requirements and responsibilities.

Learn. Choose a relevant online or offline training course that offers practical programs to maximize learning efficiency.

Accept. Be open to feedback to gain insights into how others perceive you, providing a broader perspective on your abilities and areas for growth.

Listen. Avoid interrupting others, seek clarification when needed, and record details. This skill is invaluable for improving workplace interactions and enhancing empathy.

Why soft skills matter at a1qa

At a1qa, we believe in improving processes—whether for our clients or within our teams. It’s not just technical know-how that drives improvement; soft skills play a big role, too. These abilities help us communicate effectively, solve problems, and adapt to new challenges. By focusing on them, we ensure that we continue delivering high-quality results for our clients.

Final thoughts

Sheryl Sandberg stated, “Build your skills, not your resume.” Soft skills are vital both for advancing one’s career and enhancing a company’ organizational performance. These competencies can be continually developed, so it’s never too late to invest in self-improvement.

Contact a1qa’s team if you are looking for professional QA assistance.

Migrating to the cloud is a strategic move for many organizations looking to leverage several benefits, including scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. However, this process is fraught with potential risks and challenges.

In this article, we’ll discover QA activities that help ensure seamless cloud migration.

Functional testing

Functional testing allows businesses to check whether the application (including all user interactions, features, and integrations) operates correctly in the new cloud environment.

The team uses predefined test cases to test each feature of the software. These tests should cover all aspects of the IT solution, including user inputs, workflows, and integration points with other systems.

As a result, companies release an IT product that performs its intended tasks without errors, ensuring a smooth post-migration.

Compatibility testing

The primary objective is to ensure that applications, databases, and other components integrate effectively with the target cloud environment. This requires thorough examination of software versions, dependencies, and configurations to identify any issues that might impede the transition. Integration testing is essential in this process, as it verifies that all systems and services work together seamlessly within the cloud infrastructure.

Before migration, organizations must confirm that their operating systems, middleware, and third-party services are compatible with the cloud platform. Beyond mere compatibility, it’s critical to ensure that these components integrate smoothly, allowing for effective communication and data flow between systems. By focusing on integration testing, organizations can address potential disruptions and ensure a successful transition to the cloud.

Performance testing

Performance checks help evaluate how well the software operates in the cloud environment. It involves assessing various performance metrics to guarantee that the app meets the required benchmarks and handles the expected load.

As part of performance testing, the QA team conducts:

Load testing to simulate the expected user traffic and check how the IT solution performs under normal conditions.

Stress testing to push the application to its limits and observe how it behaves under extreme loads.

Scalability testing to assure that the system can scale up or down based on demand.

Thus, companies detect bottlenecks in advance and ensure that the migrated application can provide consistent performance, even during peak usage.

Security testing

Businesses migrating to the cloud can face exposed sensitive data due to misconfigured access controls or cyberattacks exploiting unpatched software vulnerabilities. All leads to data breaches, regulatory fines, and severe reputational damage.

So, how to prevent such cases?

Vulnerability scanning

This process involves using automated tools to scan the cloud environment for known vulnerabilities. These tools check for outdated software, misconfigurations, open ports, and other weaknesses that could be exploited.

By running a vulnerability scan, organizations can take corrective action before attackers have a chance to exploit them.

Penetration testing

Penetration testing helps simulate real-world attacks on the cloud environment to identify security weaknesses. This involves attempting to breach the system using various attack vectors, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and phishing. Addressing these vulnerabilities helps in enhancing the security posture of the cloud environment.

Compliance checks

Ensuring that the cloud environment adheres to industry standards and regulatory requirements is business-critical, especially for organizations dealing with sensitive data.

With compliance checks, they verify that the cloud setup meets all requires standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. For example, a healthcare organization migrating to the cloud must ensure that their environment complies with HIPAA regulations to protect patient data.

Test automation

Relying solely on manual testing during migration presents significant challenges for QA specialists, such as managing an extensive scope, meeting tight deadlines, and mitigating the risk of human error. Manual testing can also be resource-intensive, requiring substantial time and manpower.

Certain types of testing, like performance and security testing, are particularly unsuitable for a manual approach due to their repetitive nature, large scope, and the need for frequent deployments, especially in CI/CD environments.

Introducing automated testing into the migration process addresses these challenges effectively. Automation accelerates QA workflows, improves test accuracy, and allows QA engineers to focus on more complex aspects of testing that require human judgment.

One key benefit of test automation is its ability to perform checks that are impractical to execute manually. For example, verifying that all data has been accurately transferred to the cloud database after migration would be time-consuming and error-prone if done manually. Automated testing can rapidly and accurately compare migrated data, ensuring its integrity in a fraction of the time.

Additionally, automation enhances test coverage by executing more test cases in less time, which is especially valuable for large and complex software systems. By leveraging automation, organizations can ensure a more thorough and efficient validation of the migration process

To wrap up

The cloud migration process presents several challenges for companies, but QA can help prevent issues, ensure comprehensive testing, and facilitate a smooth transition.

To achieve this, companies should conduct functional, compatibility, performance, security, and automated testing.

Need support with cloud migration testing? Reach out to a1qa’s team.

To deliver high-quality IT products, establishing seamless collaboration between QA engineers and developers is paramount.

While QA and development teams may have different focuses and responsibilities, aligning their efforts can help significantly boost productivity and accelerate the release of software solutions.

In this article, we’ll explore 6 practices to ensure smooth operation and foster interaction between these specialists.

Practice 1. Establish clear communication channels

Clear communication channels serve as the foundation of effective interaction between developers and QA experts. Businesses should utilize specialized tools, such as project management platforms, instant messaging apps, and video conferencing software to ensure that teams share updates, discuss requirements, and promptly address arising issues.

To guarantee that both teams are aligned on project goals, timelines, and priorities, it’s critical to define communication protocols, including regular meetings, status updates, and feedback sessions.

However, effective communication goes beyond daily updates — it’s about fostering a culture of transparency, respect, and collaboration. Here are some ways to promote open interaction within QA and development teams:

Set clear expectations and ensure that team members understand whom to contact in case of concerns, questions, or feedback.

Value each other’s time and reserve face-to-face conversations for significant issues or discussions requiring immediate attention while using emails or messages for less urgent matters.

Encourage active listening to ensure that everyone feels heard and valued, leading to better collaboration and problem-solving.

Support constructive feedback to create a safe environment where specialists feel comfortable providing their opinions.

Celebrate small achievements and milestones to boost team morale and motivation.

Practice 2. Involve QA experts from the start

Engaging QA teams from the early SDLC stages is key to improving interaction and productivity. By encouraging developers to collaborate with QA engineers during the planning and design phases, companies should identify potential flaws from the ground up, which helps eliminate costly rework and software release delays.

Practice 3. Foster a culture of quality ownership

It’s imperative to dissolve the traditional divide between developers and QA engineers. Responsibility for the IT solution quality should be shared by all team members.

Developers should be accountable for writing robust and testable code. Simultaneously, QA engineers should closely collaborate with them, advocating for quality throughout the entire SDLC, rather than solely serving as gatekeepers.

Practice 4. Implement Agile methodologies

Adopting flexible methodologies, like Scrum or Kanban, can facilitate collaboration between QA and development teams. Agile frameworks promote iterative development, frequent feedback, and continuous improvement, allowing teams to quickly respond to changes and deliver high-quality IT products incrementally.

To synchronize their efforts, identify dependencies, and align priorities, it’s mission-critical to leverage sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and sprint reviews.

Practice 5. Introduce continuous testing

QA plays a crucial role in facilitating CI/CD pipelines by ensuring that code changes integrate smoothly and deploy without errors.

By automating testing processes and implementing robust quality gates, QA teams enable developers to deliver code faster and more frequently. This rapid iteration cycle accelerates the feedback loop and app launch while reducing business risks and boosting the quality of IT products.

Practice 6. Promote mutual respect and trust

Building trust between QA engineers and developers is essential for enhancing productivity. Businesses should create a supportive environment and cultivate a deep appreciation for each other’s contributions within the workplace. To do this, enterprises need to:

Encourage cross-functional involvement. Foster mutual understanding and respect by encouraging team members to participate in each other’s processes.

Collaborate as one team. Foster a sense of unity by encouraging QA and development teams to interact as one cohesive unit in problem-solving endeavors. By pooling their talents and resources, professionals can identify and resolve issues more efficiently.

Emphasize each contribution. Recognize the accomplishments of both QA engineers and developers to foster better communication between teams.

To sum up

Fostering seamless communication between development and QA teams isn’t just a matter of convenience — it’s imperative to attain desired business outcomes during software development projects.

So, how can companies strengthen the interaction between all specialists? It’s critical to establish clear communication channels, involve QA experts from the start, cultivate a culture of quality ownership, implement Agile methodologies, facilitate CD/CI, and promote mutual respect and trust.

Contact a1qa’s team and obtain support in releasing top-notch software solutions at speed.

Nowadays, QA has become more critical than ever for businesses to deliver high-quality IT products at speed while staying competitive in the market.

By relying on manual testing only, it may be complicated for companies to attain the desired velocity. That’s why more and more are switching to test automation.

In this article, we’ll discover the most critical aspects of shifting from manual to automated testing.

Why should companies move from manual testing to test automation?

Consider a scenario where an organization is tasked with releasing an update for a mobile banking application within tight deadlines. If we engage manual engineers alone, it will take them a lot of time to test the modification on different devices, operating systems, and network conditions. As a result, there’s a chance a company may delay the rollout.

In this situation, test automation emerges as a game-changer, allowing the team to automate repetitive test cases, such as user registration, data validation, search functionality, and report generation. What once took days or even weeks to complete manually can now be accomplished within hours without compromising on software quality. By launching new features faster and more frequently, organizations strengthen their competitive edge.

Accelerated time to market isn’t the only benefit businesses receive. According to the World Quality Report 2023-24, 54% of surveyed IT executives noted reduced risks, 52% — improved test efficiency, and 50% — enhanced customer experience.

Source: World Quality Report 2023-24

By automating repetitive and mundane tests, businesses free up valuable human resources to focus on more strategic tasks, such as conducting exploratory testing or identifying critical issues that test automation may overlook.

Finally, test automation integrated into SDLC enables comprehensive test coverage, allowing businesses to test their applications more thoroughly after code changes, thus helping find issues earlier.

What tests are better to automate and why?

Not all tests are equally suited for test automation. It’s recommended to automate those checks that are repetitive in nature and frequently executed. They include:

Performance tests

It’s impossible to simulate the influx of users, stress conditions, or complex scenarios manually. Therefore, by automating performance checks, companies evaluate the responsiveness, scalability, and reliability of their applications under various loads from regular to extreme.

With such an approach, they’re delivering high-performing software that meets their end-user expectations.

Integration tests

Automated integration testing helps validate the interactions between different system components or modules to ensure their seamless integration and interoperability. It’s faster, more accurate, and provides broader coverage compared to manual testing.

By automating such checks, businesses verify that individual components work together as intended and detect integration issues early in the SDLC phases. Learn more about integration testing services here.

Cross-browser testing

Just imagine that you need to test a web application across multiple browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Verifying each browser version on different operating systems manually may be time- and labor-intensive. With automated testing, you can swiftly execute them across all target platforms, ensuring consistent behavior and compatibility.

Thus, cross-platform, cross-browser, and cross-device tests are among the top candidates for automation to streamline QA processes, improve software quality, and deliver smooth user experiences across different environments.

Regression tests

Automated regression testing allows businesses to quickly verify that new code changes haven’t introduced unexpected defects in the existing functionality.

Smoke tests

Smoke tests assist in assessing the basic functionality of the IT solution’s critical features. Automating smoke tests enables teams to evaluate the overall health of their applications and identify any issues that may arise during the development process.

When is manual testing still essential in the SDLC stages?

As it’s impossible to achieve 100% test automation is neither feasible nor practical, some scenarios require manual intervention. Manual testing is particularly valuable in the following cases:

Exploratory testing. Relies on human intuition and creativity to uncover hidden defects. Manual engineers can simulate real-world user interactions and scenarios, making it an invaluable method for validating the user experience and overall quality of an application.

Usability testing. It allows companies to evaluate software’s ease of use and intuitiveness from the end-user perspective. QA experts provide valuable feedback on the user interface, navigation flow, and overall end user experiences, helping businesses identify usability issues and make informed design decisions.

UAT. It involves interactions with the system under realistic conditions to evaluate software functionality, performance, and user experience. By simulating real-world usage scenarios, UAT helps identify any deviations from pre-defined acceptance criteria, uncover usability issues that may impact customer satisfaction, and assess the application’s readiness for deployment.

How to get started with test automation?

Embarking on a test automation journey can seem daunting, but with the right approach and strategy, businesses can successfully move from manual to automated testing environments. Follow the link to find an interview with our Head of testing department on how to build a smart test automation strategy from scratch.

Here are 5 steps to get started with test automation:

Step 1. Assess your testing needs

Companies should begin with identifying the most suitable test cases for test automation based on such criteria as frequency of execution, complexity, and stability of the application.

Step 2. Select test automation tools and frameworks

It’s imperative to choose appropriate tools and frameworks that align with the organization’s technology stack, QA objectives, and budget constraints. Moreover, teams should consider additional factors, including ease of use, scalability, support for multiple platforms, and integration capabilities with other development tools and pipelines.

Step 3. Build a solid foundation

Companies should invest in training their QA teams to ensure they have the necessary skills and expertise to design, implement, and maintain automated test suites effectively.

Step 4. Establish clear processes and guidelines

To ensure seamless integration of test automation activities into the existing development workflows, organizations should:

Create robust version control practices to track changes in test scripts and enable traceability over time

Implement effective test case management systems to organize, prioritize, and maintain test suites efficiently, facilitating collaboration among team members and stakeholders

Leverage comprehensive reporting mechanisms to track test execution results, identify trends, and pinpoint areas for improvement

Incorporate integration with other development tools and pipelines, such as CI/CD systems, to automate testing as part of the software delivery process.

Step 5. Measure and optimize

To measure the performance and effectiveness of automated tests, experts can monitor metrics such as test coverage, execution time, defect detection rate, and ROI. It’s also crucial to identify areas for improvement, like optimizing test execution times, reducing flakiness, and increasing test reliability.

A final thought

While test automation excels in repetitive and predictable scenarios and provides numerous benefits in terms of speed, accuracy, and coverage, it’s essential to recognize the enduring value of manual testing. Manual testing remains indispensable for scenarios that require human intuition and creativity, such as user acceptance, exploratory, and usability testing.

By striking the right balance between manual and automated testing, businesses can optimize their QA processes, accelerate software releases, and deliver high-quality IT products that meet user expectations.

Need support in fine-tuning your test automation workflows? Reach out to a1qa’s team and get professional assistance.

Over the past years, we have witnessed a profound transformation driven by the emergence of new technologies and processes.

At the forefront of this revolution is robotic process automation (RPA), a technology gaining significant traction across industries. RPA offers a compelling solution for organizations seeking to streamline operations and enhance efficiency by leveraging software bots that automate repetitive tasks.

RPA can be a valuable assistant for automating specific tasks within software testing, enabling businesses to achieve unparalleled levels of speed, security, and reliability of their IT products.

In this article, we’ll explore the intersection of RPA and QA, delving into its impact, challenges, and strategies for successful implementation.

Understanding RPA

In recent years, RPA has emerged as a transformative technology, revolutionizing the way organizations streamline their business operations and enhance process efficiency. It’s predicted to reach $13.39 billion by 2030.

Source: Statista

At its essence, RPA involves the use of bots to automate mundane, time-consuming, and repetitive tasks traditionally performed by humans. These activities range from data entry and document processing to system integrations and report generation. Thus, RPA allows for freeing up human resources to focus on higher-value activities.

To illustrate the practical application of RPA, consider a scenario in customer support operations. Imagine a company receiving a high volume of end-user queries through various channels, such as e-mails, chats, and social media. Without RPA, handling these queries would require manual intervention.

However, with RPA in place, this process can be automated. Bots can be programmed to monitor incoming messages, analyze their content using natural language processing algorithms, and route them to the appropriate departments based on predefined criteria. This accelerates response times while ensuring consistent handling of client queries, improving overall satisfaction levels.

Another example of RPA usage relates to accounting operations. Invoice processing and financial reporting often involve repetitive data entry and manipulation across multiple systems. RPA bots can be deployed to automate these tasks, extracting data from invoices, entering it into accounting software, and generating reports with minimal specialist efforts required.

RPA in software testing: unlocking the value

By combining RPA with traditional QA practices, businesses unlock a myriad of benefits that streamline testing processes, enhance productivity, and reduce costs.

To begin with, RPA in software testing helps automate tedious testing tasks, like test case execution, data verification, regression testing, test environment setup and configuration. By leveraging RPA, organizations accelerate the QA lifecycle and deliver high-quality software products within shorter timeframes.

Another advantage is continuous monitoring. RPA bots can be deployed to track key performance indicators, system metrics, and user interactions in real-time, identifying potential issues and anomalies. By controlling the software under test, organizations can detect and address defects early in the SDLC stages, thereby minimizing the risk of costly errors and downtime.

What’s more, RPA bots are useful during data validation tasks, comparing expected outcomes against actual results and flagging discrepancies for further investigation. Whether it’s verification of database entries, user inputs, or system outputs, RPA can assist businesses in streamlining such workflows and providing greater confidence in the quality of software releases.

Addressing the main challenges of RPA in software testing

Let’s focus on the hurdles companies face and strategies to overcome them.

Challenge #1. Limited testing toolkit

The scarcity of specialized QA tools tailored for RPA poses a significant challenge in developing comprehensive and efficient QA strategies. Without appropriate instruments, organizations may struggle to effectively automate processes.

To overcome this challenge, businesses can:

Investigate the market for specialized RPA testing tools that are designed to meet the unique requirements of test automation These instruments often offer specific features, such as scriptless automation, object recognition, and integration with RPA platforms.
Collaborate with RPA vendors as they provide built-in testing features or guidance on integrating third-party testing toolsets with their platforms.
Consider investing in custom tool development in cases where RPA testing tools aren’t available. By designing QA instruments tailored to their specific RPA testing needs, companies can address gaps in existing toolkits and ensure comprehensive test coverage for their RPA implementations.

Challenge #2. Lack of experience

Consider a hypothetical situation where a company has made substantial investments in RPA technology to streamline its invoice processing system. Despite the successful deployment of RPA bots, the team responsible for monitoring and collaborating with these bots doesn’t possess the required competencies. As a result, it leads to operational downtime and costly issues, hindering effective testing workflows.

To prevent similar cases, organizations should adopt a comprehensive strategy aimed at skill development and knowledge acquisition. This embraces investing in training programs designed to equip existing staff with the necessary expertise in RPA testing. By providing employees with structured training opportunities, businesses can empower them to effectively leverage RPA tools.

Challenge #3. Performance and scalability issues

Addressing performance and scalability roadblocks in RPA requires thorough testing and optimization of automation processes to ensure they can handle high volumes of transactions and heavy workloads.

For that, organizations should implement robust performance testing strategies using specialized tools capable of simulating real-world scenarios and workload conditions. By identifying bottlenecks related to software operation, companies enhance the scalability and efficiency of their RPA solutions, thereby ensuring they meet business demands without compromising speed and accuracy.

Challenge #4. Ensuring security and compliance

Prioritizing data security, access controls, and regulatory compliance throughout the whole QA lifecycle is essential to address safety concerns within RPA products with confidence.

This involves leveraging security measures, such as encryption and secure authentication mechanisms to safeguard sensitive data and ensure compliance with industry regulations. By doing so, businesses mitigate associated risks and ensure the integrity and confidentiality of their information and RPA workflows while maintaining data privacy.

Conclusion

The integration of robotic process automation into QA and software testing represents a transformative shift in how organizations approach quality assurance.

By addressing the main challenges — limited testing toolkit, lack of experience, performance and scalability issues, the need to ensure high security and compliance — businesses can unlock the full potential of RPA in streamlining QA processes, enhancing productivity, and reducing costs.

Need support in fine-tuning your QA workflows? Contact a1qa’s team.

Over the past decade, the financial sector has undergone a remarkable evolution, driven by tech advancements and changing consumer behaviors.

As traditional banks pivot towards digitalization, they face the challenge of maintaining high standards of reliability, security, and performance in their online offerings. This is where QA comes into play. By implementing robust QA processes, they ensure flawless user experiences across their platforms and mitigate associated business risks.

In this article, we’ll explore top fintech technologies and QA practices to enhance their quality.

Key innovations shaping fintech in 2024

As we continue into 2024, several transformative technologies are shaping the future of fintech:

Generative AI (genAI)

Not all financial enterprises have managed to integrate their systems with genAI. That’s due to several complexities, including technical hurdles and the lack of accurate quality data.

However, those who successfully implemented genAI, reap several advantages. GenAI helps enhance efficiency and reduce costs through automating repetitive tasks, like data entry. This allows companies to save time and effort while minimizing the risk of human error, leading to more accurate results.

With GenAI, business can improve customer service through chatbots and virtual assistants, offering round-the-clock support and personalized recommendations.

And lastly, GenAI enhances risk management by analyzing a wide range of financial data, detecting suspicious activities, and preventing fraud and money laundering, thereby ensuring better security for financial institutions and their clients.

GenAI is predicted to explode in 2024 and allow companies to enhance operational efficiency, improve decision-making processes, and offer personalized services to customers.

Robotic process automation (RPA)

Deloitte states that 53% of global organizations have already adopted RPA while 36% are planning to do it. That’s not surprising as RPA brings companies strong benefits: reduced costs, streamlined business workflows, increased productivity, and fraud prevention.

In the fight against financial crime, RPA enhances the speed and accuracy of fraud detection by automating due-diligence checks, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring. By confirming data adherence to federal anti-money laundering guidelines and analyzing variances to flag potential instances of fraud, RPA bots bolster the cybersecurity infrastructure of financial institutions.

RPA helps fintech companies manage regulatory compliance by strengthening governance of financial processes. By automating manual tasks involved in reporting and consolidating data from various systems or documents, RPA streamlines the compliance process, reducing the risks of regulatory fines and reputational damage.

RPA also plays a key role in optimizing back-office functions in fintech, including transaction handling and data manipulation.

Open ecosystems

To boost customer experiences and drive innovation, financial institutions are increasingly leveraging open ecosystems, including:

Open banking

Between 2023 and 2027, open banking transactions across the globe are projected to increase by 500%.

Source: Statista

Open banking revolutionizes the traditional banking model by fostering collaboration and interoperability within the financial ecosystem. Instead of being closed organizations, banks now offer limited access to customer data, enabling secure and electronic sharing with authorized third-party providers.

This paradigm shift empowers fintech businesses to leverage client information to enhance payment instruments, integrate user data into transactions, and provide a seamless payment experience. With open banking, customers can share their financial information securely, facilitating a unified flow for payments across different platforms and services without the need to switch between multiple applications.

Banking as a Service (BaaS)

BaaS operates on the principle of utilizing APIs to establish connectivity with clients. By leveraging the regulatory permissions of providing banks, BaaS end users can seamlessly integrate financial services without the need to navigate complex regulatory requirements.

This streamlined approach helps non-financial companies to create new solutions by incorporating a wide range of services, including deposits, money transfer, payments, currency exchange, and lending, into their offerings.

Embedded finance

It integrates financial services directly into non-financial ones to streamline the access to banking services for clients. Thus, users make payments, apply for loans, and access insurance services without reaching out to separate banking channels, gaining more convenience and accessibility.

KYC, KYB, and AML solutions

KYC, KYB, and AML solutions play a vital role in addressing the escalating complexity of financial fraud in the fintech sector fueled by AI-driven techniques and deepfake technology. They are capable of real-time decision-making and continuous customer monitoring to verify users’ identities, assess business risks, and detect suspicious activities.

Fintech regulators

Regulators worldwide are working diligently to address the modern risks of digital finance, particularly in areas, like cryptocurrency. As regulatory frameworks continue to evolve, fintechs and other financial service providers should adapt quickly and confidently to keep up with new standards.

For instance, the top regulations in Europe are MiCA and PSD3. MiCA aims to provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto assets, ensuring consumer protection and market integrity. Similarly, PSD3 seeks to enhance end-user rights and promote innovation in payment services.

QA to release high-end fintech software solutions

With banking applications handling sensitive financial data and facilitating billions of transactions, even the slightest system glitch or security vulnerability can have far-reaching consequences. Therefore, rigorous software testing should come to the forefront to ensure that fintech products meet the highest standards of reliability, security, and performance.

Below are presented testing types that are indispensable for banking applications.

Cybersecurity testing

Cybersecurity testing for fintech software is imperative to safeguard sensitive financial information and protect against cyber threats and data breaches, especially in the context of open ecosystems. With the introduction of open APIs that transfer end-user details across various platforms, ensuring their safety comes to the forefront. It involves assessing the robustness of the software’s security measures and identifying vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors.

Among the best practices, companies introduce penetration testing to simulate real-world cyber attacks and exploit vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and authentication flaws. These checks help identify whether it’s possible to gain unauthorized access to the system.

With vulnerability scanning, they scan the software for known fragilities, including outdated software components, misconfigured safety settings, and weak encryption protocols.

Performance testing

Imagine that a fintech platform is experiencing latency issues during peak trading hours. Ultimately, it’ll lead to delayed transactions and payments, missed trading opportunities, and dissatisfied customers.

To avoid these and similar outcomes, financial businesses should implement performance testing. It helps assess the responsiveness, throughput, and resource utilization of banking applications under varying load conditions, ensure optimal performance, and enable fast transactions and data exchange.

Functional testing

It assists in validating the software against requirements as well as evaluating the accuracy and reliability of financial calculations, transactions, and reporting functions while ensuring data integrity.

It plays a crucial role in testing the integrations of embedded banking into different products, such as eCommerce platforms or telecom services, by assessing how APIs function and interact within the BaaS framework.

It also includes testing account management, payment processing, and other critical features to verify that they perform as expected under different scenarios and conditions.

Compliance testing

By focusing on compliance QA, fintech providers can ensure that their IT products adhere to regulatory frameworks and standards, such as MiCA, PSD3, GDPR, and PCI DSS. This is crucial to mitigate legal risks, safeguard data privacy, and boost customer experience.

Bonus: Blockchain testing

Blockchain testing helps companies check blockchain-based fintech solutions to ensure the integrity of transactions and identify and address potential vulnerabilities. It involves testing smart contracts for logic errors, assessing consensus mechanisms for robustness, and evaluating network performance under various conditions.

By conducting thorough blockchain checks, fintech companies can instill trust in their decentralized applications and foster adoption among users.

In a nutshell

The landscape of fintech is undergoing a profound transformation driven by modern innovations, including generative AI, RPA, and open ecosystems.

To ensure they meet high-quality standards, financial institutions can implement required QA practices: cybersecurity, performance, functional, compliance, and blockchain testing.

Planning to release banking software? Reach out to a1qa’s team to ensure its high-end quality.

With customer expectations escalating and market competition intensifying, ensuring product performance is non-negotiable. 61% of users experience issues related to software operation at least once a day.

Organizations that introduce shift-left performance testing can find critical defects in the application’s functioning early on while accelerating time to release, enhancing QA workflows, and ultimately saving costs.

In this article, we’ll discover why businesses should combine shift-left and performance testing.

The impact of shift-left on software performance optimization

Shift-left testing

With traditional methodologies, like Waterfall, testing is often moved to the later stages of software development. This leads to several drawbacks. For instance, fixing defects or implementing changes after testing has begun often involves extensive rework and project delays, leading to increased expenses.

Unlike Waterfall (which still can be in place), a shift-left testing approach advocates for embracing QA activities at the initial SDLC phases. This helps businesses prevent defects, eliminate high costs associated with post-deployment rework, and accelerate the IT solution’s release.

Performance testing

Performance testing focuses on evaluating the responsiveness, scalability, and stability of an application under various conditions. It involves simulating real-world scenarios to assess how the software operates under different loads, involving heavy user traffic or concurrent transactions.

With comprehensive performance checks, companies identify and fix system bottlenecks before they impact user experience and the overall reliability of the IT product.

Why is performance testing relevant within a shift-left approach?

Under the umbrella of shift-left testing, the integration of performance testing emerges as a pivotal component, offering a proactive means to enhance software operation from its inception. Rather than being a mere add-on, it becomes an integral part of the development lifecycle, serving distinct purposes at different stages.

Firstly, companies can implement performance tests into each iteration of the SDLC to assess the performance of individual features, allowing teams to identify and rectify any issues or inefficiencies early on. Secondly, it plays a crucial role in evaluating the overall performance of the system, enabling experts to optimize its architecture and coding practices for better scalability and responsiveness. Adopting performance QA as a part of the CI/CD pipeline allows teams to assess the operation of the system with each build. Finally, performance QA conducted before software release helps ensure that the IT solution meets performance expectations and withstands real usage scenarios without faltering.

Reaping the benefits with shift-left performance testing

Let’s focus on the advantages of performance testing incorporated within a shift-left approach.

Better software quality due to early detection of performance issues

Let’s imagine that a company is developing a software product. A shift-left performance testing approach will help identify responsiveness bottlenecks, such as delays in UI responsiveness or slow transitions between application screens. For instance, when the application tries to fetch data from the server, these delays may affect end-user interaction. With early and frequent performance checks at the core, companies can address all challenges, predict set timelines, and release a high-quality IT product, driving higher client engagement and satisfaction.

Thus, by integrating performance testing into the initial stages of development, businesses identify potential software issues, like slow responses, scalability concerns, and architectural flaws before they escalate into critical ones.

Decreased expenditure

Imagine that an enterprise is preparing an eCommerce website for the shopping season, bringing an influx of clients and a huge profit margin. Postponing it may hit the company’s reputation and finances, right?

Holistic shift-left performance testing equips organizations to mitigate potential issues well in advance of the IT solution release. By integrating this approach into their business strategies, companies avoid the scenario of conducting performance testing as a last-minute check before app launch, which often leaves insufficient time to address any identified bottlenecks. Consequently, they minimize the risk of service disruptions, regulatory penalties, and unexpected expenditures, while ensuring exceptional end-user experiences from the outset.

Faster time to market

Hastened velocity is achieved through meticulous planning and continuous monitoring of performance throughout the software development lifecycle.

Let’s say a company is creating a cloud application that connects to the server with a huge number of users. By having performance testing built into the SDLC, the team can proactively address issues as they arise, preventing the accumulation of problems that could delay the release.

This ensures that the final performance tests don’t introduce unexpected holdups or require additional time to fix flaws, allowing the company to deliver the app according to schedule and gain a competitive advantage in capturing market share and attracting new customers.

Refined code quality

By embedding QA activities, such as performance testing, into the early stages of the software development lifecycle, teams cultivate a quality-centric mindset. This encourages developers to consider performance implications from the outset, ensuring that potential issues are identified and addressed before they become ingrained in the codebase. This approach encourages developers to write cleaner and more efficient code from the start, leading to fewer defects, improved maintainability, and enhanced overall system performance.

Additionally, early feedback allows teams to iterate quickly, refine code, and optimize performance, resulting in higher-quality software products delivered to customers.

Improved reputation

With shift-left performance testing, organizations mitigate the risk of software failures and downtime, thereby enhancing user experience and satisfaction. This commitment to delivering reliable and high-quality IT solutions fosters trust and confidence among customers, strengthening the organization’s reputation and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Ultimately, a positive brand reputation not only attracts new customers but also cultivates loyalty among existing ones, driving long-term business success and growth.

Shift-left testing for better software performance

In brief

Performance testing within a shift-left approach helps organizations strengthen business capabilities and stand out in the IT market.

Among the benefits that companies reap are better software quality, decreased expenditure, faster time to market, refined code quality, and improved reputation.

Want to implement performance testing in the early SDLC stages? Reach out to a1qa’s team for support.

To maintain their competitive edge in 2024 and beyond, telecom companies have to stay ahead of emerging industry technologies. QA serves as a linchpin in this process, helping ensure the smooth implementation of innovations.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the key telco trends for this year and explore a QA strategy to launch high-quality telco software in an era of unprecedented change.

Navigating the trends reshaping telecom industry in 2024

Trend #1. 5G

Surpassing 1.5 billion connections by the end of 2023, 5G has firmly established itself as the fastest-growing mobile broadband technology of recent years. This statistic underscores the immense potential that 5G holds for transforming connectivity worldwide. By 2030, the GSMA professionals predict that 53% of the population will be using 5G, 35% — 4G, 8% — 3G, and 1% — 2G.

Source: The Mobile Economy 2024

The reach of 5G networks continues to expand across various regions from urban centers to remote rural areas while offering ultra-fast speeds, low latency, and high capacity.

Moreover, the advent of 5G is driving innovation in various industries. In healthcare, it facilitates real-time remote surgeries and high-definition video consultations between patients and healthcare professionals. In entertainment, 5G delivers immersive virtual experiences that allow users to enjoy multiplayer games with on-the-fly responsiveness and minimal lags.

As the adoption of 5G-enabled devices and services continues to grow, telecom companies should focus on ensuring seamless network performance, smooth operation of mobile and web applications and computing centers, and strong security to provide customers with the full potential of 5G technology.

Trend #2. Broadband connectivity

2024 marks a significant milestone in the expansion of broadband connectivity. Consumers are witnessing a proliferation of options for accessing the high-speed Internet driven by advancements in terrestrial wireline, terrestrial wireless, and satellite technologies.

Nowadays, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite Internet are gaining momentum, particularly in remote regions. These technologies help offer viable options to traditional wired broadband services, bridge the digital divide, and extend access to previously inaccessible areas.

Trend #3. AI-driven solutions

AI-driven solutions are now becoming increasingly prevalent in the telecommunications industry, enabling operators to:

Optimize network performance. By adjusting routing protocols and network topologies, AI-powered networks can adapt to changing conditions and traffic loads, ensuring consistent user experiences.

Enhance cybersecurity. By analyzing network traffic patterns and identifying suspicious behavior, AI-driven security systems can proactively mitigate cyber attacks, protecting sensitive data and infrastructure from harm.
Deliver personalized services to clients. By leveraging customer data and behavioral insights, AI helps telecom companies tailor service offerings and recommendations to individual preferences, increasing their loyalty and receiving more revenue opportunities. What’s more, with AI seamlessly integrated into chatbots and personalized AI assistance, they can elevate their client support. AI-driven networks enable efficient problem-solving and service sales without human intervention, minimizing operational expenses.
Ensure predictive maintenance. With AI at the core, telcos continuously monitor the state of their equipment, analyzing statuses and identifying anomalies in network performance. By leveraging AI algorithms, they proactively resolve issues before they impact customer experience, reducing downtime and enhancing overall reliability. This data-driven approach allows them to predict potential failures and take proactive measures to address them with the hardware, including cell towers, power lines, and servers in data centers, ensuring seamless operations and uninterrupted service delivery.

Driving successful adoption of telecom trends with the help of QA

QA is indispensable to ensure the successful implementation of telecom trends and the reliability of IT products. Let’s explore key testing types, helping deliver high-quality telco software.

All tests can be devided into two groups:

Functional and non-functional testing

Performance testing

Performance testing holds a pivotal role in guaranteeing the seamless operation of critical systems responsible for delivering telecommunications services. By meticulously subjecting telecom solutions to stress and load tests, companies can ascertain whether they are able to promptly respond to a myriad of subscriber requests. This involves scrutinizing both client- and server-side functionalities, ensuring that vital components, such as billing and CRM systems, efficiently receive and process requests.

Performance checks help telco operators release highly reliable software while delivering exceptional user experiences and maintaining customer satisfaction.

Functional testing

Functional testing ensures that all features of telecom products work as intended. It extends to verifying applications designed for customers, user support systems (chatbots or live chats with operators), back-end software for telecom, data centers, CRMs, ERPs, and additional services (media streaming platforms).

This involves testing various scenarios, inputs, and outputs to verify the correct behavior of the software. For instance, validating the functionality of invoicing processes.

As part of functional testing, UAT helps ensure the seamless integration of new systems, modules, or integrated solutions within telecom businesses. While traditionally associated with third-party integrations, UAT testing extends beyond this scope to encompass newly developed systems or modules as well.

The aim of UAT is to validate business requirements, verify functionalities, and assess user experience across various applications and platforms. For instance, in the integration of self-service portals and mobile apps, UAT testing enables QA teams to simulate real-world usage, such as managing accounts, viewing usage details, and paying bills. Additionally, it allows verifying the usability, performance, and security measures implemented to protect customer data and transactions.

Security testing

Security testing is paramount to safeguard sensitive customer data and safeguard against cyber threats, considering the extensive network and cloud infrastructure involved. Telecom companies should be highly vigilant about potential data leakage and breaches, as they handle end-user financial and personal information. Moreover, with numerous entry points into telecom networks, including interconnected software, like CRMs, billing, and operational systems, comprehensive security testing is a must-have.

By conducting penetration testing, businesses simulate real-world attacks to identify potential weaknesses in telecom systems, such as weak authentication mechanisms or exposed network ports.

To uncover entry points for cybercriminals and assess the safety posture of telco infrastructure, companies can introduce vulnerability scanning tools, including Acunetix, Burp Suite, and Nessus.

Test automation

Telco providers can automate any tests, but it’s more profitable to automate repetitive test scenarios, reducing manual effort and accelerating the QA workflow.

To enhance testing coverage and efficiency, telecom providers leverage automated regression testing. By automating test processes, companies perform more tests in less time, significantly boosting coverage and accuracy while neutralizing the risk of human errors. These automated scripts can be reused repeatedly, optimizing overall testing efforts and ensuring comprehensive coverage across software updates, patches, and configuration changes.

Testing based on the product type

OSS/BSS testing

As OSS and BSS form the backbone of telecom services, it’s mission-critical to enable their seamless running. OSS/BSS testing encompasses a range of QA activities tailored to validate the functionality, reliability, security, and performance of telco systems, which are responsible for key functions, involving billing, customer management, and network operations.

With OSS/BSS checks, businesses also verify the accuracy of billing calculations for various service plans and validate the CRM system to make sure that customer information or service requests are accurately captured and processed.

Migration testing

It’s imperative to test the data and readiness of the system before moving to new OSS/BSS systems, such as billing or CRM platforms. This process involves migrating and validating large volumes of data to ensure seamless integration and prevent disruptions to routine subscriber activities. Additionally, it’s necessary to address security vulnerabilities and optimize performance to uphold uninterrupted subscriber activities.

Cloud testing

Cloud computing plays a pivotal role in modern telecom operations, enabling companies to scale resources up and down, such as networks and servers, as well as storage on-demand. Leveraging cloud infrastructure, telecoms can keep and process vast amounts of user data remotely, ensuring cost efficiency and global reach.

Therefore, businesses can introduce cloud testing to assess the reliability, scalability, and security of telecom products delivered through cloud infrastructure.

With cloud tests, operators can also confirm the security posture of cloud-based telecom solutions, including data encryption, access controls, and compliance with industry standards.

To conclude

The telecommunications landscape is continuously evolving. 5G, broadband connectivity, and AI-driven solutions are set to redefine this sector in 2024.

To implement these trends with confidence and assurance, businesses can encompass a comprehensive QA strategy that involves performance, functional, OSS/BSS, migration, UAT, cloud, security, and automated testing.

Reach out to a1qa’s team to get support in ensuring the high quality of your telecom software.

In 2023, we witnessed a 20% surge in data breaches in the retail industry across the US, highlighting the critical need for robust security measures to safeguard customer data. From Amazon and Home Depot to eBay and Under Armour, the fallout from these threats included eroded customer trust, financial losses, and damaged reputation.

In today’s high-risk landscape, implementing traditional security models isn’t enough to tackle sophisticated cyber incidents. The concept of zero trust (ZT) emerges as a beacon of resilience, offering businesses a proactive approach to fortify their overall safety posture and protect sensitive end-user information.

In this article, we’ll delve into core reasons why retailers should leverage ZT as well as learn hands-on recommendations to enhance resistance to internal and external cyberattacks.

A zero trust concept in retail: 5 reasons to adopt

According to the State of Zero Trust Security by Okta, 97% of surveyed C-level executives, operating in financial, healthcare, government, and other sectors, implemented a ZT security initiative in 2022.

Source: State of Zero Trust Security 2022

Zero trust instills a fundamental shift in mindset, treating every user, device, and network segment as a potential threat until proven otherwise. Its principles include explicit verification to validate based on all available data points, usage of least-privilege access to decrease the risk of unauthorized data exposure, and breach assumption to enhance threat detection and improve defenses.

This approach advocates for strict access controls, continuous authentication, and micro-segmentation to minimize the attack surface and mitigate potential hazards. And it is particularly critical in the retail sector, where the storage of personal and financial clients’ data in different places, including the cloud, can be vulnerable to attacks.

Retail environments often feature complex interconnected systems, ranging from ERP and CRMs to POS systems in physical stores. This interconnectivity increases the susceptibility to threats, such as malicious software infiltrating the POS systems or phishing attacks targeting employees to gain access to sensitive information.

Here are the reasons why retailers should introduce zero trust:

Enhanced security posture. A ZT concept helps companies ensure that all attempts to penetrate the system are rigorously verified while mitigating the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches, such as a hacker attempting to exploit vulnerabilities through the shop’s Wi-Fi network.
Strengthened resilience. By implementing micro-segmentation and enforcing strict access controls, zero trust ensures that customer sensitive information or financial data are isolated from each other, limiting the scope of potential attacks. This helps reduce the overall impact and cost of recovery as well as time to breach detection.
Increased end-user confidence. By safeguarding clients’ sensitive information and preventing leakages, retail businesses uphold their commitment to data privacy and maintain consumer trust, fostering long-term brand loyalty and reputation.
Improved adaptability to dynamic environments. In the era of cloud computing and remote work, ZT allows organizations to safeguard data and resources regardless of the location, network boundary, or device type used in retail, like self-checkouts and cash desks.
Intensified control. Zero trust architectures provide retailers with greater visibility and control over their network traffic and user activity. Through continuous monitoring, they can gain insights into user behaviors, identify anomalous activities, and respond to security incidents in real-time.
Future-proof against emerging threats. By regularly updating and refining safety controls and policies, companies stay ahead of cyber adversaries and timely mitigate the risks posed by new attack vectors and exploitation techniques.

5 tips to ensure robust cyber defense for retail businesses

To fortify defenses against evolving digital threats and safeguard retail operations, we suggest embracing a holistic cybersecurity strategy designed in line with zero trust principles and QA best practices.

Tip #1. Conduct risk assessment

These checks help identify potential system vulnerabilities. By evaluating the possible risks associated with data breaches and unauthorized access early on, retailers can develop targeted security controls and measures to mitigate weaknesses effectively.

Tip #2. Implement stringent access controls and security policies

Retail companies should prioritize incorporating access controls as part of their cybersecurity strategy. By implementing access controls based on user roles, responsibilities, and business needs, they enhance security while maintaining operational efficiency.

Thus, they ensure that only authorized individuals or roles have the necessary permissions. Moreover, with QA at the core, they confirm that access controls are properly configured and consistently enforced across the network, reducing the risk of potential data breaches.

Additionally, introducing robust security policies that govern the frequency of security actions and prioritize staff education about safety measures is crucial for maintaining a proactive approach to cybersecurity.

Tip #3. Adopt test automation for security activities

To optimize security operations and improve overall efficiency, retailers can leverage test automation. By incorporating automated security tests into their workflows, businesses can efficiently scan systems, evaluate permission levels, and identify users with granted permissions. These tests provide detailed reports highlighting any mismatches or potential vulnerabilities, empowering organizations to address issues promptly.

Thus, they streamline routine tasks, including threat detection, incident response, and compliance monitoring while freeing up valuable time and resources for core activities.

Tip #4. Develop a comprehensive incident response plan

It’s mission-critical to meticulously outline procedures for detecting, responding to, and recovering from cybersecurity incidents in line with zero trust principles. The plan should also include a list of possible risks, probability of their appearance, and actions to prevent them or mitigate their outcomes.

By defining clear roles and responsibilities for incident response team members and establishing robust communication channels for reporting and escalating incidents, businesses ensure coordinated reactions to security breaches.

Tip #5. Provide safety awareness training for employees

Organizations can empower their workforce to recognize and respond to potential safety risks. For that, they should educate all specialists — administrators, business representatives, store managers, and consultants — about the principles of ZT, the overall company security measures, common cyber threats, and best practices for data protection.

Regular security awareness training sessions foster a culture of vigilance across the organization. To evaluate the effectiveness of training programs and enhance their employees’ readiness to combat digital incidents, organizations can introduce social engineering practices, like simulated phishing exercises, baiting, business email compromise, and quid pro quo.

In a nutshell

The imperative for retail businesses to fortify their cybersecurity defenses has never been more urgent. The interconnected nature of digital operations coupled with the growing sophistication of cyber threats requires a comprehensive approach to security.

For that, companies can conduct risk assessment, implement stringent access controls and security policies, adopt test automation for security activities, develop a comprehensive incident response plan, and promote safety awareness training for employees.

Planning to enhance the security level of your software products? Get hold of a1qa’s team and obtain professional support.

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a transformative force, reshaping organizations of all shapes and sizes across the globe.

Consider Google Cloud’s groundbreaking initiative to introduce a generative AI (genAI) search tool tailored for healthcare professionals. It facilitates access to patient information that’s often scattered across disparate systems and formats, promising to streamline workflows and improve patient care.

Another team of researchers at the University of Toronto has engineered Prote i nSGM — a revolutionary genAI system that creates novel and authentic proteins and is subsequently validated for efficacy by the OmegaFold AI model.

Additionally, McKinsey experts observe that 75% of the value brought by AI is attributed to software engineering, customer operations, marketing and sales, as well as R&D.

In this article, let’s focus on how AI helps advance quality assurance and testing, enabling organizations to enhance test coverage, improve accuracy, and decrease QA expenditure.

A winning combination: maximizing the benefits of software testing with AI

With AI on board, companies are able to streamline their QA workflows while improving software quality in a hastened manner and enhancing customer satisfaction. Embracing AI-driven testing offers a myriad of benefits, including:

Faster time to market. By automating test case generation and prioritizing tests intelligently, AI tools aid to streamline QA processes, allowing companies to accelerate the release of high-quality software products to market.
Curtailed QA expenses. AI-driven testing helps replace some routine tasks, thus reducing the need for manual intervention. It allows companies to minimize labor costs associated with testing activities and mitigate the risk of costly rework caused by defects identified late in the development process.
Enhanced accuracy. AI algorithms can identify patterns and forecast potential flaws, leading to improved reliability and accuracy in testing results.
Improved test coverage. GenAI can generate diverse test scenarios and synthetic data, enabling businesses to validate system behavior and enhance test coverage.

5 steps to successfully incorporate AI in QA processes

Implementing AI in business operations can yield significant benefits for organizations, including improved customer relationships (64%), increased sales (60%), and optimized budget (59%). However, it requires careful planning and execution.

Advancing QA and software testing processes with AI

Source: Forbes Advisor

Here are 5 essential steps to ensure a smooth integration of AI within QA activities.

Step #1. Assess the readiness of your company

First and foremost, businesses should evaluate the current state of software testing practices within the organization and determine the readiness to adopt AI-driven methodologies. This assessment should include:

Estimate the existing testing infrastructure, team expertise, and cultural acceptance of new technologies.
Define whether the company has the necessary resources and capabilities to painlessly introduce AI within QA workflows.
Set realistic expectations and develop a roadmap that aligns with the organization’s objectives.
Identify potential risks upfront and create strategies to mitigate them.

Step #2. Clearly define objectives

By setting clear goals, organizations can align their efforts and resources toward achieving specific outcomes, such as enhancing software quality, increasing operational efficiency, accelerating an IT solution launch.

Here are some recommendations on how to effectively determine objectives:

Identify the specific QA areas where AI can add the most value, like defect prediction or test prioritization. For example, a company may introduce AI to automate the generation of test cases based on code changes to reduce the manual effort required and improve test coverage.
Set measurable goals to track progress and evaluate success. They should be concrete, achievable, and relevant.
Involve key stakeholders across the organization early in the process to ensure that objectives are tailored to their needs and expectations.

Step #3. Select fit-for-purpose AI tools

To maximize the benefits of AI within QA practices, businesses should evaluate different AI-powered testing platforms, tools, and frameworks available in the market and consider such factors as functionality, ease of integration, and cost-effectiveness.

To minimize disruption and streamline the adoption process, they can choose AI solutions that seamlessly integrate with your existing workflows and are compatible with their environment, version control systems, and CI/CD pipelines.

Step #4. Provide training for the team

To ensure that team members understand how to use AI technologies and tools effectively to enhance testing processes, companies should invest in their training and upskilling as well as provide ongoing support to help them overcome any arising challenges.

Step #5. Establish metrics to monitor progress

Firstly, KPIs provide clear benchmarks against which progress and success can be measured, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives. Secondly, they offer valuable insights into the effectiveness of AI integration in QA workflows, allowing for informed decision-making and better resource allocation.

By tracking specific metrics (test coverage, defect detection rate, or test execution time), businesses can identify areas for optimization and continuous improvement.

To wrap up

As AI continues to evolve and mature, its role in software testing is increasingly indispensable, empowering organizations to stay agile, competitive, and resilient in an ever-changing digital landscape.

However, its adoption may be challenging. To address obstacles on the path, companies can follow these 5 steps: assess the readiness of your company, clearly define objectives, select fit-for-purpose AI tools, provide training for the team, and establish metrics to monitor progress.

Planning to enhance your QA practices? Contact a1qa’s team and get professional support.

In the first part of our article, we revealed how companies could obtain their business objectives by focusing on QA trends, such as:

Shifting beyond traditional test automation to maximize the benefits
Embracing Agile practices to strengthen competitive edge
Prioritizing value over speed to drive strategic business outcomes.

Let’s look at three more software testing methods that are paramount in 2024!

Trend #4. Adopt a security-first approach to fortify business resilience

With the average cost of a data breach coming to $16 million last year, 47% of the World Quality Report (WQR) 2023-24 respondents ranked cybersecurity as a top priority for 2024 to prevent potential system vulnerabilities and improve its overall reliability.

But sensitive data failures aren’t just about financial losses. In 2023, 88% of businesses faced reputational damage, 87% — encountered business continuity issues, 86% — lost their competitive advantage, and 79% — were unable to acquire and retain employees.

Source: Annual Data Expose Report 2023

So, what QA best practices can help companies cultivate a culture of safety awareness and mitigate the risk of cyber threats?

Integrate security testing into the CI/CD pipeline to detect weak points early on and swiftly remediate them while reducing the expenses associated with addressing flaws in post-production. Additionally, it allows you to run automated tests on code changes, build creation, and ensure consistent testing across diverse scenarios.
Implement comprehensive security policies, covering such aspects as password strength and rotation frequency, access control levels, safe document handling practices, and regular security checks. This assists in fortifying company’s defenses and promoting a culture of vigilance against potential threats. To quickly respond to cyber events, businesses should regularly update an incident response plan and test security protocols.
Leverage DevOps practices to establish security perimeters and risk-free environments. This approach ensures continuous monitoring and mitigation of potential vulnerabilities, enhancing overall safety posture.
Adopt security-focused code reviews to create robust processes, prevent loopholes in the software and systematically scrutinize code for weaknesses.
Conduct regular security audits, including penetration testing, vulnerability and compliance assessments, to evaluate the effectiveness of existing safety measures, protocols, and software. As hackers develop new sophisticated methods to penetrate systems, it’s mission-critical to ensure that the audits are designed in line with the latest trends.
Establish an education program to ensure employees adhere to security protocols and remain informed and vigilant.

Trend #5. Introduce cloud testing to improve software reliability

Eliminating the need for significant upfront investments in physical infrastructure, deploying applications and services faster, reducing time to market, scaling up or down based on demand — these are some of the core reasons why businesses adopt cloud servers.

As migrating to the cloud alone doesn’t guarantee system security and reliability, 82% of WQR respondents consider cloud testing a must-have. It is indispensable to validate the functional and non-functional aspects of applications in the cloud environment and ensure they withstand unexpected outages and cybersecurity threats. Companies may also introduce migration testing to guarantee seamless data transitions, prevent downtime, and exclude information losses within the cloud.

The final choice of a testing strategy depends on specific business needs, existing infrastructure, budget considerations, and the desired level of control. For instance, 58% of organizations selected a hybrid option due to cost optimization in 2023.

Trend #6. Stick to QA sustainability to minimize environmental impact

In the pursuit of technological excellence, the imperative to align quality engineering practices with environmental sustainability stands as a crucial trend.

Recognizing the escalating impact of IT on the planet, 97% of companies actively integrate sustainability into their QA processes to prevent environmental harm (WQR). While 2,016 C-level executives surveyed by Deloitte have acknowledged that it also has a positive impact on brand reputation (52%), customer satisfaction (44%), and employee well-being (42%).

So, how can organizations seamlessly weave sustainability into their QA practices, ensuring a commitment to environmental responsibility across the entire software development lifecycle? Below are some recommendations to follow.

Tip #1. Develop and track comprehensive sustainability metrics for the organization

Having clear sustainability KPIs enables companies to quantitatively assess their efforts, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate progress toward reducing their overall environmental footprint.

Tip #2. Adopt test automation

Test automation can significantly reduce the environmental impact of software testing by streamlining and optimizing the QA process. While creating automated scripts may initially require energy, the long-term benefits include minimized manual intervention, resulting in lowered energy consumption associated with human-operated QA activities.

Tip #3. Implement eco-friendly test environments

Leveraging eco-friendly solutions, such as virtualization, containerization, and emulators, aids to reduce the need for physical hardware, decrease energy expenditure, and contribute to a more sustainable software development lifecycle. Thus, businesses promote resource efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and foster a culture of eco-conscious QA practices within the company.

Tip #4. Rely on shift-left testing

By shifting testing earlier in the development lifecycle, organizations identify and address issues sooner and can reduce resource utilization by minimizing the need for extensive testing later on.

In a nutshell

To stay competitive in a fast-changing business landscape and attain the desired outcomes in the coming year, companies may rely on critical QA trends: shifting beyond traditional test automation, embracing Agile practices, prioritizing value over speed, adopting a security-first approach, introducing cloud testing, and sticking to QA sustainability.

By integrating these practices into their processes, organizations meet the evolving demands of the IT market, reduce operational expenditure, accelerate software releases, and boost CX.

Connect with a1qa’s team to get professional QA support tailored to your specific needs.

Whether your business is navigating cost-saving endeavors, striving to generate more revenue, or on the brink of a transformative pivot, the role of QA is paramount to achieve these results.

By employing software testing trends that will shape this year, companies can tailor their unique pathways and efficiently attain the desired goals.

Let’s get to the point!

Trend #1. Shift beyond traditional test automation to maximize the benefits

By reducing costs, streamlining testing efforts, and improving accuracy, test automation has become a cornerstone in modern software development and QA processes. Moreover, the respondents of the World Quality Report (WQR) 2023-24 state that with automation 54% of them mitigated risks, 52% — enhanced test efficiency, and 51% — decreased the number of live defects in the previous year.

By leveraging test automation, businesses can rapidly execute repetitive and monotonous tests, thus saving hours of manual effort. This accelerates QA workflows, allowing for faster releases of high-quality software and rapid adaptation to changing market demands.

While traditional test automation brings plenty of benefits to the table, companies can maximize them by implementing additional toolsets, namely AI-based and low code/no code.

With AI-driven test automation, organizations have a possibility to:

Enhance software testing processes. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI-based automation identifies complex patterns of IT solutions’ behavior and can predict potential defects at the initial SDLC stages.
Refine test maintenance. AI-powered automation can adapt to changes in the software and adjust test scripts as the IT product evolves. This capability aids businesses to reduce the labor hours required by QA experts for script updates, ensuring that the testing process remains efficient in the face of continuous development and modifications.
Optimize test execution. By intelligently selecting and prioritizing tests based on several factors, like code changes and historical defect data, AI algorithms streamline test case execution. Thus, companies speed up test runs, focus on high-impact areas, and pay attention to the weakest parts of the software. This approach makes it possible to identify bugs early in the SDLC, contributing to faster releases and shorter time-to-market.

Although AI-driven test automation holds tremendous potential in revolutionizing QA workflows with enhanced speed and efficiency, there are notable nuances to consider. For example, AI models require ongoing monitoring and refinement to adapt to evolving software changes. In addition, implementing AI-empowered automation involves significant upfront costs related to infrastructure, training, and tool adoption.

Low code test automation provides organizations with:

Simplified project start. Low code/no code automation provides a streamlined starting point for projects, allowing teams with diverse skillsets to seamlessly introduce test automation. This accessibility facilitates a smoother onboarding process, accelerating the integration of automated testing into projects without the barriers posed by complex coding requirements. Moreover, its out-of-the-box structure simplifies test creation and execution, reducing the time and efforts required to initiate and manage QA activities.
Accelerated test script development. With no code/low code automation at the core, businesses can create and execute test scripts without the need for extensive programming skills. This speeds up their writing, allowing teams to faster respond to changing requirements and tight deadlines.

Low code automation still requires QA automation specialists to assist from a technical perspective, including the execution framework support. In contrast to traditional test automation solutions built on open-source free toolsets, codeless tools often come with a price tag, potentially offsetting the perceived budget savings.

By adopting modern test automation methods in 2024, organizations will be able to launch a high-quality IT product at speed while meeting (or even exceeding) end-user needs, reducing operational expenditure, and minimizing risks. However, to attain these goals, companies should carefully consider both the advantages and challenges associated with evolving testing approaches and align them with the specific requirements of the project.

Trend #2. Continue embracing Agile practices to strengthen competitive edge

A staggering 80% of companies worldwide are now leveraging Agile practices. The driving force behind this surge lies in the business benefits it brings, with 52% of respondents accelerating time to market and 31% mitigating risks through Agile implementation.

However, this transformative journey isn’t without its challenges. A significant hurdle for many organizations is a skill gap: 60% of the 1,750 IT executives interviewed for WQR grappled with a lack of coding abilities and 57% of them faced a lack of knowledge of Agile techniques.

Source: World Quality Report 2023-24

To address these issues, companies should:

Invest in training programs to empower QA teams with the right skillset, enhance their coding competences, and improve their ability to effectively contribute to Agile processes.
Introduce a shift-left testing approach to identify and rectify software bugs at the nascent SDLC stages, thereby eliminating expensive post-launch defect fixes and refining the overall IT products’ quality.
Integrate with DevOps/DevSecOps to foster a seamless CI/CD pipeline, execute automated test scripts on different environments, ensuring faster delivery of reliable applications and the adoption of security practices throughout the entire software development lifecycle.

Trend #3. Prioritize value over speed to drive strategic business outcomes

Since many companies are already moving at a fast pace, their priorities have shifted from speed to identifying risks and minimizing them, maintaining financial stability, and securing organizational reputation.

To shift towards a result-oriented mindset and focus on client-centricity, 71% of companies incorporated value stream mapping (VMS) in 2023, as per WQR 2023-24. This approach helps analyze, streamline, and optimize business workflows (from initial idea to final software launch) to boost customer experience.

In part 2 of the article, we’ll explore more QA and software testing trends, helping you attain the desired business objectives in 2024. Stay tuned!

To get professional QA assistance in enhancing your software quality, reach out to a1qa’s team.

As the curtains draw on 2023, it’s time to cast a retrospective gaze over the a1qa highlights during the past twelve months.

Let’s embark on this journey of reflection together!

Celebrating 20th anniversary

This year, we have commemorated a notable milestone — our 20th anniversary. Over this time, we have expanded from a small IT company to a global QA and software testing provider, helping clients attain their desired objectives through independent quality assurance.

Continuously growing and expanding the horizons

In a strategic move to better serve our global customers and provide them with tailored QA services, we expanded our footprint, opening new offices in diverse regions, including Central Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and beyond.

Moreover, we’ve reached 15,000+ followers on our LinkedIn community, serving as a testament to the growing trust of clients and partners in our industry leadership.

Exchanging multi-year QA expertise

As we strive to spread QA knowledge far and wide, we organize exclusive roundtables for IT executives and share our experiences on external platforms.

Our online roundtable sessions help attendees exchange personal cases and best practices while delving into pressing QA topics, such as automated and shift-left testing, QA trends, ways of QA budget optimization, QA for complex software, to name a few. The insights help attendees improve IT products’ quality, mitigate business risks, speed up applications releases, and strengthen their competitive edge.

This year, we have also launched a1qa tech voice series — a1qa’s executives share their in-depth experience in quality engineering, innovation, and management. They have discussed the pros and cons of much-debated technologies, IT leadership, and ways to ensure seamless performance over the peak end of year sales period.

Sharing valuable QA insights at the international events and conferences

a1qa experts attend global events to highlight the pivotal role of QA for modern software and foster collaborative relationships that transcend geographical boundaries.

In 2023, one of the most visited locations of the a1qa team was Dubai. Here, we participated in five exhibitions: Arab Health 2023, GISEC Global 2023, Seamless Middle East & Saudi Arabia, GITEX GLOBAL, and Dubai Air Show.

Our experts were excited to discuss with industry leaders how to elevate quality of eHealth IT solutions, cutting-edge technologies, eCommerce and banking software, and aviation products while enhancing their security level.

2023-year-end-recap:-a-journey-through-the-a1qa-milestones

We have attended conferences in different parts of North America: in Los Angeles — TECHSPO Los Angeles 2023, NAB Show, MWC Las Vegas 2023, and Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. In Denver, we have visited CEDIA Expo 2023 and SC23. Other exhibitions on this continent include Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Digital Transformation Week in Santa Clara, Collision 2023 in Toronto, Open Source in Finance Forum 2023 in New York, and The IT Nation in Orlando.

Our specialists established valuable networks, dived into top-notch innovations across a variety of industries, including gaming, media and entertainment, BFSI, and emphasized the importance of QA for releasing high-end software at speed without compromising quality.

That’s not all: we have been to European events — MWC Barcelona 2023, eCommerce Expo 2023, SiGMA World Europe Malta, and Digital Transformation Week Global 2023. With our unwavering mission of showing IT reps how QA helps accelerate IT product launches, boost business growth, mitigate risks, and stay ahead of the market competition.

Receiving international acknowledgement

Through unwavering dedication to excellence, we garnered global acclaim from an array of esteemed and independent experts in 2023. These accolades validate our position as a trusted QA partner and reinforce our pledge to maintain a robust standing in the global software testing market.

By consistently earning recognition and securing positions in top industry lists, we strive to instill confidence in our clients and help them deliver high-quality IT solutions to end users.

Here’s a snapshot of this year’s achievements:

The experts of Industry Eagles Awards 2023 acknowledged a1qa a Silver Award Winner in the IT Project of the Year category.
Clutch bestowed a winner status upon a1qa in the Penetration Testing and Software Testing nominations.
Everest Group, a global research firm that provides businesses with strategic insights, named a1qa a Major Contender and listed in the Next-Generation Quality Engineering Services and Quality Engineering Specialist Services PEAK Matrix® Assessments 2023.
For the fourth consecutive year, the judging panel of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals placed a1qa on the 2023 Global Outsourcing 100 and the GO 100 sub-list in the Information/Communications Technology area.
Gartner — an IT analysis and consulting organization delivering objective data for executives — recognized a1qa as a Pure-Play Testing Service Provider in the Market Guide for Application Testing Services.
The North American Software Testing Awards named a1qa a triple finalist in the following categories: Best Test Automation Project – Functional, Testing Team of the Year, and Leading Supplier of Products and Services.
GoodFirms’ judges included a1qa in several reputable lists: Top Automation Testing Companies, Top Application Security Testing Companies, Top Performance Testing Companies, Top Software Testing Companies, and Top Software Testing Companies in the USA.
Software Testing News positioned a1qa in the annual Leading Software Testing Providers rating.
SuperbCompanies acknowledged a1qa in the 2023 Top Software Testing Companies list.

As we reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, we’d like to express our deepest gratitude to our dedicated colleagues for their hard work and our valued clients and partners for their trust and collaboration.

We wish everyone a joyful Holiday Season and a New Year filled with success and prosperity!

With heartfelt appreciation and warmest regards,
The a1qa team 💜

As we approach the culmination of 2023, it’s time to take an opportunity and reflect on the wealth of knowledge that has transpired during a1qa’s online roundtables.

Let’s cut to the chase!

Unveiling the importance of a1qa’s roundtables for IT leaders

Recognizing the paramount importance of fostering a dynamic exchange of QA insights and best practices, a1qa hosts a series of monthly online roundtables designed for top executives.

These exclusive sessions help bring together diverse IT experts to deliberate on topical QA-related issues, such as quality engineering trends, test automation, shift-left testing principles, among others.

Roundup of 2023 a1qa’s sessions

The first quarter roundtables overview

During this period, participants discussed three relevant topics — “A practical view on QA trends for 2023,” “How to get the most of test automation,” and “Dev+QA: constructive cooperation on the way to project success.”

Analyzing QA trends helps business executives to proactively shape their QA strategies, ensuring they are in sync with the industry’s evolving landscape. While automation assists them in accelerating IT product’s delivery, enhancing its quality, and reducing operational expenditure.

Also, the attendees talked about the best moment for QA to step into the SDLC stages and methods to make the communication between Dev and QA more efficient.

The second quarter roundtables overview

This period was marked by three vibrant conversations:

“QA for complex software: tips for enhancing the quality” — IT peers shared the challenges they encounter when testing sophisticated systems and the ways to overcome them.
“How to release a quality product within a limited budget” — C-level reps exchanged practical experience on mapping software quality expectations to a QA strategy and optimizing QA costs.
“How to improve QA processes with shift-left testing principles” — participants discussed how shifting QA workflows left allows businesses to identify and fix defects early on while speeding up the release of top-quality applications.

The third quarter roundtables overview

“A closer look at the field of automated testing” took center stage during the 3rd quarter, emphasizing how to derive more values from test automation supported by AI and behavior-driven development.

The fourth quarter roundtables overview

During the last quarter of 2023, IT executives have already engaged in two insightful conversations — “How to organize testing and increase confidence when starting a new project” and “Rough deadlines: how to deliver better results in less time.”

At the October event, the attendees revealed the best QA approach to choose to be confident in a project’s success from the outset, optimize ROI, and reduce business risks. The November roundtable helped the participants voice their ideas and share real-life cases on meeting tight deadlines without compromising software quality.

Thanks for being part of our roundtables in 2023!

To sum up

Our journey through the diverse and insightful roundtable discussions hosted by a1qa’s professionals with in-depth QA and software testing expertise throughout 2023 has been a testament to the company’s commitment to fostering knowledge, collaboration, and innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of IT.

From exploring emerging QA trends to delving into the nuances of automated testing, each session has played a pivotal role in helping IT executives shape future strategies.

Need support in refining the quality of your IT solutions? Reach out to a1qa’s team.

We are thrilled to announce that a1qa has made its mark in the Next-Generation Quality Engineering (QE) Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023 by Everest Group.

In this blog, we delve into the significance of a1qa’s inclusion in the Next-Generation QE Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023.

About Everest Group

Everest Group is a global research firm that provides strategic insights to help companies navigate complex business challenges. By conducting in-depth research and analysis across varied industries, Everest Group assists organizations in making more confident decisions when choosing IT partners.

Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix® overview

Everest Group designed PEAK Matrix® — a proprietary tool that evaluates service providers’ market impact, vision, and capability in a particular domain.

The Next-Generation QE Services PEAK Matrix® focuses specifically on assessing companies providing cutting-edge solutions in quality engineering and software testing.

So, how did a1qa secure a place in this distinguished report?

a1qa listed in the Next-Generation Quality Engineering Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023

a1qa’s inclusion in the PEAK Matrix® is a result of our unwavering commitment to delivering top-notch software testing services to clients worldwide. Our journey to this prestigious recognition can be attributed to several key factors:

Factor #1. Next-gen QE services

We offer a comprehensive suite of testing services from continuous and performance testing to QA consulting and test automation as well as help customers ensure seamless operation of web/mobile, blockchain, IoT, and cloud solutions of any business logic complexity.

Factor #2. Client-centric approach

We prioritize understanding the unique requirements of each client, tailoring our services to address their specific challenges. We also provide them with fit-for-purpose QE activities to cover any arising demand.

Factor #3. Flexibility

We can quickly ramp up and scale down the QE teams depending on the changing project circumstances to close any expertise gaps and meet customers’ objectives on time.

Factor #4. Process maturity

We follow ISTQB-based workflows and requirements outlined in ISO 9001/27001 standards to ensure transparency, consistency, and reliability in delivering high-quality QE solutions.

Factor #5. Strong in-house culture of excellence

An internal Academy, CoEs, and R&D labs help a1qa’s experts continuously grow professionally, upgrade technical skills, and accumulate best practices to improve testing efficiency.

Considering all these factors, Everest Group’s professionals recognized a1qa as a Major Contender in the PEAK Matrix®.

a1qa has been included in the Next-Generation Quality Engineering Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023 by Everest Group

To conclude

a1qa’s acknowledgement as a Major Contender in the Next-Generation Quality Engineering Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2023 stands as a testament to delivering high-quality QE services to customers.

By embracing next-gen technologies, adhering to a client-centric approach, offering flexibility and process maturity, nurturing strong internal culture of excellence, a1qa reaffirms its position as one of the leading QE providers in the ever-evolving landscape of software testing.

Get hold of a1qa’s team in case you need professional QA support in enhancing your software quality.

We have achieved a remarkable feat by securing finalist positions in three categories at the North American Software Testing Awards.

This prestigious program invites companies, teams, and individuals from across North America to showcase their exceptional achievements in 12 distinct categories. a1qa was recognized by the judging panel in three of them:

Best Test Automation Project – Functional
Testing Team of the Year
Leading Supplier of Products and Services.

Let’s take a closer look at the projects that helped a1qa reach the finals!

Best Test Automation Project – Functional category

The client, a leading supplier of lab equipment, analytical instruments, and software for scientists, reached out to a1qa’s support in cutting testing time and speeding up their IT solutions’ delivery.

To aid the customer in attaining the desired business objectives, the a1qa team:

Shifted the client’s team from the traditional Waterfall model to Agile in order to optimize the client’s QA processes as well as allow early detection of bugs and release working software faster.
Automated regression testing to save hundreds of manual hours effort, enable a regular release cadence, improve code quality, and minimize associated risks.
Conducted functional and automated performance QA activities to enhance the quality of IT products and ensure they can handle high loads.

Recognizing a1qa’s proficiency in test automation, the judges have bestowed them a finalist position in the Best Test Automation Project – Functional category.

Testing Team of the Year category

To enter the Testing Team of the Year category, a1qa submitted a project carried out for a well-known US-based software developer of a 3D avatar social app.

The team of a1qa’s engineers and a manager were assigned to help the client cope with the increasing workload under pressing deadlines, efficiently release new features, enable failsafe operation of software that leverages 3D technology, and grow revenue.

They delved into the nuances of software operation, integrated into the client’s Scrum-based workflows, and provided the following extensive QA support:

Performed functional testing to enable uninterrupted release of high-priority and complicated IT solution’s features.
Improved existing test automation processes by migrating to a new framework, establishing integrating with TestRail, writing tests, reviewing code, and applying AWS Device Farm — all to optimize operational costs and speed up testing cycles.
Aided in rolling out high-quality and reliable software, contributing to revenue growth.

Leading Supplier of Products and Services category

To be a finalist in this category, a1qa has demonstrated that customers are at the core of its business. More than just words, we thoroughly analyze business needs, quickly initiate projects, join a project at any SDLC stage, prioritize customer needs throughout the entire development life cycle, and suggest enhancing QA processes on the projects if there’s space for improvement – all to meet set clients’ business objectives.

We incorporate ISTQB-based processes and ISO 9001/27001 standards to effectively manage projects, protect clients’ data, ensure high process transparency, and always deliver services of the highest quality.

To cope with any arising concern of its clients, a1qa offers a comprehensive suite of QA services and regularly develops tailored, industry-based QA solutions to help clients attain multi-step business objectives, such as digital transformation or implementation of Web 3.0 software.

The company swiftly responds to changes and ensures business continuity regardless of the circumstances. It was demonstrated during the pandemic — a1qa seamlessly transitioned to a work-from-home model and designed a training program for each project, so any team rotations are smooth and quick, enabling uninterrupted service delivery.

Flexibility is another pivotal aspect of our service, with a pool of over 1,100+ QA engineers performing projects for companies across 10+ industries. A unique scaling approach allows increasing the team size by up to 29 times, ensuring adaptability to evolving project requirements.

a1qa also provides quick access to specialists with the required level of expertise and thus helps its clients save costs as they don’t need to spend time and financial resources on onboarding and educating internal staff. To be precise, a1qa cultivates a culture of excellence through continuous upskilling. The a1qa Academy offers over 100+ tailored courses, enhancing competencies in high-demand areas, such as AI in test automation, advanced SQL, and cloud-based CIs.

Given this holistic approach to delivering QA services, 90% of our clients choose to cooperate with them on subsequent projects.

Therefore, the judges positioned a1qa as a finalist in the Leading Supplier of Products and Services nomination.

Final note

Entering three prestigious categories at the North American Software Testing Awards serves a testament to a1qa’s commitment to delivering high-quality QA services and providing value to clients across the globe.

Contact a1qa’s experts today and discover how they can help you elevate your software quality.

To mark World Quality Day, celebrated every second Thursday in November, let’s embark on a journey to into 6 reasons why businesses should take exceptional care of software quality.

So, without further ado!

Why companies shouldn’t neglect the quality of it products

Reason #1. Enhanced brand reputation

Consider this example: a company has released an eCommerce solution that frequently goes down during pre-holiday season sales due to the influx of shoppers, resulting in cart abandonment and lost transactions. Unhappy buyers do not bring any profit and leave negative reviews that instantly go viral and influence the opinions of potential clients.

Let’s also take a look at another case. Users flock to a streaming platform in anticipation of an enjoyable and uninterrupted viewing journey, but encounter persistent navigation glitches, buffering issues, and video freezing mid-playback. Results? Reputational harm, requiring the company to invest in significant software quality improvements.

To prevent such situations, I always suggest businesses incorporating QA processes from the initial SDLC stages. They identify errors earlier and so release high-end applications, providing positive and reliable customer experiences.

A solid reputation allows an organization to stand out among its competitors and create a favorable brand image. Moreover, satisfied clients are more likely to make repeat purchases, driving business revenue.

Reason #2. Reduced post-release expenditure

Identifying and eliminating defects at the development phase is much cheaper than addressing them after post-launch. If a buggy product gets into the hands of end users, it may involve costly emergency fixes. For example, a critical vulnerability discovered after going live may require immediate action, incurring unforeseen patching and incident response expenses.

If the fault appears in a financial application, the system may charge incorrect fees. This may result in compensation claims or even worse, regulatory fines.

In addition, relying on quality control allows businesses to prevent extra expenses for rework, like expensive architectural changes of the software.

Reason #3. Improved customer retention and satisfaction

QA plays a pivotal role in revealing and rectifying app bugs before they reach the end user. Thus, businesses ensure a seamless and trouble-free experience for clients while meeting or even exceeding their expectations. Later, satisfied customers become loyal brand advocates, recommending the organization’s IT products to others and contributing to business growth.

6-top-reasons-why-business-should-invest-in-software-quality

#4. Reinforced cybersecurity

In an era marked by the growing complexity of digital threats, companies can’t afford to overlook the paramount importance of software cybersecurity. A data breach or a privacy incident can erode confidence and tarnish the company’s reputation.

With QA at the core of their business strategies, they:

Uncover security concerns
Ensure high protection of confidential data (end-user information, financial records, addresses, e-mails) and prevent its compromise
Strengthen relationships with customers, boost their trust, and reduce churn rates
Avoid disruption of business operations, downtime, and revenue loss
Adhere to industry regulations, remain compliant, and avert costly legal consequences.

Reason #5. Accelerated software delivery

High-quality software is a catalyst for speeding up time-to-market due to streamlining development processes and minimizing delays associated with bug fixes and rework.

It allows businesses to respond to market demands more efficiently, ultimately enabling them to capture opportunities faster.

Reason #6. Simplified development processes and facilitated introduction of new features

When quality is a central focus, software architecture and design are typically more robust and flexible. This means that the existing codebase is less likely to present conflicts while companies smoothly integrate new features into IT solutions.

Moreover, rigorous QA practices help identify and resolve potential bugs in novel functionality during the SDLC phase, reducing the risk of post-launch problems. This approach negates costly rework and user dissatisfaction as well as minimizes disruptions.

Who can help you reach software quality excellence

While many businesses have in-house QA teams, 92% of G2000 companies opt for IT outsourcing. They get no more than:

Domain-specific expertise. External specialists possess extensive QA and technical knowledge and a deep understanding of the latest QA methodologies, helping set up efficient QA workflows and enhance software quality.
Cost reduction. Businesses avoid expenses associated with hiring, educating, and maintaining an internal QA team, such as salaries, equipment, and infrastructure.
Focus on core competences. By entrusting the QA function to third-party experts, companies allocate their resources, time, and talent toward their main activities, such as software development or customer engagement. They enhance productivity and excel in their key areas of expertise, ultimately driving growth.
Scalability and flexibility. As business requirements change, QA outsourcing can easily adapt to accommodate evolving needs. It provides flexibility, allowing businesses to scale their testing efforts up or down as needed.

Summing up

The six reasons we’ve explored with you in this article underscore the profound impact of IT product’s quality on businesses and their ability to thrive in a competitive landscape. I hope this article was useful for you.

If you need professional support to release high-end applications and attain the desired business goals, contact a1qa’s team.

On a final note, I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to the global IT community on the World Quality Day!

Thank you for your tireless work and diligence in ensuring that software products meet the highest quality standards and help businesses grow.

eCommerce sales are steadily growing. While in 2021 the market size totaled $5.2 trillion, by 2026, it’s projected to reach $8.1 trillion.

As the number of digital shoppers increases (they comprise 33% of the population!), businesses strive to provide an unrivaled shopping experience.

The research by Baymard Institute shows that approximately 70% of people abandon their shopping carts due to an app’s poor functioning. And some of the competitors earn more.

With this article, we want to help you outperform them. Explore 7 types of testing to release defect-free mobile commerce solutions:

Functional testing to ensure flawless software operation
Performance testing to ease congestion
Cybersecurity testing to prevent data breaches
Compatibility testing to provide consistent app experience
Integration testing to seamlessly merge software components
Usability testing to enhance user experience
Test automation to accelerate software releases.

Functional testing to ensure flawless software operation

Functional tests help scrutinize that key software elements (main and description pages, product categories, shopping cart, search, filtering, sorting) operate like clockwork. They also allow spotting and fixing defects in the search bar, forms, and payment gateways before the launch.

With this type of testing, companies, provide enjoyable end-user experiences, and make sure that customers can navigate, select, and purchase items without roadblocks.

Perfomance testing to ease congestion

Have many of your consumers left your app because it was too slow?

90% of people abandoned websites in 2020. And the same is true for mobile solutions.

Fast-loading pages, images appearing on the screen in the blink of an eye, and smooth software operation under high traffic, especially during holiday seasons like Black Friday, are just a few usual buyers’ expectations. If you fail to fulfill these demands, 57% of users will choose to shop from a competitor.

From idea to buying: 7 testing types to make your mobile eCommerce solutions flawless

Source: Retail Systems Research

Conducting performance testing aids to:

Check whether the system handles the target load
Verify the platform’s behavior in extreme conditions
Test the program’s performance under various network conditions (3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi)
Measure the software response times during page loads, search queries, and checkout processes
Assess how the app handles multiple users performing actions simultaneously.

Cybersecurity testing to prevent data breaches

73% of eCommerce companies interviewed consider security to be a major business challenge. It’s no surprise why, just look at this example.

A year ago, cybercriminals gained unauthorized access to SHEIN’s, the online fast-fashion retailer, payment systems and placed the credit card data of 39 million customers for sale on the dark web. The result? The brand’s owner was fined $1.9 million.

Virtual stores keep large amounts of private details about users, such as home and office addresses, debit and credit card data, buying history. Even a single breach can have devastating consequences.

Adopting cybersecurity testing is the way to identify vulnerabilities within the app as well as ensure all sensitive data is well-safeguarded against theft or unauthorized access.

Compatibility testing to provide consistent app experience

Shoppers access eCommerce IT solutions from an assortment of mobile devices, each running on different operating systems.

How to protect your solutions against all of that? That’s where compatibility testing comes in, allowing organizations to guarantee that the app functions smoothly across various devices, browsers, OSs, and their multiple combinations.

Integration testing to seamlessly merge software components

Mobile solutions for eCommerce often rely on interconnected components: payment gateways, customer databases, inventory management, order tracking, third-party APIs, CRM and CMS systems. To ensure that they work in harmony and the data is transferred accurately, we suggest focusing on integration tests to eliminate transaction failures and costly breakdowns in production. Good one if you have a goal to repeat visits and purchases.

Usability testing to enhance user experience

No one wants to spend endless hours looking for their desired items due to poor search functionality. An intuitive, user-friendly interface and navigation are imperative to keep buyers engaged and increase conversion rates.

With usability testing, businesses identify and rectify issues related to confusing layouts, cumbersome checkout processes, and unclear product descriptions.

Test automation to accelerate software releases

In the fast-paced world of online shopping every second can be the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart. Here, test automation becomes a valuable asset to expedite QA processes and release cycles without quality compromise.

To get more, adopt test automation during:

Regression testing — to verify that recent changes don’t break existing functionalities.
Performance testing — to mimic real-world scenarios with a large number of simultaneous users and evaluate system behavior under different loads.
Compatibility testing — to validate software operation across as many combinations of devices and mobile browsers as possible.

Our case in point

One of the leading US-based manufacturers of home appliances requested a1qa’s support in boosting its eCommerce software quality and accelerating time to market.

So, the team helped increase the number of potential users by 30%, assured the seamless integration of the ready-made payment platforms and correct distribution of taxes, and cut the time required for smoke tests by 90%.

To wrap it up

From the first click to the final purchase, these 7 testing types — functional, performance, cybersecurity, compatibility, integration, usability, and test automation— allow eCommerce businesses to prepare high-quality mobile solutions for prime time.

Do you need assistance in reinforcing your eCommerce software quality? Contact a1qa’s team for professional QA support.

If you liked the article, share it via your social media.

The article was first published on a1qa’s LinkedIn. To read more about trends, QA news, and tech, follow our LinkedIn page.

Unpacking web 3.0 testing

In the part 1 of the article, we touched upon the meaning of Web 3.0 and its benefits for businesses regardless of the industry.

By being an evolution of the Internet, the metaverse is a highly complicated three-dimensional world that needs to operate accurately to provide impeccable immersive experiences.

So today, we’d like to walk you through the 8 most significant software testing aspects for ensuring the sound operation of Web 3.0 software.

1. Performance

The metaverse is quickly picking up steam worldwide – the overall number of followers of Roblox, Minecraft, or Fortnite exceeds 400 million, while in less than 10 years, we’ll witness 1.4 billion mobile AR users.

Just imagine what will happen if they all access software simultaneously.

Will it cope with peak load and remain operable?

Will it be able to sustain such a load every day?

What load limits does it have?

Server- and client-side performance testing helps find any limitations and bottlenecks (including latency issues), as well as ensure high speed, stability, responsiveness, and scalability of the metaverse under peak load conditions.

2. Cybersecurity

When adopting the metaverse, companies can confront multiple, completely novel challenges related to its security.

For instance, vulnerability attacks to achieve desired access, avatars tracking the virtual location of users, identity frauds that ruin people’s reputations, NFTs hijacking attack simulations to steal financial data, and copying digital stores to deceive consumers, just to name a few.

With the help of penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and social engineering, you can simulate diverse attacks to spot vulnerabilities and decrease the above-mentioned risks.

3. Functionality

Functional testing eliminates major and critical software issues before going live. It also ensures that features (for instance, authentication, payments, interaction with other users, proper work of audio and video, etc.) work as expected and comply with set requirements. Therefore, QA manual engineers apply from smoke to acceptance testing and validate defects to confirm that the reported issues are fixed.

4. Accessibility

The WHO states that there are 1.3 billion people across the globe with different disabilities. To offer an impeccable digital experience to all of them, organizations should confirm that the software meets global accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Therefore, we suggest ensuring that the metaverse provides audio or visual hints, has an alternative to controlling movements; the content is readable/easily understandable, and that everyone can successfully navigate the software.

5. Usability

Usability testing at the early implementation stage is the best variant to understand the ways real users interact with the software, what problems they face; assess how much time they spend on completing diverse tasks, and evaluate their satisfaction levels.

During testing of the metaverse software, the QA experts check whether the platform meets user expectations and is intuitive enough. They also identify flaws in interface design and logic, verify the simplicity of user journeys, make sure the quality of users’ locomotion is high, and more.

6. Integrations

To provide high interoperability of the metaverse and detect issues in the business logic of the software as soon as possible, it’s important to verify the quality of APIs.

Tests simulate end-user behavior, launch a chain of API calls, and help ascertain that APIs send requests and return the responses with the correct data.

7. Immersion

Immersion is especially significant for the metaverse ecosystem. If the level of immersion that the software provides is too high, end users are likely to experience cybersickness with unpleasant symptoms as headache, dizziness, eyestrain, nausea, etc. On the contrary, insufficient immersion will make it harder for users to fully delve into the metaverse.

The QA specialists ensure that while working with the metaverse, users don’t experience any discomfort and can fully plunge into the virtual world.

8. Localization

The QA teams focus on localizing the metaverse to provide end users with access to content in their native languages and make sure it’s tailored to the cultural specifics of their homelands. For that, they verify texts embedded into graphics, figures and currency, voiceover, subtitles, make sure that graphics and colors comply with the specifics of the target region.

Considering that the metaverse is a new, while at the same time a rapidly developing market, companies should often verify the quality of existing functionality.

Manual testing only can be challenging and time-consuming. To decrease overall testing time, optimize QA costs, increase test coverage, and reduce the probability of human error, organizations can make use of automated QA workflows.

Conclusion

Web 3.0 provides great opportunities for businesses from multiple industries due to decentralization, smart contracts, AI, advanced connectivity, semantic upgrade, better engagement, and uninterrupted service.

However, this technology is still rather complicated and challenging to introduce. To ease the process and ensure seamless digital experiences, companies can supplement the development activities with need-driven quality assurance – from functional testing to test automation.

Reach out to our experts to talk about your QA related issues.

The article was first published on a1qa’s LinkedIn. To read more about trends, QA news, and tech, follow our LinkedIn page.

Today, the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds are fading at the flip of a switch. People already use AI-generated avatars when communicating via social networks, follow the latest fashion trends in the virtual runways, receive medical assistance through digital twins, and enjoy virtual concerts.

We owe these magnificent experiences to the metaverse. It’s a new, decentralized place that connects people across the globe, provides impressive brand engagement opportunities, generates novel workplaces, and simplifies our lives. It’s not surprising that by 2030, the metaverse market size will boom reaching $678.8 billion!

However, while unleashing countless capacities, this new computing era is still rather complicated. Before running with the bulls, it’s a good idea to better understand what Web 3.0 is and what benefits it offers for businesses. With this knowledge, companies can make smart decisions for introducing Web 3.0 software and confirm its highest quality.

Therefore, in this part of this article, we’ll discuss the essence of Web 3.0, and in the second – how QA helps deliver exceptional customer experiences. Let’s go to it!

Introduction to the new computing era

Within only 3 decades, the Internet has made an impactful journey from sending texts to visiting holiday destinations and sightseeing in virtual reality. Obtaining a bird’s-eye view of the concept of Web 3.0 is easier by checking out the evolution of the Internet:

With Web 1.0, people witnessed the advent of the first browser and static HTML pages with little interaction and data gathered from a static file system.
During the Web 2.0 phase, interactivity came to the forefront. Due to the emergence of multiple social networks and blogs, people turned from content consumers to creators disseminating information around the world.
Web 3.0 – a fully decentralized ecosystem for open collaboration and accessing data, apps, and multimedia – provides stunning, personalized experiences for engagement between humans and machines via AI, ML, and other latest technologies.

With more opportunities for personalization, front-runners such as Bentley, Mastercard, Disney, Shopify, Wendy’s have already taken leading positions in applying this trend. For instance, Zara has showcased its first collection for both people and avatars, while Thomas Cook launched a special initiative for tourists allowing them to choose trips using virtual reality.

Top 7 advantages of Web 3.0

Being a significant step forward in the advancement of the Internet, Web 3.0 is all about the following:

1. Decentralization

With a focus on blockchain technology and the absence of a single control unit, decentralization allows peer-to-peer interaction and data storing. It also provides opportunities for secure transactions and logging in without being tracked.

2. Legal

Smart contracts are self-executing agreements. Therefore, buying or selling assets has become much easier and faster, as there’s no need for diverse intermediaries, such as banks. Smart contracts facilitate checking, control, and the execution of an agreement between a buyer and a seller. They are highly secure due to encryption and apply computer protocols to automate tasks, which increases the speed of business operations.

3. Artificial intelligence

AI enables faster-than-ever real-time processing and analysis of large data amounts, which can considerably improve capabilities related to decision-making, image recognition, or determining fake information. It can also contribute to improving online user experiences due to a more accurate search, analysis of consumer behavior, and personalization.

4. Advanced connectivity

With Web 3.0, people from any part of the world and anytime can seamlessly stay in touch with one another due to the round-the-clock availability of the digital ecosystem. As the Internet has become an indispensable part of our daily activities, users can remain connected from a car or any wearable device.

5. Semantic upgrade

To improve user experience, the new semantic web focuses on enhancing the capabilities of search and analysis due to a better understanding of the meaning of words and overall context rather than using keywords or numbers.

6. Better engagement

The evolution of AR/VR technology contributed to the metaverse boom shaping new ways of interaction and superior user engagement. Regardless of the location, age, appearance, or income, people can seamlessly create ideal avatars and come together to network, practice sports, play games, learn new things, travel, shop, receive medical treatment, do business, work, and much, much more.

7. Uninterrupted service

Suspension of accounts won’t be a problem anymore due to the fact that all the information is stored in diverse remote nodes, with multiple backups. This prevents the failure of servers or attacks of malicious intruders.

Web 3.0 for business: is the game worth the candle?

Although it’s still under development, Web 3.0 can become a game-changer for businesses across the globe. By providing impeccable digital experiences, companies can turn their end users into brand ambassadors who will promote their companies in ways no one has ever done before regardless of any geographical barriers. This word-of-mouth approach will contribute to increased brand awareness and improved sales.

In addition, organizations can capture valuable client feedback in the metaverse that demonstrates their emotional responses and the level of engagement in the moment, so that companies can access their genuine attitude and quickly fix any problems.

Considering the above-mentioned benefits, Web 3.0 software can enhance operational efficiency and help businesses win new customers. Of course, provided that the IT solutions work as intended and contain no critical or major flaws.

Soon we’ll deliver the second part of the article dedicated to ensuring the quality of Web 3.0 software. Stay tuned!

Reach out to our experts to talk about your QA related issues.

A significant jump in the number of players occurred during the isolation of 2020, boosting the revenues in digital gaming to $174.9 billion in the same year. Today, over 3 billion people play video games to combat boredom, escape the real world, make new connections, and even learn new skills.

As the number of players grows, so does the role of QA to safeguard game integrity, fulfill end-user needs, and build their trust. Therefore, the question arises: how can an effective QA strategy help you release a first-rate game, be it on PC, console, or mobile devices?

We’ve got you covered: in this blog, we’ll walk through the reasons why quality assurance is a must and unveil testing types, helping deliver exceptional game experiences to consumers.

The pivotal role of QA for video games: 3 reasons named

Let’s delve into the reasons why QA plays a critical role for the gaming industry.

1. Optimized costs

By implementing QA early in the development phases, organizations track and eliminate defects before they cause any damage, like constant crashes or failed in-game purchases, and avoid expensive post-launch expenditures.

Just look at this case: due to high anticipation, CD Projekt SA compromised on quality to meet the release schedule of Cyberpunk 2077. The game failed due to dozens of bugs, which damaged the studio’s quality-first image. Fixing the issues cost the company almost $1b.

This kind of a misstep can be prevented with professional QA.

2. Advanced gaming experience

A buggy game is unlikely to be enjoyable for players, instead, it hinders gameplay, causes irritation, and generates a bunch of bad reviews. As a result, it tarnishes a company’s reputation, erodes loyalty, ultimately reducing revenue.

QA helps turn things around. By meticulously identifying glitches and technical hurdles, organizations ensure an immersive environment, fine-tune gameplay mechanics, and prevent lags and disruptions. All these contribute to an uninterrupted experience, keeping users engaged and enhancing their retention rates.

3. Improved safety and reliability

In-game vulnerabilities are of value to cybercriminals, allowing them to steal internal currencies, expensive digital items, and private information. According to Akami’s State of the Internet report, cyberattacks on player accounts and gaming companies increased by 167% in 2022.

Through quality assurance, businesses uncover injection points, reducing the risk of fraud and preventing cheating and unauthorized access.

7 core testing types to release top-notch, engrossing games

To deliver a high-quality game and provide an unsurpassed first impression, organizations can apply 7 critical types of testing.

1. Functional testing

Before the game goes live, businesses need to ensure that it meets the stated specifications and runs smoothly. Functional testing helps trace out issues related to audio and video, design, basic game mechanisms, and payment gateways, as well as errors in installation and launching.

2. Performance testing

In June, PUBG’s concurrent players reached over 376,000. Consider the high performance required to keep the game from crashing!

To ensure flawless operation, businesses should conduct stress testing. Since a sudden surge of users can lead to slow functioning, data losses, and security issues, it demonstrates how the game operates beyond its projected capacity.

Load testing, in its turn, allows checking the overall performance and identifying the maximum number of simultaneous players.

3. Cybersecurity testing

The global gaming market is estimated to reach $384.9 billion by the end of 2023. As the industry grows, so does the risk of cyber incidents.

Source: Statista

In 2019, cybercriminals discovered a vulnerability in Fortnite and gained access to 80 million accounts. They stole virtual currency, eavesdropped and recorded conversations, and used players’ credit cards to purchase items. No one wants to get in a similar situation, right?

So, how to mitigate such hazards? Through robust cybersecurity testing, businesses uncover weaknesses in cyber defenses, ensure sensitive data protection, prevent hacking and cheating, and safeguard in-game transactions.

As part of cybersecurity, compliance testing helps make sure that the game meets industry regulations to increase user trust and avoid hefty fines.

4. Compatibility testing

According to the Statista Global Consumer Survey, 54% of adults prefer playing video games on smartphones, 35% — on game consoles, 32% — on PCs or laptops, and 25% — on tablets.

To provide an unrivaled experience to all consumers, the organization needs to test compatibility across platforms, operating systems, and browsers.

As people use a wide range of hardware configurations (different phone models, graphics cards, processors, and memory sizes), it’s also critical to guarantee that the game runs smoothly on various setups without crashes.

5. Localization testing

To make the game enjoyable for players across the globe, companies should prioritize localization tests. It allows the adaptation of the content to the cultural nuances of different regions and ensures the translated version of the app is consistent and clear.

Localization QA helps identify bugs in these three aspects:

National: incorrect currencies, calendars, metrics, number formats, and symbols.
Visual: improper fonts, truncated characters, and placement of graphic elements.
Functional: misleading commands and links, corrupted audio or text.

6. Usability testing

Consumers expect to spend a minimal amount of time figuring out how to navigate the game. After all, who would want to waste hours on it?

To make sure that players can effortlessly dive into the game, QA teams may suggest adopting usability testing. This helps identify glitches in the user interface, controls, mechanics, and menus, providing engaging experiences with no interruptions.

7. Test automation

To speed up QA processes, release a high-quality game faster, and stay one step ahead of the fierce competition, businesses often opt for test automation.

It’s especially beneficial in the long run as it reduces QA expenditure, saves efforts on repetitive tasks, and facilitates regression testing that is vital to make sure the newly added features haven’t affected existing functionality.

Closing remarks

As the gaming industry continues to grow and evolve, one thing remains constant: the pivotal role of QA in helping optimize costs, deliver advanced experiences to players, and improve software safety and reliability.

To make the game stand out in the IT market, businesses may conduct 7 core testing types: functional, performance, cybersecurity, compatibility, localization, usability, and automated ones.

Searching for QA support in releasing top-performing video games? Contact a1qa’s team.

The role of IT leaders has changed significantly due to rapid tech advancements and ever-changing users’ expectations. Despite any of this, they should still continuously facilitate business growth, drive digital transformation, and foster innovation.

As part of the a1qa tech voice series, today, we discuss true IT leadership with Alina Karachun, Account director at a1qa, possessing 10+ years in quality assurance and software testing. At a1qa, Alina is responsible for providing exceptional experiences for clients, increasing their satisfaction, as well as building and nurturing long-term relationships with customers from the Fortune 1000 list and Deloitte Fast 500 winners.

So, let’s jump in!

These days, creativity is essential for both executives and their teams. Alina, please share your effective way to maintain and nurture your team’s creativity.

I would say brainstorming sessions are one of my favorite ways to empower my team’s creativity. You bring together people with different backgrounds and expertise and receive fresh viewpoints.

The thing is that good preparations make these meetings effective. To avoid unbalanced conversations, make sure all members contribute to the talk and no one dominates the session, everyone has time to express their thoughts. To prevent awkward silence, announce brainstorming in advance so that employees can prepare for it.

Do you agree that ethical leadership can help executives thrive? How does it manifest?

Oh, definitely. When leaders are guided by ethical principles, demonstrate integrity, and make decisions considering the well-being of all stakeholders including teams, they reinforce their reputation among employees, customers, and investors. We all know that credibility is key for establishing long-term relationships.

I honestly believe when they create a positive environment where everyone feels valued and heard, it helps attract and retain talents.

I suppose for ethical leadership, developing your emotional intelligence is really important to treat each member fairly. Sometimes, it requires setting up new — more transparent — processes, allowing top managers to control the progress of tasks, praise those who deserve it, and ethically motivate people who didn’t show good results.

According to the American Institute of Stress, 83% of US employees experience work-related stress. The same is true for IT teams dealing with tight deadlines, urgent tasks, and long to-do lists. What’s one way a technical leader can help them “ecologically” handle stress and pressure?

I’m a firm believer in the power of happiness so my advice is to look towards your team’s happiness. Happy, cohesive IT teams are better than anything for a project’s success. When the project is finished, put the stress behind you, meet each other, support each other, go hiking together, for example.

And work-life balance of course is critical. Your team will become more productive and better engaged in the workflows if they feel they have a good equilibrium.

This also helps the company reduce turnover and gain a competitive differentiator in attracting better people and retaining the best talents.

But make sure you set realistic daily goals and the workloads are feasible.

Fair and just-in-time feedback may help a lot in such situations. How to make it a team habit?

I believe that clear and constructive feedback can move mountains even in super critical and hopeless, as they may seem, situations. Many times, it helped me improve team performance, enhance collaboration between all members, and reduce stress levels. And the result? It impacted positively the business outcomes.

To encourage your employees to share feedback regularly, I think it’s necessary to explain and show its value for personal and professional growth, for a particular project, and for the entire organization in the long run.

People will be open to expressing their thoughts on processes, tasks, and challenges. However, this requires really well-established communication channels, such as one-on-one sessions, team syncs, or anonymous feedback surveys.

Critically, make sure all team members feel psychologically safe and comfortable when exchanging their feedback without worrying about negative consequences and judgment.

Alina, the last quick question — what one soft skill is essential for IT executives?

Hmm, great question. Oprah Winfrey once said, “Leadership is about empathy,” and I couldn’t agree more.

First, it helps me better understand end-user needs and ensure positive experiences. If we put ourselves in their shoes, we better recognize their needs, figure out the defects they face and their root causes.

Secondly, it allows effectively managing your technical team, foster an inclusive work environment, boost productivity and job satisfaction.

And of course, since IT leaders interact with customers, product owners, stakeholders, etc., empathy facilitates prioritizing their pain points.

So essentially, empathy allows you to make more informed and effective decisions, build a more cohesive team, and establish strong, trust-based relationships.

Alina, thank you so much for providing actionable insights into IT leadership! We are looking forward to more interviews with you!

Stay tuned for the next a1qa tech voice installment with a1qa’s top executives.

To optimize your QA costs, accelerate software releases, and increase ROI with QA, reach out to a1qa’s team.

To highlight the value of independent QA, we share our 20-year expertise in QA and software testing within our articles. We’re glad to present you with a list of the most popular 2022 a1qa blog posts.

Test automation blog posts

Test automation in Agile and DevOps: Maximizing flexibility and speed

Agile methodologies provide businesses with more flexibility, greater speed, and better communication between project members.

According to the 16th State of Agile Report (with over 3,000 executives surveyed), 94% of companies adopt Agile, 74% — implement DevOps.

To maintain the fast pace of development within these environments, businesses rely much on test automation. Integrated into Agile and DevOps processes, it brings 3 main benefits: accelerated go-to-market and testing time, reduced QA costs, and boosted software quality. You may ask, “How to properly configure test automation for flexible environments to reach the desired business objectives?” Follow the link and explore 3 core tips.

4 key QA activities to solve test automation challenges via AI and ML

Do you remember the days when AI and ML were only privileged and used within tech giants?

Source: Statista

Today, they help companies reach new heights, especially when introduced as a part of test automation. This is how businesses ensure faster time to market, reduce the number of discrepancies, improve flexibility, reinforce codeless automation, and increase the overall test coverage.

According to the World Quality Report 2021-22, 63–69% of respondents (out of 1 700+) perceived better control, transparency of their testing activities, and increased ROI. But we all want more. With AI/ML.

Which AI- and ML-based activities can be seamlessly integrated into test automation? Introducing smart test script writing, optimizing test automation with self-healing AI functions, conducting GUI test automation with ML, and automated monitoring.

To get more details about each activity, read the article.

Software testing guides

Mobile app testing guide: win the race with five-star software

53% of users abandon the app if it loads too long or has other mobile-related issues.

Source: Statista

In the mobile app testing guide from a1qa, you’ll discover: why mobile app testing is a must-have to launch highly reliable mobile products, what testing types to choose for that purpose, and why to introduce test automation.

The A to Z guide to functional testing

Yes, we’re living in the era of total automation, but let’s look at the basic reasons why companies test their IT products manually: cost-effectiveness, usability from the human perspective, and flexibility.

Source: State of Testing Report 2021

“Why does functional testing matter?”
“What types of functional testing are vital to include in the strategy to roll out a high-quality app?”
“Is there a scenario to set up a manual QA process?”

Click here to read the guide and find out the answers to these questions!

How to implement 2023 telecom trends with QA

To strengthen the competitive edge in 2023, telecom enterprises may rely on 4 topical trends: continue adopting 5G and deploy 6G, implement the cloud, turn to network-as-a-service, and apply edge computing.

Source: Statista

To smoothly implement these trends and ensure the impeccable quality of the end telco product, we suggest conducting OSS/BSS, migration, integration, performance, and cybersecurity testing, as well as test automation.

Welcome to read the blog post to know what lies behind this suggestion and discover more about the trends.

Get ready for Black-Friday-to-Cyber-Monday shopping

88 million Americans opted for online shopping during Black Friday in 2021. Companies make millions, billions, or trillions during this period when their websites and mobile apps operate flawlessly and withstand the visitors’ influx.

What 5 questions should companies ask themselves to provide unmatched CX during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and release top-tier eCommerce software?

1. “Are you ready for a spike in shoppers?” Introduce performance testing to verify this.

2. “Does your software have glitch-free navigation and interface?” Discover it with the help of usability testing.

3. “Does the software meet business requirements?” Check it out with functional testing.

4. “Are the payments safe enough?” Rely on cybersecurity testing.

Source: Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022

5. “Does the app meet the cultural and linguistic needs of end users worldwide?” Implement localization testing and get the answer.

Delve into this blog post to get more detailed answers.

6 must-have testing types for eLearning and mLearning software

mLearning market size is expected to reach $25.33 billion by 2025, eLearning — more than $1 trillion by 2027. What a boom! To deliver a seamless learning experience to consumers, companies need to take exceptional care of their quality.

Source: Global Market Insights

What testing types are a must-have for educational software? Performance, localization, security, compatibility, compliance, and mobile app testing.

Explore more about these 6 core QA activities, helping boost the eLearning and mLearning apps quality in the article.

App software testing for telecom

Since the pandemic, telecom traffic increased from 20% to 60%. We understand the need to grow fast and cope with new challenges like too heavy loads, safety breaches, and slow delivery of new functionalities.

By introducing QA, a business can increase customer retention rate, boost CX, fine-tune internal processes, obtain core business systems with embedded quality, and drive business innovation with confidence.

Source: Precedence Research

Read the article and explore why QA is the key to enhancing the quality of telecom products.

Taking stock

Thank you for reading our articles! We will continue to share with you the most relevant and insightful information on QA and software testing in 2023.

In case you need professional QA support to roll out a high-end IT product, reach out to a1qa’s experts.

Emerging technologies help organizations worldwide to digitize and progress faster, drive operational efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and strengthen their brand identity ― all to meet desired business outcomes.

Take, for instance, the metaverse. This technology provides better opportunities for businesses to interact with users from anywhere in the world, conduct meetings or educational sessions with colleagues, and design impressive recreational areas to play games. No wonder its global market revenue will increase by 14 times and comprise almost $680 billion!

Or another example ― is genomics. It can assess human DNA and its structure to detect hidden health diseases or possible disorders in the future. Its great potential is demonstrated by the growing worldwide market size that will reach almost $6 billion in 2028.

However, the implementation and usage of advanced technologies often complicate digitization journeys because of their overall sophisticated nature. To simplify that, organizations may, among other things, rely on their thorough testing, which also helps prevent issues in the production environment, accelerate time to market, and optimize QA budgets.

How to attain maximum efficiency during this process? We suggest improving the testing workflows with the top 4 industry trends described in the article:

Trend 1. Ensure sustainable quality engineering to minimize environmental harm

Open-minded companies tend to shift testing left to detect issues early in the SDLC, speed up testing cycles, lower costs, and improve cybersecurity. However, there is another significant benefit of focusing on software quality ― attaining sustainability. The more companies emphasize software soundness, the better they can operate without harming the environment.

The World Quality Report 2022-23 (WQR), which surveyed 1,750 IT executives across diverse regions and sectors, mentions that when sticking to sustainable quality engineering, organizations can enhance brand value (47% of respondents), increase overall revenue (46%), and even better employee recruitment and retention indicators (33%). Most importantly, executives think that sustainable IT will positively impact social and economic aspects, e.g., energy efficiency.

Source: World Quality Report 2022-23

Unfortunately, only in half of the cases do companies succeed in reaching set sustainability targets during software development. They already make a difference by relying on the cloud, test optimization, test automation, verifying customer journeys, performance, and CX.

In addition to these measures, they can prioritize a quality assurance process, initiate it at the earliest development stages, quantify environmental influence by configuring software performance monitoring solutions, and consider sustainability from the design stage.

Trend 2. Set up an automated-first approach to reach desired outcomes faster

Test automation remains an indispensable part of continuous testing and Agile-driven workflows and contributes to speeding up testing cycles, decreasing costs, and improving testing coverage.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult for the WQR interviewees to obtain the expected test automation benefits ― only 55.1% set up continuous integration and delivery, 53.4% managed to scale down QA team size, and 53.4% boosted test coverage.

When it comes to implementing automated workflows, quite often, organizations confront two major obstacles ― poor planning and its separation from the development process.

To improve the situation and optimize QA efforts, companies can focus on:

Adopting test automation already at the requirements creation phase
Designing an accurate implementation plan
Analyzing tooling efficiency
Betting on highly skilled SDETs
Creating a long-lasting product development strategy.

Trend 3. Consider a quality engineering strategy to support emerging technologies

The latest technological innovations arising at a rapid pace help businesses simplify daily operations, deliver digital transformations of diverse sizes, scale on demand, enhance both customer and employee experience, and stay successful despite high market competition.

For instance, already today, the cloud helps organizations improve cybersecurity levels, ensure data recovery opportunities, and increase overall flexibility; the internet of things (IoT) contributes to decreasing expenses related to infrastructure and boosting deployment speed; AI/ML optimizes routine processes, forecasts failures, ensures personalized customer experience, and more.

This year, the WQR respondents stated that their current IT strategies rely a lot on such technologies as blockchain and Web 3.0 (85%), digital twins (78%), and the metaverse (69%).

Without a focus on software quality during their implementation, multiple business risks can arise, especially those related to cybersecurity, growth, and staying ahead of the competition.

To cope with them, organizations can:

Attract seasoned QA experts who have in-demand skills, e.g., automated, cybersecurity testing, AI/ML
Consider introducing DevSecOps to enable high software resistance to cyberattacks from the early development stages
Design an effective strategy for smooth adoption.

Trend 4. Adopt Agile and DevOps to improve the development process

Organizations that jumpstart a cultural shift towards Agile and DevOps improve the quality of their delivery, attain faster and more frequent releases, speed up the process of obtaining feedback, and enhance the levels of customer and employee satisfaction.

The journey to embracing agility is complicated and requires the support of experienced QA engineers who possess skills related to test automation and CI/CD toolkits, performance and cybersecurity testing, deep knowledge of the industry, and can become full-fledged members of cross-functional teams. According to the WQR, organizations still lack professional quality engineers who can assist in infusing and developing Agile workflows.

To simplify the transition, companies can embed test automation along with performance, cybersecurity, or integration testing, consider the toolkit in advance, take care of appropriate quality metrics, and continue betting on skilled people.

Closing

Today, companies more often give preference to advanced technologies to improve organizational performance and keep up with increasing market competition. However, their roll-out and further usage are far from being the easiest task.

QA and software testing can simplify it and contribute to accelerating QA activities and reducing expenses. To increase the efficiency of this process, organizations can consider industry QA trends to reach set objectives and ensure that end users are delighted with delivered IT solutions: test automation, Agile workflows, timely quality assurance for advanced technologies, and sustainable quality engineering.

Reach out to a1qa’s experts to ensure high quality of your software solutions.

Automation testing has been a buzzword to accelerate your software quality needs. I have seen in many C-suites that it is always seen as the only answer to releasing at pace. Though do we really understand the value it can add and also the risks around it? As it can easily eat your company funds if it is not implemented in the correct way.

In this article, I will be covering the basics and will be giving some tips so that you have a steady journey on the automation rollercoaster. Let’s go!

What is automation testing?

It is a technique where specialists use automation testing software tools to execute a test case suite.

Automation testing demands considerable investments of money and resources, and that is why it must be done properly.

Why is test automation beneficial?

From my experience, it is the best way to increase effectiveness, test coverage and increase the velocity by which we release.

Some statements around automation benefits:

In some cases, it can be more than 70% faster than manual testing.
It generally is reliable if done correctly and maintained smartly.
Automation can be run multiple times and overnight.
It reduces the chance of human error and improves accuracy.
Automation testing helps increase test coverage.

Automation for me, has been a life saver, where we have not had the capacity or time to test manually. It has helped to catch defects which would have impacted our customers greatly.

My key advice is to run automation frequently, and the quicker the feedback — the better!

What should we automate?

Now, this is a really important question. We should not automate everything, especially if it leads to flaky tests.

6 cases to automate:

High-risk areas — business-critical test cases.
Test cases that are repeatedly executed.
Positive test cases.
User interface (UI) tests.
Test cases that are very tedious or difficult to test manually.
Test cases that are very time-consuming to run and create.

Example scenarios of what we ‘should’ automate:

Compare two images pixel by pixel.
Comparing two spreadsheets containing thousands of rows and columns.
Testing an application on different browsers and different operating systems (OS) in parallel.

What should we NOT automate?

Now, the counter question, this is key and we should always have this at the back of our mind when automation test design takes place.

We should not automate:

Test cases that are newly designed and not executed manually at least once.
Test cases for which the requirements are frequently changing.
Test cases which are executed on an ad-hoc basis.
Negative failover tests.
Tests with massive pre-setup.
Test cases where the return on investment based on automation effort will take a long time.

The process of test automation

This should be planned out, and some time should be invested to think it through. Many times, I have seen automation fail due to flaky tests and people choosing to automate for the sake of automation.

Here are the steps for automating your software testing:

1. Select the test tool — this is done via a proof of concept and involves many stakeholders so that the right decision can be made.

2. Define the scope of automation — facts to consider:

The features — this should be clear

Devise the scenarios which need a large amount of data

Technology feasibility review

Review the complexity of test cases

Review whether we want to incorporate cross-browser testing.

3. Planning, design, and development:

Automation tool selection
Framework design and its features:
- The most popular open-source web framework is ‘Selenium WebDriver’
Define your scripting standards, such as:
- Uniform scripts, comments, and indentation of code
- Exception handling
- User-defined messages are coded
In-scope and out-of-scope for automation
Automation test bed preparation
Schedule and timeline of scripting and execution
Deliverables of automation testing.

4. Test execution.

5. Maintenance.

The last phase of ‘maintenance’ is very key — as if the tests are not maintained, the technical debt is not brought down and those ‘flaky’ tests are not removed; you will actually find that automation testing is taking more time and money investment than manual testing.

How to measure the success of your automation suite?

So, we have automation in place. It is important to track success, and if success is not being met, if you have data to track, you can get back on the right path.

Some automation metrics I would recommend to measure:

Percentage of defects found by automation.
Time required for automation testing for each and every release cycle.
Time taken for a release due to automation testing vs time taken if scripts are manually tested.
Customer satisfaction index.
Productivity improvement.

Conclusion

Automation is awesome, and it can really add to your QA capabilities, though it must be done and thought out properly.

Opening

We often hear the words ‘great culture,’ and it is emphasised in many QA companies’ websites and job specifications.

We all want a great culture, but do we actually understand it enough to maintain or improve it?

In this article, I will be sharing all of that.

What is culture of happiness?

I like to think of it like the foundation of a house — without a strong one, there will be no stability to it, and it certainly will not last. It is the key element by which everything else is added, such as a kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, study, and garden, to name a few.

Culture takes place whether you want it to or not. It is the nucleus of a QA company and is in large part created by the founders and all employees — not by their words alone, but more so by their actions.

Strategy is key in business, but without the right culture, any strategy will fail.

Culture is led by beliefs, attitudes, and practices that people are exposed to when they interact with your business.

Culture, or lack of it, is infinitely more important and could kill your strategy before it even gets off the ground.

Strategy and culture need to mutually support each other. A bit like in a car — no matter how good the parts are, without wheels, you will not be moving very far.

Why does culture matter?

Think back to your past roles that you have enjoyed the most — I’m sure the reason was due to an amazing culture. The opposite applies for roles which you did not like.

There is evidence that good cultures create a feedback loop that often self corrects bad strategy, and also that good strategy gets consumed by bad culture.

From my experience, a better culture helps to create a higher chance of great delivery output — take a happy environment generally, there will be learning, and all the software testing team will be moving in the same direction.

I have seen this in action, and for me it was due to the crew being synchronised and working to meet a common goal. If a team works together, there’s a bigger chance to meet our objectives.

What impact does bad culture have?

A bad culture normally creates fear in the QA team; thus, they generally will be scared to innovate and will make more mistakes. Another big impact — people will not want to work within the company in the future. Or ever come back.

People do not leave the company; they leave the culture.

QA culture also hits revenue; the best performing software testing teams generally are those performing the best long term. In my view, squads who have a bad culture and are still successful, will only maintain high performance in the short term, or they may not actually be meeting their maximum output.

What should your company’s QA culture include?

Remember that culture is more than just creating a great place to work and some words in your mission statement.

The culture should determine what is encouraged, discouraged, and acceptable.

It includes:

Adaptiveness to change — in business, we need to be flexible to adapt quickly.
Innovation — making great new software products to keep ahead of the competition.
Risk tolerance — how much risk are we willing to take?
Decision making — being brave to take decisions, even when they may fail.
Efficiency — ensuring that we are efficient in our output.
Customer focus — how is our culture driving what a customer wants?

Culture starts at the top of a company, and each layer below should be aligned with this.

What can you do to improve your company culture?

‘Check the pulse’ and understand your culture.
Foster conversations and ensure it is a safe space to talk.
Map your values and purpose.
Celebrate success together.
Culture is created by behaviours that you tolerate.
Change starts at the top — company leaders show how they care about culture.

A leader recognises they are ‘a voice’ around the table, not the ‘voice.’ They allow others to say how culture can be improved and also listen to any concerns within software testing teams.

For me, companies that are culture conscious outperform industry benchmarks. What makes a business unique is its culture and it is often used as a competitive advantage.

I like to think of culture as a tailwind for a travelling plane, it pushes a plane forward and if stars align, you will make it to your destination faster, therefore, it adds hidden value.

Closing

As a leader, we can all impact the culture of the company and move the lever. Though, it takes patience and perseverance.

Agile quality assurance is a term which many technology teams have heard. In the following statement, I will be sharing what QA in an agile team looks like, and how you can release at pace with the same software quality.

Firstly, when a team details that they would like to be more agile and deliver updates more frequently, it can scare a QA team. They will envisage that they will need to test a code base that changes daily with no breaks and not enough time for each.

Is it so? Let’s answer this question together.

What about Agile manifesto?

You may have also heard the myth that companies get rid of QA when they are trying to move towards agile. This is incorrect. You will need to focus more on quality if you are adopting agile.

In an agile team, everyone is responsible for quality. The goal is not just finding bugs and defects, but also preventing them during the development cycle.

How can QA meet the agile manifesto?

4 key aspects that I have used to follow QA in an agile form include:

Add QA documentation where it brings value.
Always look for automation opportunities.
Always look into automation tools, thus making your testing more efficient, repeatable, and easier-to-track.
Understand your customers and ensure that you know the quality level they expect. Also, the double bonus, you will be automating smartly — the right things.

I have touched on automation in the above — automation is key as you have guide rails, so a good opportunity to react quickly to changing priorities and have a constant quality measure.

QA should be involved throughout the whole agile process. They should be a part of the team. The key to this is pairing on a task and discussing how a story should be tested. If we involve QA earlier, why not then shift QA left and have more of a chance to meet the delivery at high-quality considerations?

8 key tips for QA members working in an agile team

1. Join the agile team and work together

Standup, retros, demos, planning sessions.

2. Focus on the existing methodologies

Learn how your customer uses the product and prioritise what you test.

3. Automate your key tests

Black box testing and working with engineering so you pair on automation.

4. Test manually for the right reasons

Exploratory testing and always asking the ‘What if’ questions.

5. Continually improve

Build maintainable and non-flaky test suites.

6. You must have excellent product knowledge

Collaborate with your product team and learn about the product.

7. Shift left

Test as early as possible and in smaller chunks.

8. Shift right

Look to monitor, identify, investigate and remediate based on real-world scenarios and conditions.

The QA team is not the gatekeeper of the quality of a software product. The whole TEAM is responsible.

The agile QA process: 9 steps

QA should be involved in all of the above and think of ways to implement them with more automated processes or faster feedback loops.

Summary

What is important? To reflect, refine, improve, and progress with enhancing processes. Following agile is never easy, though, my advice is — by adding more value with, let’s say, automation it will make a massive difference.

The agile working style is disrupting traditional approaches to delivering software quality, allowing organizations to keep up with the fast development pace, ensure business continuity, and improve operational efficiency. A specific role in this process is dedicated to quality assurance.

Through the mature culture of excellence, it’s easier for companies to ride the wave of innovation, accelerate time to market, and minimize production failure risks. But how to build this true culture of quality? How do we seamlessly embed QA practices into the Agile environment, and how can automation enhance testing capabilities?

To answer these and many other topical questions, we took an interview with Dileep Marway, an experienced QA engineer in the past and VP of Engineering and Quality at SHL ― a world-known developer of data-driven talent acquisition and talent management solutions that help businesses maximize their people’s potential by building agile, highly flexible teams.

With around 13 years of contributing to the QA field, Dileep regularly gives back to the IT community by writing content to show the value of QA for releasing sound software. This time he produced the series of articles “Agility and speed: Supercharging your business strategies with QA” for a1qa that we’ll talk about today and share with you all very soon!

Dileep, please tell our audience some words about yourself and how you got to the position you are in today.

I’ve worked in a multitude of roles, and quality assurance is where I started. Essentially, I’ve been doing digital transformations at different scales, and a lot of that has had quality at the heart of everything that we do. Making sure that customers are getting the right type of quality and what they expect has been vital.

If I look at my journey in my previous role, I accomplished digital transformation for a startup-type team in central Birmingham, UK, and most recently, I’m doing a digital transformation for an enterprise-type organization at SHL.

Thank you for introducing yourself. Why did you choose to contribute to the quality assurance field?

I started as a graduate tester, and the main reason for that was generally I was very structured in my approach. I initially studied pharmacy at university, then I moved to Computer Science. I always go back to that structured scientific approach, as it has suited the quality assurance realm well.

I was very passionate about quality when I first joined, but for me, to be more rounded as a QA engineer, I needed to understand the other areas of the software development life cycle.

In my career, I have worked in production support, in product, in delivery, and I was Head of DevSecOps. As a QA engineer, it’s good to understand the other areas very well because it’s good to collaborate and improve processes as a whole.

Quality cannot be achieved just by one person; quality has to be reached by a team.

We know that you give back to the IT community and write content to raise the awareness of QA value for the business. Could you, please, briefly introduce the series of blog posts for a1qa that you’re working on right now?

Sure. Luckily a1qa gave me this opportunity, and it’s very kind of them. I enjoy blogging, writing, and helping others. I’d like people to help each other because that’s how we all level up ― and everyone can get to their destination.

The first blog that I did was on Agile QA. And this is a very important subject because everybody wants to go fast. But essentially, it’s key that we go at a speed and follow users’ expectations. As an example, if a client wants a car and they want it to be red, they expect the car to be red at the end of the week, not for it to be blue. In this article, I’ll share tips and good ways of working that a QA member can contribute to being Agile and contribute to the output in a team.

The second article was about the culture of happiness. Why is this important? It’s key in any type of digital transformation, whether it’s quality, engineering, or DevSecOps, culture should be at the heart of everything that you do. I always say: “If you are in a happy team, you have a good output of work.” And if somebody wants to go to work, they are happy and will be doing a good job.

And then the last blog is on automation. This is essentially talking about automation, what is the value, why people automate, and also what aspects you need to do before you jump into automation.

What I’ve seen in my experience is that everybody wanted to automate but wasn’t quite ready. There are certain things that they need to do before starting to automate because otherwise, once you do, it’s a bit like if you buy a house that has leaky plumbing. And you are just trying to fix the pipes all the time, whereas you should be checking them before you buy the house in the first place. So, that’s a nice analogy that I like to use. And in the article, I’ll be covering that.

Good examples. Thank you! In your opinion, why should companies go for independent software testing instead of in-house?

My experience is that firstly, it depends on the type of journey the team is on. Initially, it’s good to know where you are in the transformation. Are they experienced or not in their QA practices? Is there a collaboration between engineering quality and product?

For me, where you’ve got a team, which is performing poorly, it’s great to bring in experts, learn from them, and say: “Look, I’m monitoring this team, but I’ve got bias because I’ve been looking after them for so long.”

That’s where I found great value in getting independent services. The experts can come in and independently review your company, provide an unbiased view, and make recommendations on what they would do because they know best practices and worked with other companies, maybe in a similar area.

In addition to telling you what is right, they can also say, “We can give you expertise in this area, which can fill that gap.” Whereas recruiting yourselves in-house, you have to go through a transition of training. Even before recruiting, find the right candidates, and then actually go through a transition. Maybe, if the time is there, it’s good to do both in parallel.

So, work with a testing partner, hire internally, and the two work together. But generally, where deadlines are short, stakeholder wants things quickly, stakeholder wants to see the value from the project quickly.

I think it’s a good idea to get specialists’ help – that’s where a testing partner really can excel.

Absolutely. As you’ve mentioned, one of the blogs is devoted to culture. In your opinion, how should the company train its employees to build a true culture of quality nowadays?

Firstly, there’s the culture on the people’s side, and that should be set throughout the company.

If you go to the top from bottom or bottom to top, everyone should have the same vision. They should talk to people with respect, give constructive, not destructive criticism, and respect your peers.

And there should be a level of psychological safety. If you make a mistake, you can learn from this mistake. That’s the first side that is very important. From a quality perspective, engineering, QA, and those in product roles need to work as one team.

What I really like is that QA isn’t just owned by an isolated QA team. You can run your automation pack, you’ve got engineers who are following TDD and unit tests – and that gives time for QA to specialize. For instance, QA is very good at exploratory testing, and you can add this niche skill, and the team can work together.

In a good culture of QA, they would say: “As a team, we’ve dropped the ball, but to learn, we’ll do this better.” That’s what I mean when I say a culture of QA. It’s more of a collaborative team effort to get something right.

Thank you for such good points. If you speak about Agile, from your professional experience, does Agile need QA, or does QA need Agile to ensure high-quality software?

It goes both ways. To operate in a DevOps culture, you need quick feedback. But how can we get it? The answer is QA.

You need test automation, great performance, and security tests. There’s always going to be a quality need, and the team requires processes in place at speed so that they can move in an Agile way.

For me, when people say that to go fast, they don’t need QA, I’d say, “QA is as important as having engineering in Agile. You need all your key team members there to succeed.”

If you turn to digital transformations, can they be successful without an Agile approach today?

For me it depends on the organization type and its maturity.

For instance, I worked on major projects where you need such a structured approach that operating in an Agile way is quite hard to do if you haven’t got the skills, the team, the right architecture, and processes.

What I found recently is if the architecture has been created from scratch or the engineering has been built from the ground up, then you can go with Agile in mind. But when you have legacy systems, sometimes you have to take a more pragmatic view.

And your advice on how to embed QA in Agile to ensure confident and secure digital transformation?

I’d say you do want QA to be introduced as early as possible. What I find very important is how QA gets involved in Agile ceremonies, so is QA asking the right questions? Asking the “how,” asking the “what.”

What would I do if I was in a session? I’d ask what the impact analysis is. I sit with the engineer and say, “Can you show me, which other areas of the application are impacted by this change, how are you making the change at a code level?” At the same time, I’d start to run my test cases, and I’d think outside the box.

As an example, if I’ve got a username and password, would I just put the right username and password in? No, I’d put characters in the username, I’d put emojis in it, I’d probably put some SQL code injection in it. So, for me, it’s the initial mindset and the investment that you put at the start of the software development life cycle.

When you get to the part where you’re running, you can meet the Agile processes because you’ve thought further ahead of the game. Initially, it’s difficult because it’s still slow but once you start understanding what to test, and what’s a high priority, then you can start to use automation.

Automate the high-priority test cases that matter to a user first. And then run these test cases in an automated manner regularly. The more you run, the better, because you get fast feedback. You find out how flaky your tests are, and whether there are any false negatives in the tests. The same is with the code, the more regularly you run it, the better because you know that something is broken.

So, if you’re a part of a DevOps culture to your engineering and your QA processes, essentially, the team will start to move in an Agile manner.

What should companies consider before introducing test automation, and why does this accurate planning matter?

The mistakes I’ve seen in the past have been automation for the sake of automation.

But why do you want to automate?
What are you going to automate?
What business value will this give to your customers?

First, assess what you are automating. In general, if you don’t have your test cases listed or you don’t know what they are and what your first priority test cases are, you’ll probably automate a piece of rubbish. And then you’ll just be maintaining that forever with no value. Once you know what you need to automate, collaborate with the product team.

They can help you and say: “I don’t think that’s important, why haven’t you thought about this?” Or “You put it as a priority three, and it’s actually a priority one.” So, collaboration is the key.

Now, when it comes to implementing automation, the framework and the programming language, for example, should be in your sweet spot. If there’s a unison of the language, then everyone in the team can contribute.

Multiple people engaged is crucial, because your automation pack should be seen as a product in its own way. If an engineer created it, it can still be of the same type as a QA engineer or automation engineer.

Once the programming language and framework are set up, there would be a roadmap to say, “I’m not going to implement this.” Then it’s important to run automation as frequently as possible to give you data to ascertain whether you’ve automated the right things, whether they’re giving you the right results, whether the tests are flaky, and whether they are finding any problems. It’s the initial transition.

What I normally find is people jump into that last step which is to write code. But people need to walk before they can run, which is what I would recommend.

As we know, test automation cannot fully replace manual testing. From your point of view, is it possible to determine the percentage of QA activities that should be automated?

I think it’s hard to put a percentage on it, mainly because it depends on the priority. If people are doing so, they would start to automate concepts that don’t add any value.

As an example, if we automate something and it takes 2 seconds to do it manually, why not test it manually as it takes far longer to automate it, and it will take longer to get the value back?

Or if we’ve got very complex functionality where a piece of code has dependencies in 20 other areas – if we automated it, what confidence would we have that it actually tests everything? That’s where the value of manual testing comes in. And the value of somebody doing this priority testing will come in.

I don’t really like to put a value on it. For me, it’s more for what you’ve automated, why have you automated that percentage, and why you’re not doing the other 40%. If somebody can answer those questions, I believe that’s the better way of answering it rather than just a value.

Dileep thank you very much for this interview!

In this blog post, we continue our conversation on how QA outsourcing helps optimize telecom’s quality assurance expenses.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

What type of QA team to choose based on your unique telecom needs

Best practices for working in a multi-vendor environment and addressing challenges.

Dedicated or project team models: which one is the best fit?

Dedicated (DTM) and project (PTM) teams are business models, allowing the client to expand the capabilities of the existing internal team while curtailing QA costs. A DTM fits for long-term projects with a high degree of uncertainty (e.g., incomplete or missing documentation), where the product develops by iterations. PTM is good for smaller assignments, where the amount of testing scope won’t be as broad, and the goal is clear.

For example, if a telecom company develops a complex product involving several systems and software that regularly roll out new features and needs ongoing testing, then the DTM approach is the right choice. It helps attract domain experts with the right skillset who easily adjust to all project changes, set up and monitor the testing infrastructure and processes themselves, and propose improvements where possible. However, the choice of the final team depends on the main goal. So, if the primary aim is to accelerate the release of IT solution, the organization should introduce a dedicated test automation team.

Another situation: a telco provider has a billing solution, but it’s mission-critical to verify only one of its components, e.g., performance that won’t take more than half a year. In this instance, it’s more cost-effective to consider a PTM.

Engaging only senior specialists with vast experience in the QA field may be costly, as the statistics show the annual salary reaches up to $132,000. Involving both top and junior engineers may be the best path forward, creating a balanced team that works effectively while keeping the budget in check.

Establishing a multi-vendor environment: 3 challenges to consider

Since telecom programs often require the engagement of specialists with different competencies and skills, companies outsource multiple teams. Let’s imagine that TT&A, our hypothetical telco company, turned to two suppliers simultaneously to acquire software development and QA services. Going beyond traditional workflows and operating in a multi-vendor environment, the provider here would face several challenges.

Challenge #1 Environment management

If businesses want to maintain strict coordination, they must handle all managing and controlling activities. However, they should realize that these tasks take up time, possibly forcing a distraction from their primary responsibilities.

Another option is to transfer these activities to a supplier ― here, it’s vital to opt for the one who has already worked in a similar environment and has experience in monitoring and fine-tuning the workflow processes.

Challenge #2 Synchronization of processes and priorities

If suppliers are not aware of their priorities and the requisite task sequence, it leads to a lack of synchronization, slowing down all operational processes.

Companies should clearly set goals for each vendor before the work begins.

Challenge #3 Interaction between teams

Do the outsourced teams cooperate with each other? How effective is this communication? Make sure that vendors are not working in isolation, as this results in disharmony and delays with respect to the end product delivery.

Businesses need to hold regular meetings, helping providers cooperate and discuss the challenges at hand.

5 steps to establish an effective multi-vendor environment

Here is our step-by-step plan on how to manage the work of several third-party teams within a multi-vendor environment.

Determining the project scope. Prior to reaching out to vendors, it’s core to define the main goals as well as the volume of activities to perform. This helps set the right priorities for outsourced specialists.
Establishing proper metrics. Running a project without monitoring progress is extremely risky. KPIs enable tracking both vendors and processes as a whole: companies can set up qualitative benchmarks to measure the performance of experts involved and quantitative ones as well to ensure that everyone knows the proper scope of tasks and responsibilities to undertake.
Setting up a one-team approach. When functioning in a multi-vendor environment, suppliers run the risk of not communicating with each other. To address this problem, the product owner can create a team culture by incorporating regular meetings that allow discussing operational issues and building better rapport. This improves overall productivity and helps achieve a common goal.
Creating a report system. To keep the client informed about providers’ activities, it’s advisable to introduce a special procedure: each vendor makes a weekly performance report with a detailed description of the work done, problems encountered, and suggestions for solving them. This level of detail is all upside and only strengthens the process. Suppliers should also be involved in regular meetings to discuss challenges and ways to address them.
Managing risks. To make each outsourced company assume proper responsibility, the product owner may adopt a set of regulatory guidelines and standards as well as penalties for non-compliance.

Bottom line

Outsourcing software test requirements to a trusted QA partner makes sense for telecoms. Doing so pays performance dividends as much as it economizes telco budgets allocated for ensuring smooth product roll out. A key takeaway to remember is that the QA vendor takes care of four core aspects highlighted above: employment process, software assessment, QA activities setup, team agility and scalability.

If you’re ready to boost your telecom product quality with professional QA support and expertise, reach out to the a1qa team. We’re here to help you hit benchmarks and achieve your business goals. Let’s connect!

Projections by the Market Analysis Report show that the global telecom market will reach $2,467.01 billion by 2028. That’s a lot of (valuable!) communication on the horizon.

To maintain a leading position in such a fiercely competitive market, businesses need to ensure each software roll out meets the highest standards of quality for their end users, and do so while staying within QA budgeting parameters. One of the most effective ways to achieve this process is by partnering with an outsourced team of QA experts.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

Why companies should never skimp on software quality

How effective QA providers work hand-in-glove with telecoms to ensure best-in-class solutions.

Budgeting for QA: Stay wise when you economize

The telecom sector remains ascendant in the wake of the Covid pandemic, and continues to develop rapidly. As the tech that telcos provide to their customers keeps accelerating, so do expect end users when it comes to flawless connectivity.

This demand only reinforces the pivotal role that software testing plays in helping telecoms stay competitive. And the stats back this up: 61% of the World Quality Report 2021-2022 respondents from telecom companies state that QA has helped them enhance customer experience and security as well as achieve quality at speed.

Being complex and multi-component, effective, long-term telco solutions require adequate investments in QA. However, due to budget limitations, some companies scale back on functional software testing, which can lead to potentially devastating consequences, including damaged reputation, accelerated churn rates, lack of business growth, and worse.

Let’s consider three possible scenarios, demonstrating what may occur should you opt to skimp on testing software.

Scenario #1

TT&A, our hypothetical telco, has a billing and customer service system designed to offer a universal line of services for various types of networks. But their in-house QA team does not have enough expertise to perform full-fledged testing of the software, and it goes live with a range of critical and minor defects. As a result, churn rates balloon as unsatisfied users turn to rival IT products, shifting their purchasing power to companies whose software has no bugs and provides superior CX.

Scenario #2

In an attempt to cut corners, TT&A only conducts functional and usability testing. They decide to forego any QA tests concerning performance, cybersecurity, integration and so on. Trying to minimize QA costs, our fictional company suffered both short-term and long-term losses, because the lack of cybersecurity checks led to many vulnerable points through which hackers penetrated the system and captured personal data. And as we all know, this type of occurrence is not the work of fiction — data breaches can cost a company millions of dollars.

Scenario #3

Finally, imagine that TT&A has another telco product, designed to unite several core parts of the operation ― billing system, software for providing Internet access, accounting clients, and tracking invoices. After testing each module separately, they decide to omit comprehensive integration tests and verification. When the software was released, the system could not accurately identify users who had paid their bills and randomly cut off connectivity to certain customers.

Our examples point toward what not to do, but that doesn’t mean mitigating risk and optimizing performance requires blowing out your budget. Outsourcing QA tests to a trusted partner has been shown to drive up outcomes in software and application quality, and do so while decreasing costs.

How QA outsourcing helps optimize software testing budgets for telecoms

By applying professional expertise to the following four core aspects of QA, third-party vendors can assist telco businesses in decreasing expenses associated with assuring software quality:

Software assessment. Does your team know precisely which checks are pivotal for your software? QA professionals evaluate the IT product and its specifications to wisely choose a comprehensive QA strategy, tools, and testing types ― all needed to fine-tune workflows, quickly detect critical defects, and refine the quality. At this stage, experienced specialists also ensure proper test coverage through test design techniques. To verify the app accurately, they consider the specifics of the telecom industry.
QA activities setup. Establishing a QA process (especially from scratch) is time-sensitive and budget-consuming, involving investments in devices, toolkits, and workstations, and stopping a variety of major tasks. Possessing extensive expertise in telecom projects, third-party specialists take over the entire software testing cycle and perform all mission-critical stages: analyze requirements, plan, design, and execute tests, create reports, and so on.
Team agility and scalability. Let’s say your QA team consists of 3 engineers, and the testing scope is constantly evolving. How long will it take to find and onboard a new specialist? These concerns can be effectively taken off your plate — by staying agile and adaptive to the needs of the moment, a QA vendor can easily and smoothly expand or reduce the team of highly educated experts with vast experience in telecom at any time.
Employment process. The QA provider independently organizes the procedure for recruiting the most suitable specialists and onboarding them for the project. The annual salary of a test automation engineer is currently around $73,000 per year. When factoring this into the funds required for equipment and training, it’s easy to see how quickly costs begin to rise for a telco. A trusted vendor undertakes all these expenses, allowing you to focus on core business operations and subsequently increase ROI by producing a high-quality end product.

Source: Payscale

In Part 2, you’ll discover the difference between dedicated and project team models and challenges when working in a multi-vendor environment. Stay tuned and expect our next blog.

In case you’d like to optimize your telecom budget and refine software quality, contact a1qa’s experts.

How can telecom companies maintain market leadership in 2023? Adopting novel tech trends can be of help but it is a tricky process. So, how can businesses simplify it while achieving the desired outcomes? In the article, find out the 4 emerging telecom trends and 6 testing types that are pivotal to implementing them.

4 telecom trends to adopt in 2023: make your software unrivaled

Let’s see what trends will shape the future of the telecom industry.

Trend #1. No need to wait with 5G and 6G

Mobile ecosystems are constantly evolving, however, in today’s world, companies are in search of methods to make wireless communication even faster with higher capacity and frequency and lower latency. Even though 5G is still trending, many organizations are looking ahead and gradually introducing 6G, providing better throughput, higher data rates and reliability as well as unrivaled immersive experience when it comes to AR/VR.

Consider this: if 5G offered the speed of 1 GB per second (or with peak data rates of 20 GB), 6G will reach one TB, which is 8,000 times faster than 5G.

Source: Statista

Trend #2. Cloud introduction or amplifying the power of your digital ecosystem

Have you noticed the number of apps migrating to the cloud? Of course, business realizes that their target audience wants to access the software from anywhere. So, telecom companies are also looking for the ways to provide more flexible and scalable solutions with high computing power over the cloud. This is because the growth of such devices as IoT, AI, and ML has driven the demand for more powerful computing capabilities. Here, cloud computing assists in improving program resilience and efficiency, accelerating the digitalization processes, and easily transforming all flowing procedures to meet customers’ needs.

Trend #3. Network-as-a-service (NaaS) or having the network infrastructure without building it from scratch

Since building, deploying, and maintaining routers, WAN optimizers, and other network elements is a cumbersome process, organizations rely heavily on NaaS. NaaS removes the need to invest in network hardware and infrastructure, helping businesses avoid budget overruns.

As user traffic often varies and can exceed the expected limit, NaaS ensures that your network runs smoothly even during high loads and prevents system disruptions.

Trend #4. Edge computing or shortened response time

According to Statista, the edge computing market will reach $250.6 billion by 2024. By storing, processing, and analyzing data locally, edge computing provides higher performance, bandwidth optimization, low latency, refined security, and soundness for IoT, AR/VR, industry 4.0, and other devices possessing sensitive controllers.

It will allow cutting down on exploitation expenditure by reducing large volumes of data previously kept on the cloud.

How to take care of software quality when implementing telecom trends?

It’s critical to ensure a high software level. To achieve this, we see companies applying QA aimed at checking various system aspects and eliminating bugs in them.

#1. OSS/BSS testing

Integrating a myriad of devices, like servers, cloud-hosted machines, tablets, phones, etc., and handling large volumes of transactions, OSS/BSS systems should be able to function correctly around the clock. This allows verifying 3 key aspects of OSS/BSS software:

Performance. The number of flowing operations and users skyrockets from time to time, so for the software, it’s mission-critical to withstand all kinds of loads: from regular to peak ones.

Security. These systems are vulnerable to unauthorized intrusion, which often results in the leakage of clients’ and company’s private data.

Functionality. Can subscribers create, modify, and delete accounts? Can they easily perform all necessary actions, such as tracking and paying invoices? Functional verification assists in confirming that the OSS/BSS solutions comply with the stated requirements and simplify user interaction with the system.

#2. Migration testing

Just imagine this: you have a billing solution containing a slight calculation error. Sure, it’ll cause user dissatisfaction and 100, 1,000, or more customer support calls. Migration should be smooth without affecting the routine actions of subscribers.

The transformation of the telecom product, such as receiving new features, always requires the transition of a large amount of data from the source system to the target one. Migration tests help make this process seamless and ensure required data integrity while preventing its losses.

#3. Integration testing

Telecom software products have a complex structure and comprise a multitude of modules. Just look: one IT solution may include billing, customer support, and self-service systems as well as an integration platform.

But how to make sure that all of them seamlessly correlate with each other? Integration testing is of help in such situations that allow timely identify integration discrepancies in the app and ensure the proper functioning of interrelated modules.

Based on the entire system and its individual parts readiness and the desired deadline, companies may employ different integration testing strategies. For example, the big bang one is aimed at the systems in which all components are already interconnected to assess the integrity of the whole product. If the program isn’t entirely ready, it is better to start with low-level blocks by applying the bottom-up approach.

#4. Performance testing

When you need to combine several systems into a single one or the number of subscribers of your telecom software multiplies, putting performance testing at the core of a business strategy is a must-have.

So, what types of checks are helpful?

Load testing — to check that the system handles the required load.
Stress testing — to exclude program crashes if the number of users expands.
Volume testing — to make sure that the increased amount of data stored won’t cause software breakdown.
Scalability testing — to analyze how the telecom product responds to changes in architecture, the number of simultaneous subscribers, and generated requests.

#5. Cybersecurity testing

According to Deloitte, in 2020, cybercriminals stole the sensitive data of more than 500,000 people across the globe from video conferencing and sold it on the dark web. Quite an alarming case, agree? The most common attacks in the telecom sector, where 45% of all are cloud-based, include DNS (79% of companies suffered it in 2020), SS7, DDoS, and others, which ultimately lead to downtime, damaged reputation, and high operational expenditure needed to restore the software.

Well, to prevent breaches within telecom systems, companies make use of cybersecurity tests — conduct a vulnerability assessment, static code analysis, penetration testing, social engineering activities, and more — providing a safe experience for subscribers.

#6. Test automation

Testing telecom software may be time-consuming, especially if done manually. Adopting test automation is a logical choice to reduce test cycles, improve test coverage, and decrease QA costs as well as increase ROI from 37% to 50%, as stated in the World Quality Report.

Closing thought

In 2023, telecom companies may rely on 4 topical trends ― 6G, cloud introduction, NaaS, and edge computing ― to continue providing end users with a consummate digital experience.

And to take exceptional care of telecom software quality, organizations just call for QA and verify the following aspects: OSS/BSS, migration, integration, performance, and cybersecurity, as well as introduce test automation to accelerate the testing process.

In case you don’t plan to boost your telecom product quality yourself and need professional QA assistance, reach out to a1qa’s professionals.

The world is changing, and the same goes for technologies. You can hardly imagine the software that doesn’t need improvements and updates, can you?

But how to manage constant modifications confidently while delivering a competitive IT product? And that’s where continuous testing comes in to support businesses in boosting apps quality and winning the high market race.

In the article, let’s discover…EVERYTHING about continuous testing: perks it provides for companies, reasons to adopt it, and 6 core steps to make to smartly integrate it into business processes.

Shaping a complete picture: why do companies need continuous testing, and what do they get in return?

These days, we are witnessing a mass-scale adoption of flexible methodologies. The 15th State of Agile Report indicates that 94% of surveyed companies are practicing Agile while 74% of respondents are implementing DevOps. What are the reasons behind these high rates? Constant changes. In the market, across the software development process, and end-user behavior patterns. And Agile and DevOps perfectly assist in addressing all of them.

However, businesses want a bit more than just producing a top-notch IT solution. What if the goal is to deliver high-quality products at a fast pace with innovations at the core? Then, it’s essential to integrate continuous testing (or CT, for short).

The common question is, “How can the company understand that it’s time to adopt continuous testing?” Here, there are 3 critical factors to bear in mind.

Factor 1. Working in a highly competitive market

For several decades, the world has been in the constant flow of technological change, with many industries experiencing disruption — from streaming companies to hospitality and automotive. With more organizations applying AI, IoT, AR/VR, and other technologies to boost customer experience and hold the attention of picky end users, remaining competitive has come to the fore. Adopting CT helps test early, often, and faster, delivering quality software.

Factor 2. Following regular release cadence

Amazon deploys every 11.7 seconds, and other companies attempt to reach the same results. Continuous testing, in its turn, allows keeping up with this pace, significantly reducing the testing cycle time and helping deliver high software quality at speed. At really high speed!

Factor 3. Striving to enhance software quality

To increase the odds of success in the market and deliver IT products that attract end customers, companies continuously do their best to improve software quality. CT allows them to establish a holistic quality assurance process by fulfilling tests throughout the entire SDLC, from the stage of early planning to deploying to the production environment. This means meeting the high software soundness, performance, and security.

It’s true that before introducing a particular service, companies need to know exactly what values it may bring to them. Let’s take a look at the 5 strongest benefits of continuous testing.

Early mitigated risks. Timely feedback throughout the SDLC assists in promptly identifying blocking defects and eliminating them before the preparation of code.
Smarter software release. Within Agile and DevOps, companies build an extremely flexible software development ecosystem with continuous release cadence.
Effective QA workflow. Continuous testing allows shifting left and right at any SDLC stage while performing required QA activities at the necessary time.
Boosted user experience. Timely performing test activities and conducting test automation throughout the SDLC keep the software code under exceptional supervision and prevent fault leakage. So, it helps improve CX, delight end-users with high-quality new functionality, and avoid business decline.
Better teams’ integration. When evaluating the quality state from the very start of the project, all project members share QA value (as the time of siloed QA teams has passed). This streamlines effective collaboration, minimized downtimes, and high-grade code in production.

Building the 6-step plan of continuous testing

Now, let’s proceed with the steps to make to introduce CT with confidence.

Step 1. Conduct exploratory testing

Yes, test automation is an excellent choice for those wishing to check whether code changes haven’t affected existing functionality. But test automation alone can’t truly define if the features live up to set expectations.

It’s vital to perform exploratory testing as a first step in assessing the quality of a product. It helps identify issues that are hard to notice during other software testing approaches, simplify the cooperation of the cross-functional team, and find issues before introducing automation.

Step 2. Prioritize risks and perform test design

Modern software testing solutions are characterized by increased complexity due to multiple innovations at their core. And often, the costs are too high to allow even a single defect to leak into the production environment as the software may be embedded in a medical device intended to save someone’s life, for example.

So, to detect issues quickly, it’s critical to define business risks, prioritize them, and create the right test coverage that you’ll be able to gradually increase to reach 90% and more.

Step 3. Introduce test automation

Test automation works miracles when it comes to improving QA efficiency and accelerating time to market without compromising on software quality. The latest World Quality Report shows that it also provides businesses with reduced operational costs (47%), enhanced detection of defects (49%), mitigated risks (51%), and many more.

Source: World Quality Report 2021-22

However, to get the greatest value from test automation efforts, it’s significant to do 3 things: define the right toolset based on your business needs and budget, teams’ capabilities; set up a stable approach to have real-time visibility into the current quality level; expand the coverage over time.

Step 4. Prepare the infrastructure for CI/CD

CI/CD pipelines are a core part of DevOps practice as they help boost project velocity, minimize manual efforts, and reduce the probability of errors during integration and deployment stages.

To release reliable software, companies should prepare their infrastructures for CI/CD by organizing pipelines, integrating them into the communication channels, and performing service virtualization.

Step 5. Establish procedures (related to processes based on minimizing business risks)

By following a sequence of steps, companies standardize procedure flows. It minimizes the probability of defects slipping into the production environment and decreases the QA budget required for their fixing.

For example, before rolling out a new feature, it’s vital to define business risks and create test coverage, consisting of step-by-step procedures. They include defining the scope of unit tests, component tests, and finally, end-to-end tests. It also allows easily tracing the roots of any problems by analyzing them during retrospectives.

Step 6. Measure progress

It streamlines determining the progress and getting insights into which parts of the implemented solution may work better and improve them. Here, you may analyze the influence of your actions, reanalyze the risks, and conduct a retrospective to achieve greater success.

Wrapping up

So, what do we have? The key factors for adopting continuous testing are working in a highly competitive landscape, following regular release cadence, striving for software quality enhancement.

About the benefits. With CT, companies mitigate risks early on, provide smarter software releases, enhance QA workflow, boost user experience, get better teams’ integration.

And that’s not all. Companies may follow a 6-step plan to implement it smartly and confidently.

Reach out to a1qa’s experts to get a personal consultation on adopting continuous testing.

Why do today’s eCommerce apps need to be extremely fast and efficient?

Obviously, consumers don’t like waiting. Like they say in the song, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.” To win their trust, it’s vital to provide them with a high-quality and reliable IT product.

But how to achieve this and at the same time make the testing process more effective and transparent? One of the proven options is to implement Agile and DevOps, which is not always that easy.

In the article I will show you how Agile and DevOps help reimagine eCommerce software, and what advantages companies receive from their implementation.

Flexibility and speed: supercharging eCommerce apps

According to the 15th State of Agile Report, the overall number of organizations practicing Agile methodology is 94% while the State of DevOps Report 2021 shows that 83% of companies implement DevOps.

But what about eCommerce: Is it enough for businesses to apply classical QA approaches for endless but essential software changes? Definitely, not.

Being flexible as never, Agile and DevOps help create a close-knit team where developers, QA engineers, product owners, and other members interact constantly to meet the common business goals. With a high focus on end users’ needs, of course.

When the pandemic struck, the demand for online shopping increased dramatically and the rate of online purchases surged to 16.1% from 11.8%. Not that much but still that impacted a lot the behavior and buying habits of consumers. Thus, close cooperation between the specialists helps respond quickly to changing customers’ requirements, prevent delays in the product launch, enhance its quality, and reduce business risks by constantly receiving the feedback.

People rate their favorite apps, giving 5 stars on Play Market and App Store, etc., recommend them to friends, become brand advocates, and keep up with all the new products of the brand. A perfect scenario.

3 “yes!” to say to Agile in eCommerce

To get positive results from implementing Agile, it’s essential to clearly understand how it works and what you want to obtain in detail. The 15_^th State of Agile Report shows that the main reasons for adopting Agile include managing constantly changing priorities, accelerating software delivery, increasing team productivity, enhancing IT product quality, and reducing project risks. Please, have a look at the picture below.

15^th State of Agile Report

Though the pool of Agile strong points is ample, I think it’s necessary to mention some more key benefits that are indispensable in reaching the desired business outcomes:

Increased velocity and flexibility

I beleive that agile probably stands out among other methodologies as it helps release the app faster and more frequently by close and strong collaboration between business, management, and engineering teams that help react on constant changes and manage the quality faster.

Given today’s fast-paced IT landscape and high end-user expectations, it allows gathering consumers’ feedback after the product launch and gradually modify the eCommerce software. To make it so, continuous testing wins out, ensuring high speed of flowing processes while gaining more accurate results and timely fixing bugs.

Business analysis, in its turn, assists QA teams in understanding end-user needs implemented in the new-feature requirements. Moreover, specialists exchange essential updates on regular sync-ups to ensure transparent vision on project’s status and directions.

Enhanced market interest

Guided by their needs, consumers are subconsciously looking for software that meets their requirements and provides a wide range of options. All-in-one. Let’s admit it’s pretty much easier to have everything there — from making online transactions via multiple payment methods to selecting different colors and sizes as well as tracking products’ availability at all stores.

Let’s look at Amazon and eBay — their apps instantly process all incoming requests and provide the customers with all the information and products at lightning speed. And they succeed.

How? Performance testing, for instance, helps evaluate whether the IT solution withstands heavy loads and will not crash on New Year’s sales or Black Friday due to a large influx of customers, so end users continue e-shopping instead of getting error message on their displays.

Being aware of the expected number of users and the desired software capacity, QA teams organize the correct systems performance by detecting the actual performance indicators in advance and comparing them with desirable ones. Close cooperation helps QA experts pass all the details as well as improvements areas to the development team. The result of such interaction is the reduced implementation time and improved system’s capabilities.

Mitigated business risks

The flexible approach, divided into several sprints, brings project transparency by passing all processes step-by-step while forecasting possible hazards and gradually addressing them. It also improves project management processes, handles unwanted risks, and provides greater flexibility, allowing companies to deliver high-quality IT products faster and more frequently.

In case you want to reduce business risks even more while bearing in mind the number of cyber incidents is increasing each day, introducing cybersecurity testing may be of help with that. With software being extremely sophisticated, the hackers have more opportunities to penetrate it, so rigorous testing allows find the pain points and timely prevent the leakage of sensitive users’ data.

DevOps in eCommerce: yes or no?

The 15^th State of Agile Repost highlights that 75% of respondents find this methodology essential for their organizations.

While Agile focuses on ongoing changes, DevOps aims at constantly testing and delivering IT products to the market while enhancing the quality and reducing the number of bugs.

Primarily concentrating on ongoing communication, improved performance, and better cooperation, DevOps methodology leverages fast deployment while closely complying with clients’ requirements.

To get all the benefits that DevOps provides, why not leverage eCommerce processes via introducing several up-to-date practices:

Smart automation

When implementing DevOps methodology with test automation, companies make the testing process more effective. The right automation tools and a wise automated solution contribute not only to speeding up the process by reducing test cycle time but also to improving software quality, maximizing ROI, increasing release velocity through CI/CD approach. It’s easy to integrate test automation with the development activities, so the Dev team performs checks when needed by triggering automated tests build.

Continuous innovations

With Waterfall, the defects are possible to fix after releasing the product. No agility, no mobility. DevOps helps address it with confidence by providing improvements within small iterations, ability to perform changes following retrospective and audience feedback.

For instance, one of the pressing problems of modern apps is the poor UI. According to the latest World Quality Report, 46% of respondents put an emphasis on CX validation and usability testing.

By performing UI testing, it’s possible to verify multiple components, like UI workflows, calculations, buttons, etc. As a result, all app’s functions operate smoothly and correctly while ensuring comfortable users’ experience.

Summarizing

Within today’s IT market, retail companies adopt flexible approaches that assist them in delivering upscale apps, satisfying end users’ needs.

Agile and DevOps are pioneering among other methodologies as they bring enough flexibility, provide constant team members collaboration that help release software faster and more frequently, getting the leading positions in the IT market and enhancing IT products’ quality.

Feel free to reach out to a1qa’s experts to get QA support on implementing testing in your Agile and DevOps business strategy.

Within growing popularity amid end users, AR/VR have emerged as mediums providing new ways to implement a range of business solutions and helping modify both online and offline shopping experiences.

What to consider to smoothly introduce AR/VR innovation into retail business? This is where forward-thinking retail players rely on software testing while preventing possible issues like customers’ outflow, revenue decline, unstable IT products, and many more.

Let’s take a closer look at the infographic that shows what digital reality tendencies such organizations launch and how they navigate the challenges through AR/VR testing.

You can download the infographic here.

Final note

The future has already come in the retail industry within AR in-store navigation, digital displays, smart dressing rooms, and VR shops. However, companies still have hesitations on implementing AR/VR by experiencing high expenses and time-consuming app support.

Is it a race for being trendy or it is a real need to move on to the next level of doing business? You decide.

To keep up with customers’ expectations and introduce high-end technologies with confidence, organizations apply AR/VR testing. Alongside ensuring impeccable quality and stable operation, QA helps enhance CX, increase conversion rates, and reinforce end users’ loyalty.

Need support in introducing AR/VR technologies into retail software? Get hold of the a1qa team.

Within the evolving IT market, the demand for high-quality software is boosting day by day, with companies improving their products continuously. By adding new functionality and upgrading the developed one, their intentions are around to meet the end-user expectations.

This is where the need to ramp up the team, a QA group being no exception, is growing by leaps and bounds to help them stay ahead of the competitors.

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford found that 90% of young businesses fail because of premature expansion, and this is where it becomes clear that a prepared scaling plan doesn’t necessarily mean organizations attain planned outcomes.

By leveraging smart scalability based on agile methodologies and scaling up and down on request, businesses are more likely to derive desired results. The World Quality Report 2019-2020 indicates 95% of respondents use agile to some extent.

The Agile approach is more typical for small teams. But what if the promptly changing market and the need to offer truly high-quality IT solutions force to accelerate delivery time and enlarge the project? In the article, we discuss how to effectively scale a QA team and be confident in releasing top-notch apps meeting tight deadlines.

Reasons for scaling QA team

Global digitalization has become a clue for transforming internal processes. The unstable situation also paved the way for the rapid transition to a new norm, when people massively migrated to the online space within moving limits.

In such conditions, companies have tested their strength and how deeply their business operations were shocked. However, most of them were not prepared for this and faced a number of hindrances: decreased customer satisfaction, fallen market share, reduced revenue, and much more.

To bolster their competitiveness, organizations need to speed up time to market. How to do this in unprecedented circumstances? Salvage the situation with Agile. Here are the top 4 reasons for implementing it.

Adopting agile — Resource: the 14th annual State of Agile Report

When it is not enough to be ahead of the competitors, adapting not only at the team level but also within the entire organization can be a way out. Based on smart scaling, SAFe is designed to conduct large transformational programs being about the equality of team members and the timely exchange of information between numerous participants using agile. Therefore, every employee understands the business goals and knows how to achieve them.

Smart scalability addresses the challenge

Applying for a sage extension, companies can change the number of project participants on request at short notice. Hinging on the business goals, the team might be scaled up and down.

The mounting process also involves the division into small groups, where effective communication is a silver bullet. Due to the desire to reach planned outcomes laying at the heart of the approach, employees re-image the mindset and work cohesively with each other.

Having united all the departments and teams with one management system, productivity increases. Project participants know their responsibilities, roles, and whom to contact in case of an emergency. They do understand their tasks and project objectives better, which means reducing downtime.

Moreover, employees’ accountability and independence in decision-making are evolving. There is no more need to regularly contact managers with uncomplicated issues that allow specialists to use their knowledge and experience and unleash their potential.

How to expand a QA team successfully?

Here’s what a1qa’s experts recommend to increase the number of team members effectively.

Compose a plan

A plan should be designed at the very start when recruiting employees. As the team grows, it is necessary to continuously develop the right strategy that will suit the current state. The scaling plan covers all activities on the project, from the technical aspects (tools and infrastructure) to the teams and resource management.

If you have a range of urgent and high-priority tasks to focus on, you can onboard a QA consultant who is up to analyze the current situation on the project and make a reliable plan for the transition to new practices supporting you in achieving your business outcomes.

Prioritize

Defined business goals streamline attracting specialists with an adequate skillset, as expertise and technical knowledge for productive work have already been specified. It is better to set several ultimate goals to be sure tasks are prioritized, and activities are consistent with the plan. An example to consider is: if the project’s aim is to accelerate time to market, you need to onboard test automation specialists to optimize routine checks, reducing the iteration time.

Onboard specialists with right skills

The software quality and success largely depend on the team. It is crucial to recruit QA talents with the appropriate skills not only at the start of the project but also when an expansion is necessary.

It is a common situation when the internal crew is not enough to scale, and organizations turn to outsourcing. It happened when the customer, a global provider of telecom IT solutions, entrusted the a1qa’s team with testing three large software packages. The scope of the project was regularly changing that caused the QA group ramp-up.

Considering the workload size, a1qa attracted additional QA specialists and also reduced the QA squad upon request.

Thanks to the timely knowledge transfer and task monitoring, the QA expansion was effective.

Monitor progress and results

By tracking all the parameters, including success metrics, you get a birds-eye view of the team’s structure, its productivity, and growth in the future. Otherwise, it is more likely to miss the scaling time or which area needs it.

Moreover, controlling progress on the level of an employee is an essential point. KPIs allow specialists to develop themselves and have a better understanding of business aspirations.

Care and interest in the progress of all project participants can ensure productive scaling, continuous interaction, and working as a single system.

All things considered

Highly competitive IT space forces companies to briskly scale project members, including those assuring quality.

But how to expand physical horizons and maintain high productivity? Smart team scalability is a way out. Based on agile methodologies, the approach contributes to faster time to market and adaptability within the entire organization.

Bringing on the right skillset and a clear strategy at the start, task prioritization, and setting KPIs can fuel the growth meeting all desired outcomes.

Need support in scaling your QA team? Reach out to us to get help from a1qa’s experts.

In line with a highly competitive market, businesses have their eye on digital experts to effectively promote their brand, turn to programmers and QA specialists to deliver a top-notch application under tight deadlines.

Cooperating with QA vendors, organizations not only get an experienced team, but also reap numerous benefits: concentrate on core activities, optimize costs, increase operational efficiency, and much more.

However, besides brought success, it shares potential risks and responsibility for achieving goals in delivering flawless software.

The process of choosing an entrusted partner is difficult, even when you have a solid plan for further activities. In this article, I will share tips on how to pick an infallible QA provider and how to start this prosperous cooperation.

Is it worth onboarding the distance working team?

Every organization possessing an IT solution asks the same question. “Should we hire in-house QA engineers and provide hands-on technical training, or transfer tasks to an outsourcing team that integrates into the process and delves into the software hallmarks?” There is no right answer, as it all depends on the peculiar requests of a company.

If it aims to nurture an internal department, the decision will be made in favor of its in-house team.
If the goal is to reduce costs on creating and maintaining a novel direction, it will turn to an independent vendor.

Collaboration with a QA provider brings a formed group of specialists that are selected according to business needs. Therefore, it saves costs and time on human resources.

Outsourcing a dedicated team allows setting non-key processes (like software testing for a bank, for instance). Also, QA specialists’ commitment and narrow-focused competence push the envelope to new initiatives.

Since the organization has an IT solution, its development process divides into cycles and workload distribution is likely to be unbalanced. Sometimes QA engineers have to wait for the next build so that they stay out of work. After a while, they are overwhelmed with tasks and run out of time to perform all the necessary tests. Outsourcing helps companies flexibly control the amount of work and onboard specialists on demand.

Moreover, even if you are confident in your software product, occasionally it needs an independent assessment to identify the shortcomings and improve quality.

Selecting a QA vendor

The provider’s investigation lays in the heart of the successful partnership. Try to figure out all the necessary information. It might be the size of a company, its market experience, portfolio, and much more.

What is more important, pay attention to the official website. It is rather unreliable to trust a company, which can’t establish a satisfactory operation of its own digital space, right?

You may also have a look at the reviews from its previous clients on the independent platforms, like Clutch. It helps form a more comprehensive picture of the vendor.

Don’t forget about a portfolio. There you can find success stories from diverse spheres and make sure that the organization has experience in similar projects.

Many outsourcing companies also offer pilot projects so that a team demonstrates its skills in practice. It is the most suitable option for clients to check flexibility and team scaling on demand to assess the results and decide on further cooperation.

Integrating the outsourcing QA team

Once a company has chosen a QA provider, the next step is to think over a team integration in the current project infrastructure. Continuous communication is a silver bullet. It might be more effective to use shared online tools: file storage, messengers, video conferencing platforms, etc.

Identifying the responsibilities of each member helps everyone know what to do and whom they can contact in case of an emergency. To synchronize processes, regular meetings can be established.

Knowledge transfer is one of the keys to business success. However, many companies do not have a clear plan and holistic insight into it. a1qa’s experts suggest the following algorithm at the start of cooperation:

Compose a plan. The order of joint actions should describe the business process that is delegated to a remote team. So, you can detect potentially vulnerable areas that need close attention from the side of a QA provider.
Ensure minimal impact on business-critical operations. Knowledge transfer shouldn’t disrupt business activity. If a company shifts the responsibility of a process to an outsourcing team, then in-house specialists should be fully involved in their core charge.

How to provide efficient communication

Both customer-company and vendor-organization should work together and find an optimal cooperation format. Members can communicate in a real-time mode, every day, every two weeks, once a month, or less frequently.

Accustomed platforms and messengers are suitable for solving simple or non-urgent tasks. It is convenient to keep in touch with each other within one or two tools when all the information is concentrated in one storage. Such communication can be supplemented by weekly or short daily calls.

Retrospectives summarizing interim results mark the end of each sprint in Scrum. The client’s dedication helps form a clear vision of current priorities, and the team receives timely feedback.

When leveraging Scrum or SAFe, companies should adhere to the following principles:

Incrementally plan participants’ actions
Maintain continuous communication
Meet deadlines
Scale up and down the team on demand.

Scrum planning can take a few hours, while the cycle in SAFe usually lasts a couple of weeks with several phases of planning, verifying, and configuring.

Unlike high-level team consistency in SAFe, Scrum allows multiple teams to work together at a low dependency level.

Estimating the remote team’s productivity

Before jump-start working, you should clearly understand your project business goals, while by tracking KPIs, you can see met targets, realization stages, and remaining tasks to derive the valuable outcome.

Testing equipment also makes a difference. For example, mobile app testing requires real devices to simulate end users’ actions.

Partnership with the outsourcing team: core concepts

Shared stake in success with delegated responsibility is the cornerstone of project performance. For instance, a QA team sets such transparent processes that the client receives up-to-date information about the status of issues and new defects weekly or daily via video conferences or email. This adaptability helps build trust and mutual understanding.

Besides, many customers value QA specialists’ intent on delving deep into the business context and learning the product features.

It is great when a client provides everything required for high-quality work, maintains the relevance of information sources, and informs about any internal changes in the company.

In conditions of geographical distribution, an experienced provider adapts to the client’s time zone. Depending on their requirements and business goals, QA engineers can adjust work schedules to fit the customer’s mode.

Cooperation with a remote team is a craft where the all-important point is a joint work of a customer and a QA provider.

a1qa knows how to tweak it to perfection. If you still doubt to onboard an outsourcing team, feel free to get hold of the a1qa’s experts.

Scrum has proven to be a powerful tool for rolling out software products involving up to nine assets comprising the product owner’s performance. Seemingly, nine high-end and wisely motivated professionals are capable of anything, what could go wrong? However, in real world, things are rarely that simple.

When software development needs are expanding by leaps and bounds, the number of teams is increasing pro rata. Communication between them and synchronization of group work are jeopardized especially if considering geographically dispersed specialists.

LeSS Huge envisaged by Scrum is applicable for projects with >8 teams only. Otherwise, I recommend cherry-picking SAFe framework.

Founded on the principles declared in the Agile Manifesto, it allows syncing up the work performed by up to 150 specialists. SAFe takes communication to the next level and introduces Program Increment (PI) Planning to promote direct communication between the attendees: software developers, testers, business owners, and program stakeholders. PI Planning is the synchronization point of the Agile Release Train (ART).

Why PI? During the planning session, the teams create the plans for the upcoming Program Increment, which helps them get things done effectively, release more features in less time, and align on project workflows.

How is PI planning organized?

It’s better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times. With this saying in mind, I’ll share the planning agenda we received attached to the Meeting Request email last month. You’ll find the agenda some paragraphs below, while right now, I enlist some of the crucial points of planning.

Prior to planning, the well-elaborated backlog of functional and architectural features is prepared. The results of the planning shall be the commitment of the teams to an agree-to set of objectives for the next PI. All planning takeaways (teams committed to working on any user story, user stories interconnections) are fixed on the program board.

The planning process itself is very fascinating in SAFe and has many teambuilding features.

Let’s review some of the major differences our QA consultants have come across.

Organizational issues to be ready for

Duration. Previously, it took us less than four hours to plan up a Scrum sprint. After migrating to SAFe, planning began to last four days almost.
Participants. While applying Scrum, we planned sprints independently from other teams. In SAFe, it’s all different. Development, QA, business analysts, UX specialists are to participate in planning cooperatively. If someone can’t attend it for some reason, he or she should be available for questions.
Event agenda. In Scrum, most of the time is devoted to estimating user stories. In SAFe, there are many more stages.

Now have a look at the agenda of the Product Increment planning we had last month.

It all starts with the company’s governing bodies communicating the business context of the upcoming PI to all teams. After that, the product manager specifies how the business context will be implemented in terms of functional solutions. The architecture shares his/her vision on the product’s technical implementation.

When they are done, the floor is yielded to the product owner of every team. He/she briefly presents the scope of requirements for the whole team to be familiar with the features that will be developed by every other team. On that note, the first day of planning is over, and teams say goodbye to each other to meet the following day.

On day two, teams break out to start working on their plans for the upcoming PI. By the end of the day, the draft of the plan should be presented. Managers review those plans and introduce necessary adjustments.

During the third day of planning, teams continue working on their plans to finalize them. Scrum Masters present the plans of their teams and review the risks alongside. The final procedure is a confidence vote. All attendees should confirm their commitment to the final plan objective. Every team conducts a “fist of five” vote. The commitment is accepted if there are three or four fingers on average. If fewer, then plans are reworked.

Noteworthy, any person voting two fingers and fewer should be given a voice to explain their concerns.

Finally, a brief retrospective is conducted to capture what went well and what did not. Following this, the next steps are discussed.

Ways to sync up and visualize the issues

If you were attentive (and I bet you were), you must have noticed one of the points on the agenda I haven’t specified yet. Scrum of Scrums hourly. It’s an hourly meeting of Scrum Masters that takes place while the teams are estimating the given user stories. The objective here is to sync the teams up.
The new level of visualization. Working with Scrum, we used JIRA to track bugs, assign issues to the responsible specialists. In SAFe, it became very difficult to discuss arising issues with colleagues who are allocated on other continents. Having tried multiple options, we gave our preference to RealTimeBoard – virtual boards that allow us to work with visual content together with our mates.

Stories estimation differences

Estimation methods change from those in Scrum. User stories in SAFe are estimated in story points. This is the relative estimation to compare the difficulty of two or more stories.
Every story is to be estimated in 2-3 minutes. Teams don’t need to get into deep discussions but rather provide a general estimation.
If the story is estimated in more than 8 points, it should be broken out in smaller pieces to be implemented on time.
Now in SAFe, we estimate not only our job but also the job of our colleagues from other teams. It gives a better understanding of their contribution and engagement. The question “Why do you need so much time for testing this small feature?” is rarely heard now.

PI planning advantages

With visible changes becoming commonplace, the SAFe framework is one of the means for deriving faster time-to-benefits while increasing productivity, quality, and customer engagement.

PI planning in SAFe is an essential technique for providing better alignment between teams through improved process transparency and well-organized face-to-face communication.

Development on cadence, being the heartbeat of ART, is observed while the future becomes more definite as we are aware of the teams’ plans several sprints ahead. Besides, we’ve gained a better understanding of our mission and the value we add to the product.

To cut a long story short

Our fast-changing world complicated by COVID-19 pandemic requires novel, well-balanced strategies to adapt at the necessary pace. SAFe is precisely one of them.

Wisely configured and applied, it can turn the tide to help you achieve any goal – from shifting new markets with products tailored to face a global challenge to embarking on a digital transformation journey.

All you have to do is just start. a1qa will help you begin and proceed with confidence.

The forced changes in the global context due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus have affected many areas of our lives. Right now, we are observing the onset of a global crisis that is turning our understanding of digital space upside down.

Take the promotion of home self-isolation as an example. It has stimulated a growing interest in online services. In the USA alone, Internet traffic has increased by 20%. Unfortunately, not all websites and mobile apps were prepared for such a large-scale online migration.

We still have time to rectify the situation. Here are five key lessons the businesses need to learn during this pandemic to somehow achieve the planned outcomes.

The need for digital transformation

The demand for digital technologies for business is growing by leaps and bounds because web users expect fast and accurate fulfillment of their requests.

Machine learning, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things help improve customer experience. Software solutions based on these technologies are significantly more appealing for users than the rest. Here are just a few examples of why this is the case:

Virtual assistants save user time because they can answer simple queries.
Smart ecosystems make life more comfortable as they can synchronize different devices and can be controlled remotely.
Big data solutions bring the user more satisfaction because they make generic software become personalized.

An unfinished digital transformation has limited the potential of a business at a time when everyone has massively migrated to the online space. After all, poor-quality or the absence of digital products has pushed users to find quick alternatives in conditions of increased competition in the network.

Attention to data management

Сollection, storage, and analysis of data help companies get a comprehensive picture of their customers. Effective data management is the basis for the development of IT systems.

Big data has become a corporate asset that helps build a development strategy, make informed business decisions, and streamline internal processes.

How does it work in practice? Data management allows you to create the optimal offering for each individual user, and this customer focus results in loyalty. Working with data has allowed companies to form more unique selling points.

If the company does not collect and analyze data or does not control the quality of information, the risk of receiving erroneous results with regard to compiling a business strategy will grow.

Flexible business model

Another lesson from the epidemic is the importance of building a flexible business model that allows you to transform processes and operations quickly if necessary.

Benefits were afforded to those companies that followed the digital-first concept. The main idea behind this approach is the preference for digital interaction channels and platforms. Such companies who have taken their first steps toward realizing this already possess a margin of safety.

To become a digital-oriented company, it is important to enlist the support of a reliable vendor. For example, choosing an outsourcing company can help you set up the continuity of working activities.

Outsourcing teams specialize in remote collaboration, so they already have the necessary experience in creating effective interaction processes. Contacting experienced IT service providers allows you to build a more flexible and productive business model.

The other advantage is risk diversification. The current situation has clearly shown the global chain of processes. The pandemic has also displayed how simple it is to break this link in a chain reaction. It is already impossible to navigate building a solely offline business because it can fall victim to recession in the conditions of a prolonged quarantine. It is necessary to formulate different formats and approaches for the development of operations that can interchange each other.

After the pandemic, businesses should constantly ask themselves the following questions:

How can we reduce the impact of a sharp decline in demand for my product?
How can we attract attention to the product in conditions of increasing competition?
Why should a user continue buying my product even with a decrease in his/her income?

Focus on customer-facing solutions

A key component of this strategy is the focus on user satisfaction achieved via utilizing all customer touchpoints. Understanding the importance of customer needs is a significant business investment that affects process design.

The first step to ensuring personal interaction between the user and the product will be provided by the UX. After all, the higher the comfort of the end users when using your software product, the more likely they are to become regular customers and brand advocates.

An additional factor in creating customer-facing solutions is performance testing. These quality checks allow not only evaluating the performance of the product under the expected loads but also to look at it through the eyes of the user. The timely elimination of system bottlenecks helps introduce a more attractive and competitive product in the market.

Who might need this? Large corporations are a potential target. The global increase in traffic has affected even the giants. In early March, Netflix and YouTube asked their users to lower the quality of the video to reduce the load on the servers.

Process automation

Optimization of business processes can significantly save resources, and the key to this is automation. The attraction of self-regulatory technical means has shown their strength during the pandemic. Indeed, the automation of some tasks helps ensure that the production processes are not interrupted.

Test automation, for instance, allows a series of regular operations to simulate user activity. Individually designed tests can be re-run when testing functionality.

Moreover, test automation makes it possible to conduct checks at the optimal time while reducing the load on the server. Currently, a decrease in human involvement in this process is allowing business continuity.

Сonscious work on errors can help us actually implement the lessons of this pandemic and prevent possible difficulties in the future. It is worth remembering that the current predicament is only a phase that will end someday.

At present, we can learn several important lessons, revise our development strategies, and realize how to maintain an attitude of optimism in these difficult days.

Get a free consultation with the a1qa engineers on your software quality issues.

In the current conditions of uncertainty and panic, it is important to focus on enhancing the effectiveness of your teams.

Applying the best practices for optimizing project management for the long term, QA managers and team leads should ask themselves the following questions in order to help businesses bring the planned outcomes:

How should I keep the project on track?
How can I timely monitor and respond to external and internal amendments like the client’s business goals, market situation, atmosphere within the team?
Are there any hidden problems that can “destroy” all the made progress?

In this article, a1qa experts are sharing their experience on the QA retrospective use and are shedding light on how it helps emphasize typical challenges as well as solve most of them.

Tackling often-observed issues

The retrospective is a system of regular “flashbacks” that can enhance crew performance and increase the transparency of the project processes for the QA manager by involving the whole team in the internal culture of excellence.

Let us define three types of retrospectives depending on the objectives and the arisen challenges:

General
Project
Internal

A general meeting involves each and every project team member to take part in the problem-related discussions and make robust decisions. Everybody from testers, developers, business analysts to designers meet together to stop thinking about doing work tasks and focus on drawing a picture on the main challenges within the team as an entity. We call it a “psychotherapeutic” retrospective helping find process drawbacks and make a plan of action.

A project retrospective is carried out within the framework of a specific team or the testing crew separately from the development and other units. It can prepare participants for a general retrospective or it can be an isolated event to improve processes and solve specific problems.

The manager can also conduct the retrospective for himself or herself after finishing some of the work. It helps analyze and structure gained experience without delay to record successful management practices for future use.

The frequency of the retrospective can vary from weekly meetings to one rally at the end of the project and depends on the size of the team and the number of tasks. The most effective format is believed to be a regular meeting held every two or three weeks after the end of the iteration.

The retrospective may be conducted:

At the end of a certain phase of the project
After each iteration (for Agile programs)
Upon completion of the project
At any time when problems arise.

Even arranging retrospectives at the needed time and with the required objectives is not a way to effective meetings. Hence, one is to configure this process properly to get the maximum results. Read on to find out how to do it right.

Retrospective: 5 steps of a well-build process

As a rule, the retrospective starts with the “opening” phase, which helps commit a team for the working mood. Each participant can calmly and constructively express his or her opinion to find the optimal solutions together with other team members. Since gamification has a positive effect on the retrospective results, warm-up techniques and game elements are often used.

At the phase of gathering opinions, each participant is invited to recall the past period (iteration, release) and answer three questions:

Which tasks did the team cope with successfully?
Which tasks execution was not effective?
Which issues can be tackled?

This is the most common option, but there are others. For example, the Starfish approach suggests dividing all activities into five categories and communicating on each one: what you should start doing, stop doing, keep doing, do more of, and less of something.

The overall picture becomes transparent after collecting and processing feedback from all team participants. The stage of gathering opinions helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the processes, determine true team values, and evaluate the socio-psychological climate.

The 3rd step is the longest one, as it implies discussing each problem and generating ideas for solving them. However, before proceeding directly to the search of the perfect solutions, it is worth focusing on the most important project difficulties and discarding the minor ones.

Throughout this stage, we often apply for voting practices to define core issues. Each participant chooses from one to three points that he or she finds the most important on the project. The number of votes depends on the size of the team and the amount of the information collected at the previous steps.

The problems with a large number of votes are recognized to be high-priority. Then, the team focuses on their discussion and tries to find the most profitable solutions, normally in the brainstorm format.

After the discussion, the moderator of the process draws up an action plan where each problem with priority has an appropriate set of specific steps to solve it. It is important to determine the responsible person for each item in the plan and set a deadline for each step.

The last stage is about closing the retrospective, thanking all participants for their contribution to the processes improvement, and ensuring that all the results are documented. You can use any convenient tool to record the comments. The main thing is to care about each participant having access to all materials and artifacts of the retrospective.

6 rules for increasing retrospective efficiency

Usually, the retrospective lasts from 1 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the team and the iteration duration. To increase the efficiency of the event, participants should prepare their comments and ideas for improvement in advance.

Make sure the retrospectives do not become a routine, and the team is motivated for a constructive discussion and a joint search of the good problem resolving. For example, you can use such practices as voting to select Captain Sprint, a person who performed best during the Sprint; a discussion based on the Six Hats method; gamification with Lego, and others.

Proper management of the discussion helps participants not to go aside from the goals of retrospective and spend time productively. The ability to defuse the situation and solve conflicts allows everyone to speak freely and stay within the framework of a constructive dialogue.

In addition, the appointment of a responsible person in charge and discussion of the deadlines for all tasks encourages team members to take retrospective arrangements seriously and make more efforts to implement them.

It is also useful to review the agreements and analyze them (whether they are done/not done, worked/did not work). Therefore, the next retrospective often begins with a review of the action plan from the previous meeting and its update.

Remember that focusing on the project participants’ failures and playing the blame game are not going to work well to find the way. Only a QA team remaining cohesive can achieve better results.

The retrospective is not a miracle cure for all the problems on the project. If implemented correctly, it is a useful tool helping make the QA teamwork more transparent, keeping the positive “climate” in the crew, and identifying the pain points before they turn into a disaster.

Need professional help on the QA-related issues? Contact us!

No turning back. The world will hardly be the same again.

The COVID-19 virus spread is literally impacting every economic sector and every component of every sector. It enforces private local organizations, big enterprises, and entire industries that transform their processes to survive in these days full of challenges.

The fears caused by COVID-19’s power usurpation continue worsening the tragedy of losing lives apart from an immense effect on businesses on all continents.

In the recent research “Managing supply chain risk and disruption” (compiled by Deloitte), the coronavirus is called the black swan continuing to ambush all industries not feeling sorry for anybody.

And managing the crisis impact is becoming a challenge as the world is changing day-to-day, and we can only assume what will happen in a few months. For sure, coronavirus influence on global economic performance cannot be understated. And in the heart of the breakdown, we also see millions of people naturally living in an online environment. It leads to the natural shift of offline businesses to online mode.

In this blog post, we will highlight how companies can meet their planned business objectives with no health risks involved with the help of QA outsourcing.

Be certain in the uncertain times

How to enable your company to remain strong enough? As the unstable situation triggers acceleration for digital transformation, adapt to the rapidly changing end-users mindset – digitalize your business as soon as possible and give consumers what they are searching for.

Imagine the scope of the audience that is moving to an online landscape: you can attract clients that can become your brand advocates and current buyers if they are satisfied with what you are doing.

It is a well-known fact that companies focusing on boosting CX get revenue higher by 4-8% than the rest ones. By now, consumer behavior is modifying. New demands. Growing expectations. This is why the definition of positive customer experience is changing as well.

In retail, representatives are acting in a new way, changing the processes that used to become habitual and clear, and optimizing it as soon as it becomes possible. Indeed, some challenges in this sphere are much like extremes especially when you need to rethink the supply chain.

eRetailers in red zones need to make a shift to more essential products and be sure their digital solutions will fulfill their tasks even if a target audience, which has increased by many times, will opt for their goods. They are having the goods delivery happen more often – for this, QA practices can help ensure the client can see the whole goods variety, order an item, and pay for it in online mode with no system interruption.

With the BFSI industry, the impact is more moderate. When banks workforces are mobilizing to remote work, their consumers are searching for more operational flexibility along with expanded digital banking opportunities. Software testing is here to leverage the delivery of top-tier software products.

How can QA outsourcing help respond to the situation?

The unstable conditions clearly showed the importance of having a truly global delivery model. If not so, a QA outsourcer can provide high-quality B2B technical support of the companies in this critical time of need. In addition to digital transformation, new demand in terms of moving to Agile as well as to the cloud is becoming more essential, and a third-party vendor is up to ensure smooth transitioning during the lockdown.

It is also important for the business to stay focused on the core business needs and anticipate the risks while the partner can accelerate the successful release of the software product.

How exactly can a QA outsourcer support a business?

Provide an independent assessment of software quality.
Ensure the increased speed of jump-starting the project in a couple of weeks.
Reach time and budget savings due to wisely implemented QA solutions like test automation.
Select the right QA talents with niche and industry expertise.
Deliver smart team scalability depending on the current needs.

How a QA vendor can support your business

At a1qa, we deeply delve into the business needs of the client to understand its pain points. This is how we created an Aquality Automation platform for test automation to help decreased QA budget and tests’ duration.

Four characteristics of a well-trusted vendor

Now, the deal of every service provider is to continue delivering high-quality solutions to ensure uninterrupted service delivery and not forget about their own business-critical needs.

QA outsourcing can leverage your appearance in the right place at the right time, rather than drown under the weight of changes.

Here are four factors that can help you choose the right third-party company.

A solid reputation in the market. Mark positive and negative customers’ references, recognition of authoritative sources, niche certificates.
Company of needed size and required competencies. Ensure a vendor is skilled enough to meet your business challenges and has proper QA experience based on the success stories in the portfolio.
Clear communication process. Is your initial communication transparent? Do you feel that people talking to you are qualified? Answer these questions to decide on the communication levels.
Business continuity during this unexpected time. Ascertain that the company can provide continued confidence that the planned operational outcomes will be achieved.

A really well-trusted vendor provides full immersion in your processes, problems, goals and has already done a mental shift to adjust to the “new norm”.

Thinking about making the right decision in almost total uncertainty? Drop us a line to get expert advice from the a1qa professionals and see how we can support your business.

Founded in 2003 and based in Lakewood, a1qa consists of an 800+ strong independent software quality assurance providers’ team and delivers full-cycle testing services as well as particular testing types along with QA consulting, test automation, and many others. Furthermore, the company also holds a dozen offices and testing labs in Europe and is looking for geographic expansion to assure more significant cost savings to the clients.

With more than 1,500 successfully developed projects in its portfolio, a1qa has already served more than 800 global companies across multiple industries, including telecom, IT and software development, BFSI, healthcare, etc. Moreover, the professionals at a1qa cater to them with the values that adhere to the highest professional standards and improve the clients’ businesses. Through these exceptional values, QA professionals also create an unrivaled environment for extraordinary people.

View a1qa’s GoodFirms’ profile to know more about its guiding principles and other robust characteristics.

Starting with the interview, Nadya Knysh narrates her primary role as USO Managing director at a1qa and also the idea behind the commencement of the business along with the other parameters.

The primary responsibility of Nadya is to run a1qa’s operations in North America, manage adherence to the chosen development strategy, and ensure that professionals add value to clients’ businesses.

Moreover, Nadya also mentions the idea behind the commencement of the company by saying the following:

The professionals at a1qa help enterprises protect themselves from software failures in terms of time, money, and reputation, which can occur due to required bug fixing before the software goes live.

Coming to the a1qa’s most flourishing services, Nadya proudly mentions that “We believe in long-term collaboration and facilitate its development. At a1qa, we think that a partnership brings more value than a client-vendor relationship model.”

The professionals at a1qa enable a software testing process that approves the development journey of a particular project of the clients’ business. With a1qa’s engineers, the clients’ business team will be able to focus more on new traits rather than fire-fighting bug issues that arise from new builds.

Besides this, the team at a1qa applies both domain-specific and client-oriented testing methods and tools to guarantee that the delivered software products are of reliable and consistent quality. The QA specialists hold technological expertise that enables them to create the best-fit combination of infrastructure, tools, and resources based on the project goals.

Moreover, a1qa also offers 24/7/365 service to compress the lifecycle of the development process. Thus, backed by the team of professionals with narrow specialization in QA and software testing that solve the most challenging issues endows a1qa to tap into the list of the top software testing companies in the USA at GoodFirms.

The below-displayed review and the scorecard are confirming the quality of the testing services provided by the QA engineers at a1qa.

After giving a brief overview of the testing services rendered by the QA engineers at a1qa, Nadya also elaborates on the outstanding service, i.e., full-cycle testing. It is one of the core QA offerings catered to the clients globally. With over 16 years of experience, the professionals have worked out a holistic full-cycle testing solution to give the clients the most reliable end-results.

The QA engineers pick up manual, semi-automated, and automated testing services to assure that both front-end and back-end elements of the application run correctly as initially designed. Moreover, the testing veterans also reveal bottlenecks and breaking points in the application, evaluate current and projected data and user loads, and attune the software and hardware elements. Thus giving improved functionality with more excellent reliability to get better performance, the testers’ team of a1qa burgeons amongst the top QA testing companies at GoodFirms.

Having read the brief description of the testing services by Nadya, one can also have a look at the detailed interview at GoodFirms.

About GoodFirms

Washington, D.C. based GoodFirms is a maverick B2B research and reviews firm that aligns its efforts in finding the top software testing and QA testing companies delivering unparalleled services to its clients. GoodFirms’ extensive research process ranks the companies, boosts their online reputation and helps service seekers pick the right technology partner that meets their business needs.

About the author

Anna Stark is presently working as a Content Writer with GoodFirms – Washington D.C. based B2B Research Company, which bridges the gap between service seekers and service providers. Anna’s current role lingers to shape every company’s performance and key attributes into words. She firmly believes in the magic of words and equips new strategies that work, always in with ideas, something new to carve, and something original to decorate the firm’s identity.

Here at a1qa, we understand how difficult it can be to mediate your software’s quality while also fostering growth for your business. That’s why we’re dedicated to providing independent QA and testing services, so you can focus on enhancing your IT solution, thus, boosting your customers’ experience.

In light of our outstanding achievements in the software testing industry, we’ve been named a top technology partner on the Clutch 1000! This is a comprehensive directory that highlights leading companies in the B2B space, verified by Clutch’s research.

Out of 160,000 vendors listed on the platform, we fall in the top 1000 vendors, which puts us in the top 1 percent. We’re number 459 on the list, one out of only six application testing firms in the world, and one out of sixteen vendors features from Denver, Colorado.

We’d like to thank our customers for participating in client interviews on our behalf to help us achieve this award. They ranked our services on the basis of the quality of service, attention to project deadlines and time constraints, and overall cost as in value for their monetary investment. In a general reflection of those scores, we’ve been given an amazing five out of five stars! We’re so happy to be meeting our clients’ expectations for top-notch quality and assurance.

For those who might not know, Clutch is a B2B market research firm that employs a unique rating methodology to compare companies across various sectors. We’re also highlighted on both of Clutch’s sister sites, Visual Objects and The Manifest. The Manifest, a business data and how-to site, recently featured us on their list of top software testing companies.

We thank once again our customers and the Clutch team for making this award possible.

Please drop us a line if you’d like to enhance the quality of your software solutions with a1qa today.

In today’s post, we’ll raise your awareness of how good quality can be defined and achieved. This material will be useful to project managers and company owners who are running software projects either regularly or on a one-time basis.

Let’s start.

Every project manager knows that when planning a project, it’s essential not to leave any issues up to chance. And it’s not about the software only. When planning a trip, house repair works, or a wedding, it’s vital to take all but tiny issues into account.

When speaking about IT projects, it’s highly important to plan for the scope of work, for the budget and timeline, select the right tech stack and skills that every team member will bring to the table.

However, there is one thing that is often taken for granted. Quality. Believe us on the say-so: high quality is not a matter of course. Quality is as important as budget, deadlines, and toolset. And if you don’t plan it, you still leave it up to chance.

Quality plan: what to include?

For every project, there is a project plan. The point is that for every project, there should also be a quality plan. Unfortunately, very few of us know what it looks like. Right?

A quality plan is not the same as a test plan. A test plan outlines a testing strategy, while a quality plan helps to assure that you will deliver the flawless system.

To excel, make sure you have the comprehensive step-by-step quality plan in place. Mainly, planning to produce a decent software product of high quality is a three-step process, and we’ll list all the steps.

So what are the steps your team should take to deliver a high-quality product, free of flaws and vulnerabilities, and satisfying both the stakeholders and your users?

1. Agreeing on “good” quality

For those who have no or little experience in setting quality goals, this step may be rather daunting. But once you set your first goals, it will be less challenging for you next time.

The simplest way, to begin with, is to analyze what has made us or our clients, or management judge the system to be of unacceptably poor quality before. What made the client go crazy or why the users left bad reviews you’d prefer to delete from the store? Was the software too buggy to be used successfully? Was it slow? Was it insecure?

Try to make a list of all quality dimensions that turned out to be critical in the past.

2. Setting measurable quality goals

Sounds quizzical? Indeed, the budget is set in terms of money, deadline – in terms of calendar dates. How can one measure quality?

Once you’ve completed the list mentioned above (with various quality dimensions that matter), think how you can measure each of those dimensions.

For instance:

If you care about the number of defects, then apply the “defect density” notion. (Defect density = total number of defects detected in software for a certain period of time/product size, where size is measured in some concrete way, i.e., lines of code).
If the final performance parameters are important, then you can speak about the time of response (measured in seconds), throughput (bytes per second), or load (simultaneous users).
Once you’ve identified the key quality attributes, it’s high time to figure out what your reasonable quality goals are.

Previous software development and testing projects will be much of help. However, very often, the quality on the prior projects fell short of expectations. If this is the case, still measure the goals achieved and set new ones with improvements.

3. Planning quality-related works

Defining measurable quality goals is not the end. In order to achieve them, you or your team must do something.

There are three main types of quality-related activities you should plan: detection, correction, and prevention. Let’s specify each of them.

Defect detection activities are designed to isolate defects. “But we have a QA engineer who’s responsible for reporting bugs to the developers”, you might say. You’re right, but are you sure that testing doesn’t happen too late on the project? To answer this, reckon up the costs of the bug fixing activities. How much effort does it take?

You can improve quality by doing more detection activities earlier on the project. The results will astonish you.

To do this, try the following:

Introduce code review in the early stages of the project.
Consider implementing a test-driven development approach. Writing the tests first requires a software engineer to consider what he wants from the code.

Defect correction activities are focused on verifying that the bugs that have been detected and fixed haven’t introduced any more flaws or vulnerabilities to the system.

The last (but not the least) kind of activity is defect prevention. If conducted properly, it will provide you with the biggest payoff. Remember a wise saying assigned to Benjamin Franklin? “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The essence of the defect prevention is to consider the problems you faced before, and try to enhance tools, methods, or approaches to keep them from happening again.

Of course, some experience is required to perform defects prevention. Otherwise, it is likely to take too long to search for all possible bottlenecks. We would advise addressing specially trained staff, be it business analysts or QA consultants, to do this work and avoid high rework costs.

Bottom line

In today’s post, we’ve focused on planning for quality. Now you know that alongside the project plan, there should also be a quality plan in place. Have we convinced you?

We’ve also specified how to choose quality parameters and measure them. The three activities you must plan if you don’t want to leave your quality goals up to chance have also been mentioned.

Now you know the route to successful project delivery.

Any questions? To get a free quote, drop us a few lines.

Without further ado, a1qa jump-started this year with fruitful and positive transformation in its story – from the complete revamping of a corporate style to gaining valuable experience while participating in the industry-specific events and receiving recognition globally.

This May has brought another significant shift – a1qa established the practice of conducting complimentary workshops held the world over to provide professional assistance in training and sharing insights as regards the QA and software testing niche.

The first two events dedicated to test automation essentials took place in Lisbon and were fully booked in no time.

We’ve compiled the answers from the event organizers about the values of the implemented practice for business development and smooth QA processes’ establishment.

What was the idea behind introducing this concept?

Throughout its development, a1qa has accumulated broad expertise stored in specially designed R&D centers that allow continuous enhancing of the data on the software under test and obtaining certification or improving qualifications for its employees.

At a certain period of the company’s development, we felt the strong desire and necessity to share skills with businesses to help them dive into the aspects of delivering high-quality solutions able to increase brand loyalty and foster the application of innovative technologies and best practices of SQA sphere.

How? By implementing customized workshops.

What was the format of the delivered events?

We at a1qa appreciate the agility and have a stake in providing intensive training of several types.

The first one is a half-day event tailored for a particular organization with an emphasis on the adoption of the discussed practices within the company considering its internal processes.

The second one – a customized full-day workshop for multiple companies where industry best practices are delivered in accordance with the chosen topic.

After the first two events, we may state: their interactive nature encouraged discussions of the most relevant issues regarding test automation deployment and CI/CD pipeline introduction.

Additional value for the members of the events lied in the opportunity to network and discover peculiarities of selected QA processes.

Why did you choose test automation as a topic?

Automated testing practice is of high relevance today as multiple QA tendencies strengthen the need for greater and smarter automation, whether it’s the adoption of Agile and DevOps or AI. Therefore, we wanted to dwell on certain aspects of the process to increase their transparency.

Except for the analysis of test automation values and their impact on business development, the primary focus was made on the processes. What are the peculiarities of a CI/CD pipeline? What is the structure of a test automation solution? How to opt for the proper toolkit? These and many other questions were examined. To clarify the process and see it inside out, automated test case samples were presented.

The structure of test automation team was also considered. A well-designed system of talent cooperation within a project results in a clear-cut and seamless implementation of the given objectives.

How did the audience receive the training?

We were glad to swiftly get the feedback after conducting both events. The survey results held among all the members have shown that 85% rated the workshop as useful, and almost all the participants agreed to take part in similar events in the future (93%).

What’s more, the guests have emphasized a1qa’s agility and flexibility in the process of organizing the events. In the scope of workshops, a1qa conducted an online conference with the company’s experts to provide accurate technical answers to additional questions regarding security checks and performance screening.

How do you see further advancement of this practice?

We’ll continue conducting and developing tailored events and highlighting tricky aspects of quality assurance and software testing. Why? We want to raise business awareness regarding the direct influence of QA activities over the product lifecycle and high-quality software delivery for improving end-users’ satisfaction.

Each workshop will be further complemented with diversified examples of real-life implementation of the chosen QA solutions to ease the overall perception and make the whole process even more beneficial.

Later on, we’ll add such in-demand topics as the setup of business processes, performance testing, quality assurance of mobile apps, test automation demo.

Afterword

a1qa would like to thank all the participants for their interest and active involvement in discussions.

We are already planning further workshops for executives. To take part in the events and always stay tuned, drop us a few lines.

We’ve rounded up 8 most common questions regarding the cooperation with a1qa and the specifics of a project performance asked by our clients at the very beginning. Let’s answer them all!

How to start cooperation?

The cost of services and our testing approach constitute the list of most wide-spread questions within the outset of each project. What testing activities will we implement? What QA solutions will we provide the clients with?

The answers to these questions are unique in each particular case.

However, it’s possible to divide all requests into two types:

the ones that require fulfilling specific works of a fixed volume
those that presuppose forming a dedicated team.

The first type of queries is connected with performing tasks for a fixed price, the second – with the assembling a dedicated team.

Let’s discuss both scenarios.

The first option: a fixed price model

In this case, the client’s issue can be solved by means of particular testing service, be it an ad hoc functional or performance testing when the test coverage is previously defined.

If the software under test is a publicly available product or we can compile the desired data without an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), then the preliminary cost estimation will be created without signing additional papers.

To get an exact estimation, NDA is required. We gather the necessary data for preparing a commercial proposal and calculate the price, that can differ from the estimated total by +/-20%. After the cost approval, we conclude a contract, an MSA (Master Service Agreement), and an SoW (Statement of Work). E-signature allows the client to sign the contract online, and the project starts in the course of two weeks after receiving the prepayment.

The second option: a dedicated team model

This variant is more preferable for long-term projects with inaccurate project requirements.

We study the demands set for a software testing engineer of a certain qualification, define the cost of one man-hour, and start forming the team. The client can join the process by examining the CV of each specialist and conducting a face-to-face interview or meeting all project members after concluding the contract.

The legal process is similar to the above-mentioned scenario. The team is put together in two weeks or even earlier after receiving the prepayment.

What if the team is required ASAP?

Providing the team will take some time due to an obligatory legal registration of each deal. However, we are always ready to accelerate the process.

For instance, we may start clarifying the requirements for a team alongside signing the contract. Swift alignment process on the client side will help speed up the project launch.

How to choose the proper model?

If the project scope and deadlines are accurately defined, it’s better to opt for the fixed price model.

Conversely, if you can’t determine the requirements or the time frame of cooperation, we recommend choosing the dedicated team, managed either on the client side or by a QA manager as a part of the team. The tasks can either be transferred to the team or formed in the scope of work. The second alternative is more common for projects based on Agile practices. Thus, progress is tracked. The a1qa specialists will keep the client informed regarding all possible improvements on the project.

The team is selected. How to integrate it into the ongoing development process?

a1qa possesses vast expertise in providing specialists for remote work. If the development stage has already started, the engineers are integrated into the current context. The first vital aspect to consider is the choice of the proper tools – task management, version control, bug tracking systems, and many more. Working with the toolkit applied by the client is a big deal, as it helps seamlessly fit in with the team on the customer side.

One more aspect to keep in mind is the integration into the client’s infrastructure, be it test benches or virtual machines for running automated tests.

Furthermore, the active participation of the a1qa team in communication with the client’s specialists matters.

In order to establish effective communication at the beginning of the partnership, we visit our clients and organize the knowledge transfer to the engineers or team managers.

Then the expertise is accumulated within a particular project so that the client can get the answers to all the questions at any given time.

Multiple communication models – e.g. a lead software testing engineer-a dev team/QA engineer – are observed. Thus, transparency of the working processes ensures seamless interaction with each specialist.

How to monitor the progress of the testing team?

The timeline for the fixed price projects is always set strictly. In the scope of work, the client has real-time access to all the defects detected and test documentation, which allows studying all parts of the code covered by tests.

The dedicated team provides weekly reporting that covers the workload fulfilled, the time spent, and the overall team performance.

During sprint planning within the Agile-based projects, the client can independently manage tasks and establish priorities. However, these activities can be carried out by the QA manager if necessary.

Can a different time zone affect the process?

No matter what the time difference is, the core solution applied by a1qa is shifting the working hours of our teams to reach the maximum overlap in time. Such situations prevail in the IT sphere, and its’ better to tackle them individually.

Meanwhile, if the client is located to the west, we are ahead of time, which is a major asset. By the beginning of the day, the client receives the scope of the fulfilled tasks and logged defects so that the workflow is accelerated.

Having efficiently functioned for more than 15 years, a1qa has never experienced any problems with the time difference. What matters most is the setting of the working schedule, which later can be optimized if needed.

End-user personal data is under GDPR. Will you ensure its safety?

GDPR compliance is legally determined in a1qa. Alongside concluding the contract, the client signs the documents that assure data protection.

Depending on the type of personal information, we apply various data protection mechanisms, from data depersonalization technology to randomized information of unreal people.

Are the processes delivered transparent and measurable?

a1qa is committed to build long-term cooperation with clients and meet all their requirements. Such an approach implies ongoing improvement and optimization of processes within the company, a modern system of qualification and training tailored for its employees, accumulation of technical knowledge and practices within R&D centers.

The majority of clients choose a1qa upon the recommendation, which signifies a high level of trust.

The company is often contacted to provide complex software testing support. Company’s rich experience allows us to deliver consulting services to optimize current testing activities and build efficient QA processes from scratch. a1qa’s broad expertise is the key to estimate the quality of the existing processes on the client side.

With more than 700 FTEs on board and 15 years in SQA business, the company continues to grow steadily. The quality management system is certified according to ISO 9001.

One more indicator of the company’s maturity is the level of industry recognition. a1qa is widely represented in various ratings, we regularly participate in software testing events, our specialists attend industry-specific and cross-disciplinary conferences the world over.

We are glad to share our expertise and go into details of the services, which are of particular interest to you. To get a free consultation, drop us a few lines.

Nadya Knysh – Managing Director at a1qa – on how to decide on the right amount of QA and choose the right test strategy.

Is it possible to choose the single right amount of quality assurance? The simple answer here is NO. And here is why.

There are multiple factors that impact the scope of testing and your testing strategy.

#1 Solution scope

In my experience, about 80% of software projects are delivered using Scrum as the project methodology.

Scrum (like most Agile frameworks) is all about change. New requirements are coming in every sprint, priorities are changing, development is following business needs…

What does that mean for QA?

Well, your planning horizon is pretty limited. Of course, you’ll define your team capacity after a few sprints.

However, you cannot be 100% sure of what skill set may be required in the next sprint – are we testing APIs or UX? Will we have new devices in the office by the time we need to test against them? Will the development team’s capacity impact the deliverables dates? All these questions impact your ability to plan and predict how much QA you’ll need and when. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan, though.

#2 External factors

Imagine you have a one-year roadmap to deliver a brand-new solution to the market.

It’s December 2018 when you start developing, which means Apple has already released its 2018 updates while Samsung is still working on its presentation for February 2019.

Oh, and by December 2019, when you plan to release, Apple will have delivered another presentation on 2019’s new features, hardware, screen sizes, and who knows what else.

So, when planning QA, you should look at up-to-date statistics on what devices your target audience is using to interact with your software.

By the way, the iPhone 7 is still pretty popular, so your first thought might be to include it on the list of supported devices.

However, when thinking from a strategic perspective, by December 2019, the iPhone 7 will be three generations old. So the question is – do you care about it? And what if you do all your development and testing around the Apple Watch and then, a few months before the release, Apple recalls all the devices due to some critical issues?

So, my recommendation is: plan but be flexible. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

What are the most important quality aspects to be tested?

That’s a very good question! But I have found a very simple answer.

A long time ago, I was talking to a solution architect who was developing the architecture for a SaaS solution: highly secure, customizable, and with (hopefully) high performance.

When he was walking me through the architecture ideas (in other words, a draft version), he was explaining why he needed this feature and that feature here and there through quality attributes – a concept well defined in ISO 25010.

The full list of quality attributes is now available all over the Internet. So now, when defining a QA strategy for any of our projects, I recommend reviewing this list again and asking a question: is that important for my product now? In most cases, your answer will be YES in terms of functionality and UI/usability. That’s why you’ll plan functional, UI, compatibility, and usability tests.

Compatibility is the one that is often overlooked.

Always remember that you cannot make your audience use the same browser or smartphone that you do. You have to accept their choice and support whatever they like.

Side note: check your audience geography; people in China use very different smartphones from those used by people in the US.

Let’s say you develop an internal accounting solution for your CFO and two to three other analysts or accountants.

In this case, if one report that you only generate annually takes five minutes to generate, you may not care that much about the solution performance. But what if your solution is a stock market software? Performance is critical here: the market changes in nanoseconds and five minutes will cost you a fortune.

Security is another big topic. Do you store personal information (like SSN and DOB) or your customers’ credit card details? Oh yeah, security testing is a must.

And believe me, you’d rather be compliant with HIPAA, FDA, PCI-DSS, and other regulations than go to court against your customers.

Summing up

To test or not to test isn’t a question in our digital age. Now the focus has shifted toward choosing the right testing strategy that will meet the requirements of the software developed, end-users, and business stakeholders.

Flexible planning and setting priorities related to your product is what will help you make the smart choice.

Once upon a time, software QA was done by teams taking small aspects of a piece of software and testing every conceivable variation. Times have changed and so has the software industry. We no longer think of software as being packaged in a box and bought off store shelves. Old-style massive full versions of software are no longer the norm; now most companies deliver software via the internet in small bursts. Unless there is to be a major change, the updates are just made and instantly applied without users having a clue.

The move from gigantic disc-based software to these incremental on-the-fly updates required a great deal of thinking behind the scenes. First, the programmers became Agile and set themselves small achievable goals. They would spend a week, maybe two, working on adding some features or fixing a couple of bugs as in these images:

*Bug Queue image courtesy of monday.com*

*Features Backlog image courtesy of monday.com*

While the old mindset had developers creating software and handing it off to the operations team to maintain, the newer DevOps approach has those programmers working together with their operations team throughout the process.

The key is that now much of the company is both working and planning to get the product to an agreed-upon state. Instead of waiting for the programmers to push their possible final build to the testers after, those testers are now involved from the get-go.

Granularity

To make a build cycle take as little time as possible, its scope is recursively reduced. Here is an example of one of those tasks, or stories, being further refined:

This shows an attempt to break down and refine the goal into the smallest bites possible. These smaller and smaller bites make it easier to plan software testing. QA engineers can better estimate the time needed for testing and fixing any defects discovered.

Number of tests

When talking about testing in Agile environments, the team has to be able to trust that the code will perform as expected. That trust, or its lack, can be easily understood if you look at it in light of the number of tests. More testing means higher probability that your program will build and deploy successfully. Your confidence about the application will be much higher if it passes 295 out of 300 tests than if it passes two out of three.

Size of tests

The other side is the size of the tests you need to do. With large, multifaceted applications, it may be difficult to test the whole program after every build. In those cases, you test only the parts that are important or that have been changed. There is never a set-in-stone group of required tests, your teams can add or subtract as needed.

Frequency of tests

How often you test can depend on the types of tests and what resources they require. For an application that consists of a bunch of smaller programs, it is pretty straightforward to test just what has been changed. If, however, your program is huge, you may not be able to run all your tests after each section of code is committed. In that case, you run the subset of tests that you need to and then run your full test at night. Basically, if the team decides that a test needs to be run, its size or runtime will not matter. For a test that takes three days to run, you just automate it to run every three days at a certain time.

Automation and continuous delivery

In the past, testing engineers focused only on one part of the software development cycle—testing the code and pushing it on to the programmers. Although with DevOps, that has changed—with continuous integration and delivery, testers are now required to take responsibility for quality throughout the entire development process, not just the old QA phase.

Building more tests into the software

In the world of DevOps, it is important to have regular deployments—the automation of processes can be a big help in making that happen. That said reduced deployment time and more frequent software releases mean more testing will need to be done. If there is no automation, large numbers of test cases must be run manually, which will slow down the whole process. Teams need to increase their testing and will have to automate more and more of it.

Automation for testing environments (virtualization)

A test environment is an internal setup of software and hardware that emulates the environments where the finished product would eventually deploy. The team can then test the software on virtual systems to catch defects before it rolls out to production. Cap Gemini’s included diagram shows several varieties of testing environments.

*Test Environments image courtesy of capgemini.com*

If testing environments are automated effectively, the amount of manual intervention will be greatly reduced. However, if the automation is done incorrectly, the QA team will have to fix test environments manually, which will ultimately increase the amount of manual work—not something you would expect from automation.

Effect on teams

In the old model, QA wasn’t in touch with the development and delivery processes. DevOps get them working together.

Increased communication and collaboration

In DevOps, QA engineers must actively collaborate with other departments. They attend planning sessions and communicate to the rest of the project team what will be tested next, when, how, and by whom. This may require the QA to step out of their comfort zones, but it will be necessary for effective work.

The right project management solution is critical to keeping all teams aligned by giving everyone clear visibility on the project’s progress between meetings.

Fail faster, fix faster

Coding is a practice that often requires extreme concentration. Getting back on track, or more specifically, getting back to where you were mentally when you added a bit of code can be very difficult.

For this and other reasons, many teams work on the Fail Faster, Fix Faster principle. Jim Shore said in his 2004 IEEE article on the subject that, “failing fast is a non-intuitive technique. Failing immediately and visibly… makes bugs easier to find and fix.” This method makes it very easy for an error to stay in context for the developer. They will not have to search for hours to fix it.

Some software is given the ability to compensate for errors. This can result in a bigger mystery fail. Fail fast suggests that the error should be allowed to happen right away so that it can be detected and fixed faster. These bugs appear sooner and don’t reach production, thus reducing costs.

Closing thoughts

The move to the DevOps methodology can help production teams bring software to their customers faster. In addition to having the developers work closely with the operations team, we now have the QA testers pulled into this collaborative effort. All three teams work and plan the steps for the full rollout—keeping in mind that this consists of lots of little rollouts. The QA team is now there in the thick of things automating and testing their little hearts out. No longer are they necessarily the last stop feeling left out in the cold or blamed for the product release being late.

Author: Steve Medeiros, a writer for TechnologyAdvice.com with an extensive background in technology, software, and customer support.

Three decades ago, the advent of mobile phones made telecom business extremely profitable. Today, digital transformation makes their life rife with challenges.

In today’s blog post we examine the most vital telecom challenges and ways to overcome them with the help of Software Testing and Quality Assurance companies.

What challenges make telcos’ life difficult?

Seamless infrastructure

Flexible, dynamic, and scalable infrastructure is the need of the hour for the communication companies. Without it, embedding of any smart solution will be impossible.

It’s also important to take into account that various services provided by the telco put different demands to the network, sometimes – the opposite. For example, those subscribers who use communication device will value the quality of sound and connection speed, while for machine-to-machine devices – that use network resources to communicate – low power consumption and an opportunity to connect multiple devices matter. The speed of the connection is not of high priority for them.

Seamless infrastructure that will allow for developing multiple services is the integral part of the telecom business.

Declining topline

With the boom in the mobile communications industry, telecom companies have to shift from traditional voice and messaging services to new offerings. Otherwise they will run out of business.

For sure, these new services should have no functional snags that will do more harm than good and all efforts will come to naught.

New offerings

Considering the point above, Internet of Things, Mobile Money transactions, OTT services should help retain customer base and increase revenues.

However, the primary goal for any telco is to find out the preferences of new generation. Subscribers today opt for WhatsApp, Skype and other messengers. What do telecom companies have to offer in this connection? For example, they can re-route calls to messenger apps if the subscriber is out of the network coverage area, but is available in the WiFi area.

Another solution is to build business relationship with players from other industries: online retailers, bank and finance services providers, transport and logistics companies.

Participation in Internet of Things projects is also a promising solution. To deal with the IoT ecosystem, telecom companies have to build strong partnerships with the technology providers in the e2e IoT value chain.

Applying to well-established Quality Assurance service providers can help to ease out most of these obstacles.

How QA companies help telcos tackle the challenges

Ensuring quality of the key business products

Business support systems (BSS) and operation support systems (OSS) are software components that are used to run telco business operations towards customers. Proper testing will guarantee that the BSS/OSS solution meet all business and customer requirements.

More and more often telecom providers come to realize that their BSS solutions are not up to new industry challenges and become too costly to support. As a result, telcos undertake modernization and upgrading of the software. In this context, QA providers can help to ensure proper data migration from the legacy system to the target one.

Optimizing QA processes

Professional QA consultants will examine the existing QA process and recommend a plan to improve. They will also develop right test documentation and quality metrics to measure the results. QA consulting team can also implement the proposed solutions, supervise the entire process, addressing any issues that will arise.

As a result, the telco vendor will get a well-set QA process that will fit their type of business and developed solutions.

Supporting innovations

QA and Software Testing providers support communications vendors in their pursuit to launch new services and apps. Timely testing will help the telco to outshine the competition. But this brings forth the need to ensure that new products function properly, are convenient and secure.

Ensuring positive user experience and customer retention

Launching new products isn’t the reason to forget about the tried and tested ones. There are still many customers who use their mobile phones to make calls and send instant messages. Therefore, it’s vital to ensure high performance of the backend infrastructure, develop high-quality IVR menu that will speed up communication with the operator, create positive user experience and increase loyalty of the long-term subscribers.

a1qa eagerly helps telecom industry beat all the challenges. We run a fully functional Center of Excellence in Telecom. The team of the CoE focus on testing all sorts of telecom-related solutions optimizing time-to-market and reducing the number of customer complaints related to quality.

This is what Julia Ilyushenkova, head of the center of excellence, says about the Telecom – QA business prospects:

Many communication companies run their own development and testing departments. However, when the project of the software modernization or upgrading approaches the active phase, the QA team is to be scaled up very often. In this context, managers come to realize that it’s no effective to hire and educate new team members. Outsourcing testing needs to the dedicated team of QA engineers with years’ experience in telecom – is the solution.

Moreover, it’s not that easy to find test automation or data migration pros. As for us, we have a pool of over 100 engineers who perform testing of telecom solutions and can tackle and challenge.

Summing up

Telecom operators should reinvent their roles in the new world as the missed opportunities will cost too much. Obviously, it’s become more difficult to catch up with the industry demands as time goes by.

Seamless infrastructure, high quality of the traditional and new services, and optimized processes – are the key elements to retaining customers and increasing the client base.

And finding a professional QA team that will accompany telco on the journey to success in the 21^st century is a good start.

Do you want to stand out in the Telecom industry? Contact our Telecom testing team now. They know how to help you!

Transformation of the billing solution

The billing system is a vital element in any telecom network. High-quality billing solutions predetermine great customer service and operator’s stellar reputation in the market.

A traditional billing system is network-derived and serves as a tool to calculate fees for services usage (mainly voice and SMS). However, the customers’ needs change and the reality of digital economy press telecom operators to transform their business models and billing solutions.

A redesigned billing solution should have all the features to generate complex offerings and value-added services, operate in real time (as no user wants to exceed their data cap while watching a video), should be agile in terms of services and products.

The transformation process is a long way in terms of development and quality assurance works that should go unnoticed to the customers. To this end, the fees and terms of service provisioning should stay the same as even a slight increase in fees or a calculation mistake will deteriorate customer experience and increase the claims.

Telecom data migration testing

Ensuring high quality of telco software is the key area of the a1qa expertise.

When testing data migration to the new solution, our company applies a combination of testing types. Yet, the final one is Parallel Testing (also called Back-to-back Testing).

The following article provides insights into what we believe needs to be considered and actioned as part of the planning and execution of a successful Parallel Testing for the Telecom industry.

What is Parallel Testing?

From the view of Telecom industry, Parallel Testing is a strategy to verify the quality of data migration from the existing system to the target one. Testing is performed on the same data with both systems running side by side. The results are compared and any mismatches are analyzed.

It is expected, that in the end, any transaction on the migrated clients will have the same effect when performed in the legacy (old) system and a target (new) one.

In our context, the effect is the same fees charged for the usage of the same services, equal calculation and payments reflection on the customer’s balance sheet.

Any discovered discrepancy is a potential defect in software configuration, migration process, or functionality.

What business processes are tested?

Parallel Testing verifies that the following critical business systems processing large scope of the migrated data work as expected:

Cash payments processing
Online and offline calls processing
Balance forwarding, payments, and fee adjustments processing
Fee calculation
One-time charges calculation
Change of the data plan
Service enabling/disabling
Data packets activating/deactivating
SIM card replacement
Billing
Remuneration calculation

Setting up environment for Parallel Testing

Setting up a right test environment will ensure testing success. The following components are required for Parallel Testing:

A testbed with a target system
An environment for data comparison and analysis

The data for the legacy system are collected from the production environment.

Before testing starts, at least one billing plan with all its products should be located on the testbed. Mapping tables with all products, customers’ attributes should be developed.

On the testbed of the target system, there should be a stable version of the latest release that has passed system and acceptance testing.

Additional test environment will help to accomplish the following tasks:

Copy operating results of the business processes under test (fees, payments, bonuses, accounts, post-migration data records, etc.)
Launch scripts for comparison and save results
Analyze discrepancies with the help of the supporting subject tables

Two phases of Parallel Testing

Parallel Testing is performed in two phases:

Preliminary phase
Regular phase

In the preliminary phase, various kinds of defects are detected and eliminated: poor product mapping, incomplete clients’ attributes transfer, poor synchronization of data between billing subsystems, functionality flaws.

Scripts for results comparison and data analysis will also be debugged in this stage.

Finally, the testing team should get ready for discrepancies analysis before launching regular tests.

Once the preliminary round of testing is over, the regular phase begins.

The main goal of the regular testing round is to detect and eliminate the defects mentioned above.

The difference between the two rounds lies with the amount of clients’ data under test. In the preliminary round, engineers will take only a small portion of the clients that are to be migrated. In the regular phase, all clients should be taken.

By the way, in some cases, it’s possible to omit the preliminary phase.

Dry run testing phase

In any of the phases (preliminary and regular), Parallel Testing is performed immediately after the iteration of Dry Run.

Dry Run shall provide the scope of clients that can migrate to a new system.

For example, the project requirements may define that the clients with a debt in the balance sheet can’t migrate until the debt is paid off.

So in fact, Dry Run is the preparation of data for Parallel Testing.

Once the testing is over, all discrepancies are analyzed and the reasons for them are examined. If necessary, defects are reported to the bug tracking system.

After that, the discrepancy statistics correlated to business processes in collected. The discrepancies impact on the overall workflow is estimated and described.

All the results are presented in the final report.

All the defects that have been detected in the previous stages of Parallel Testing are validated while executing system test cases. However, their elimination should be confirmed in the next stage of Parallel Testing for the same scope of data and products.

Summing up

Parallel Testing is an extra type of data migration testing. Due to the relatively high cost, we recommend launching parallel tests once the system testing that will detect the majority of defects is over.

The advantage of Parallel Testing is that this type of testing provides a wide coverage of both the subscriber base and the configuration of the company’s products due to the fact that real data are taken from the production environment and processed in mass.

In addition, Parallel Testing detects defects that were overseen during system testing and brings down financial and reputational risks of data migration to a minimum.

Finally, we’d like to note down that this type of testing can be useful not only for telecom solutions but also for testing migration of large scope of data of any type.

Contact us to get more information on how our services can help your software deliver the expected value to your business.

Integration testing does not frequently grab the headlines of the hot news in the Information Technology section. The scale of defects is definitely not as critical as of security defects.

Also, planning for a software release, business stakeholders rarely ask for integration testing giving priority to functional testing, cross-browser and cross-platform testing, or software localization testing to meet the demands of the international audience.

However, it does not seem right to underestimate the importance of integration testing as it is one of the primary keys on the way to a solid product release.

What is integration testing?

Integration testing is the phase in software testing in which individual software modules are combined and tested as a group.

The first thing that comes to mind is the software integration with the payment systems. No doubt, assuring the quality of payment flows is an important aspect to be tested, but not the only one. Today, business relies on a large number of software solutions like websites, ERP, CRM, CMS systems. Smooth communication among them all will guarantee proper users’ requests handling, service delivery efficiency, and overall business success.

In this blog post, we are going to demonstrate what systems might be tested in the QA project and what can be the possible challenges that engineers will have to beat.

Integration testing: project review

Client

A representative of a popular English-language magazine (available in print and digital formats) turned to a1qa to perform full-scale testing of the website.

Product under test

Apart from the website functionality, the team was to check the Subscription Portal that was an integral part of the website and consisted of a few components. This module was of prime concern, as the business relied on it for revenue.

The subscription function was implemented with the help of the following software solutions:

The open-source CMS system eZ publish that performed subscription data filtering (type of subscription, subscription period, discounts applied, etc.).
The website through which a user interacted with the system.
Salesforce CRM software. It stored all users and subscription data. An additional plugin allowed the client’s team to manage the subscription acquisition, create new types and review the existing ones.
Zuora SaaS software to process billing and payment flaws.
Mule ESB service bus to enable data exchange between the components.
The database as a BI tool.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud software for online marketing.
Drupal CMS used to function instead of eZ publish. At the given moment, it contained data of the registered users and serves as a tool for publishing articles, video and audio content.

The subscription workflow is the following:

User’s data is gathered.
A user is provided with a possibility to subscribe after filling out the personal and payment information forms.
The subscription order is handled by a third-party contractor.

Project goal

The client was planning to free the process of the third parties involvement. For this purpose, it was important to make sure that the developed system could function properly on its own.

Testers’ task

The a1qa team was to ensure that the whole system made up of the above-mentioned components was able to solve the necessary tasks.

a1qa integration testing strategy

Key business processes, covered by the system, were defined: buying, cancelling, freezing, and renewing a subscription, changing the billing information, etc.
Test documentation was developed with the consideration of all possible variations. In the project context, variations are all possible flows (e.g., subscription can be cancelled by a client, or automatically if the payment was rejected by a bank). The documentation was to include checking things, like whether the subscription can be performed successfully for all products within each business process.
Testing included a systematic execution of every business process from the start (where it was initiated) through all the transitional steps and to the final business process (or processes), checking that all the data was transferred correctly and the expected outcome happened.

Most processes included data transferring from one module (most commonly Salesforce) to the rest.

If the starting point was not SF, the information went from the starting module to MuleESB, and then to SF. After that it was spread to the rest of the modules (again, via MuleESB).

All in all, integration testing took about 40% of all the a1qa efforts.

Challenges

Surprisingly, but the majority of the integration testing difficulties were caused by the poor requirements elicitation at the very start of the project. The requirements of poor quality caused defects and the overall system instability.

What was the problem? Initially, the requirements were prepared by developers and looked like a number of User Stories in JIRA, containing only the headings without any explanation.
The a1qa team initiated the changes in the requirements preparation process. Description and Acceptance Criteria became the fields that should be filled for every Story. Subtasks were also created with a clear definition of who was responsible for its fulfillment.

Integration testing: automate or not automate?

Test automation is a complicated question and requires detailed consideration of all the pros and cons.

Integration testing automation needs an even more detailed approach. On the one hand, automated scripts reduce the QA time. On the other hand, automated tests are effective only when dealing with continuous or, at least, predictable data sets.

With subscription, it is not often the case – the data is updated regularly and randomly. Therefore, the testing was mostly manual.

Only at the later stages of the project, the automation was put into practice. What test cases were automated? The key business processes were selected. Each business process had a number of variations written. Only the test cases that covered the most stable business processes were automated.

With such an approach, automation guaranteed maximum coverage at optimized costs.

Results

The project is still on, though, even now it is possible to conclude that the system works properly. While each component is performing its function separately, all together they help to reach the goal of the non-stop business processes operations important for the client’s business.

Bottom line

For a project with complex business logic, integration testing can’t be neglected.

For effective testing, defects and flaws detecting, the QA team must:

1) Understand the structure of the product, knowing how all the modules interact;

2) Know the specific aspects of a project. It is important for preparing good test cases, tests analysis, making a choice between manual or automated testing techniques.

In October, a1qa was highlighted in the Top 10 of QA/Testing Solution Providers complied by the Technology Headlines. And here we cite the interview by Dmitry Tishchenko that was first published in the October edition of the magazine.

The principles on which a company builds its foundation are quite important when defining a business strategy and working towards a common goal.

Many entrepreneurs ignore this fact when they first start their businesses and look forward to establishing a profitable company without taking the time to build a solid foundation that takes businesses to the next level. As a result, organizations’ endeavors to establish and make a profit fail, and the worst is many companies realize this fact only when reaching the fifth or the tenth year.

Guided by the core principles of constant improvement, long-term view, and mutual trust and backed by a spirited team, a1qa is a QA and testing solution provider that serves over 500 global customers, including Fortune 500 companies.

Started out as a software testing company in 2003, a1qa has successfully completed 1500 projects and has highly contributed to the success of its clients in various industries. By applying the core principles to its business strategies and process management, the company has been able to get certified to ISO 9001 and 27001 standards with no difficulties.

“As the company grew, we witnessed new institutions and practices that arose on its basis. For example, QA Academy, a proprietary education center for software engineers that primarily covered a1qa talents needs was later turned into the self-supporting business unit,” says Dmitry.

“With ten centers of excellence at a1qa that specialize in different focus areas including performance, security testing, test automation, etc, the company continuously builds up its expertise and accumulates experience that makes it stands out in the market.

Being the constantly developed company, the main challenges we’ve been facing are the necessity to increase performance and improve delivery quality,” says Dmitry.

“To solve this challenge, the company applies quantitative approach to management; decides on better practices to serve every single project. Over the course of time, the company has optimized the learning curve and transformed it to one of its competitive advantages, called smart scalability.”

Keeping pace with the ever-changing QA industry

“Speed and flexibility are critical to any IT project today. There is a great variety of agile modifications tailored to any context. This trend will stay topical in the nearest future and will require QA vendors to be ready to adapt to any agile variation,” Dmitry affirms.

From the technological point of view, he also points out the evolution of IoT and AR/VR.

“Requests we get mainly involve support on pilot projects and require the development of new testing methods, which is challenging from the technological and processual sides,” adds Dmitry.

When asked about a1qa’s best-of-breed test automation service, Dmitry says the company’s test automation service echoes with the principles of lean manufacturing. “Since it is a multi-step activity that starts with the analysis of the automation penetration and evaluation of the expected effects, the technical solution is prototyped. After that, the pilot launch of tests is performed, and efficiency parameters are measured. Only then the solution is scaled.”

To maintain a high level of automation, the company has also introduced an analytical system to measure and compare the effects of automation. It ensures the application of the best practices for different projects.

“We also develop our own automation frameworks. Our main principle here can be articulated as Keep It Simple. The primary objective of any framework is to get the effect as fast as possible.

For example, we can deploy automation environment for a web project testing within a couple of hours,” explains Dmitry.

The company’s core competency lies in the ability of its professional engineers who are able to proactively react to the changing needs of the QA market and adopt latest technological solutions, specific domain knowledge; world class processes; and professional skills to deliver quality services are the significant factors that differentiate a1qa from peers in the market.

a1qa’s service line is made up of several layers: core services, value-added services, and QA consulting.

The core services include performance, security, compatibility testing that align with clients’ needs and can be built into their in-house processes. As for the value-added services, they are designed to improve productivity and add value to customers. This line includes benchmarking, baseline testing, test automation, and many more.

QA consulting services make up the third layer. Based on its expertise in the testing processes and methodologies, as well as the experience with global delivery of QA services to the world’s leading companies, a1qa works with their clients to enable stronger testing processes and superior software quality, which, in their turn, help companies to trim budgets in a timely manner.

In the nearest future, the company plans to keep helping customers increase productivity and gain maximum value through their services. To this end, a1qa is working hard to diversify its consulting offerings, and apply new engagement models such as TaaS. By bringing consulting engagement to its portfolio, the company would not only be competing with QA companies, but also with huge consulting enterprises.

In terms of geographical expansion, the company plans to open new locations to become geographically closer to potential customers.

“Right now we have offices in the US, CIS, in the UK. We come closer to our clients and we want to propose them an alternative. They should get the idea that a small or a mid-size company can handle the task they usually assign to large-scale vendors. And it will be a cost-effective and low-risk option,” Dmitry concludes.

As the holiday season is coming, many of us are planning to go travelling, visit friends and families, go shopping, eat out or buy food to cook at home, or simply enjoy other seasonal pastimes in full swing. It may surprise you, but most of these pastimes are aided now by sophisticated pieces of software.

Here’s why we at a1qa want to take an opportunity to give sincere thanks to all QA and software testing pros. They work behind the scenes to provide us with high-quality software so that all of could rely on them for holiday fun, safety, stability, and convenience.

For example, if you’re one of the 50,9 million people who will take a 50-plus mile drive from home on November 23, the American Automobile Association reports, you are likely to use a GPS navigation app to find your destination. You may also download an app to find the lowest gas prices or find auto repair facility if needed (hopefully not, but who knows?)

Or maybe you’re one of the nearly 29 million Americans projected to fly during the 12-day Thanksgiving travel period. Your navigation through an airport will be much more convenient with the specialized app in your smartphone. Travelling with children? Install sandbox-style games or puzzle apps to keep them occupied – and thinking in the skies.

Purchasing meal for the holiday dinner? Point-of-sale software in most stores will speed up the checkout. You also can save a few bucks on Thanksgiving dinner by finding coupons for various Thanksgiving stuff. (By the way, the American Farm Bureau came up with another reason to be thankful for – a 16-pound turkey this year costs $22.38, which is a 36-cent decrease per turkey compared to last year.)

Prefer shopping online? Analysts report, Cyber Monday will remain the No. 1 day online sales and will generate $4.50 billion in e-commerce sales. Shopping online becomes easier and safer thanks to thorough and timely testing, of course.

And the last but not the least. You’re likely to use your smartphone to check emails, text you dearest and nearest, make calls. Or maybe you’ll be the one who will call the Butterball Turkey Talk-line experts to tips on how to cook the main part of the Thanksgiving meal.

It’s very easy to take the flawless quality of these apps for granted. But we’re thankful to our colleagues who do their best to ensure the quality of the apps to detect all the issues that may ruin the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

For those of you who’ve missed our previous post, let’s remind that a1qa has been engaged in the project of testing the new payment system for more than two years. There was nothing unusual about the project. Until one day, the customer gave us the challenge to arrange a demonstration of the first product release. Our team knew the product perfectly, so we immediately agreed, although the task required additional preparations.

The product was to be demonstrated to the customer’s team that knew and understood the requirements, but had only a vague idea of testing processes and terminology.

Acceptance testing challenges we faced

Customer representatives and tech geeks seemed not to see the product through the same glasses. And that became the reason of the first challenge.

What was important for the customer? To make sure that all processes function correctly from start to finish. As for us, our team of functional testers split the processes into small blocks and tested each block separately and in great detail, sometimes losing sight of the product as a whole.

Additionally, we lacked a clear mapping of test cases and business requirements. That was the second challenge. Test cases were based on technical documentation developed by system analysts and architects. Therefore, it was difficult to find the approach that would help demonstrate the expected result to the customer representatives.

a1qa approach to demonstrating first release

Criteria for successful acceptance of the first release there were very loyal: the implementation of 30% of the requirements, pass-rate – 80%, and the absence of critical defects in the implemented functionality.

Taking those criteria, a small number of demonstrated requirements (about 180), and the lack of complete business processes implementation (only some modules were released), we decided to use the following approach:

We selected the realized requirements, which had to be demonstrated.
For each requirement one or more test cases were prepared. Test cases were aimed at demonstrating that particular requirement.
Each test case assigned to the requirement was a standard test case with test data, a precondition, a detailed description of the steps and results. However, we focused on the description of the test case purpose and underlined the connection between the test case and the requirement as clearly as possible.

Thus, the implementation of each requirement was demonstrated by the test case, and the correctness of implementation was confirmed by passing the corresponding test case

Test cases were prepared as a separate Excel file, and attached to the Acceptance Testing (AT) document.

How was AT held?

AT was held by the a1qa engineers in the presence of several customer representatives. a1qa was in charge of demonstrating the product and executing test cases.
The commission included 10 people – representatives of top management and employees, who had to manage the payment system and monitor it.

The technical equipment of AT wasn’t sophisticated and consisted of a projector to show the information about the product under test and a monitor to display the Acceptance Testing document.

The AT process was organized as follows: the demonstrating requirement was named, the test case was described, and each action was commented. The result of each check was documented. During the demonstration there were many questions, comments, and proposals for improvement. Comments were recorded and questions were answered. If we had no answer for a question, the question was recorded and passed to responsible specialists.

The demonstration generally proceeded smoothly. All 230 test cases were passed, and therefore all 180 requirements were implemented correctly. The first release was successfully demonstrated.

However, we weren’t overly optimistic. There were two more releases ahead and it was advisable to start preparing for the next AT as early as possible. Moreover, after the first AT, we had a lot of ideas about improvements for the following demonstration.

Second release: new approach for Acceptance Testing

The main point that we had to improve in the approach was the “Test Methodology” section. Why wasn’t the approach used for the first release appropriate? The thing is, all test cases covered different modules, and didn’t demonstrate the system as a whole. Thus, it wasn’t evident that all processes were covered, and there was no sense of the integral system.

At the first release, the number of implemented requirements was not so large. To demonstrate the final product it was necessary to use a new approach.

Finally, we had to work on the terms used in the test cases. They were understandable for functional testers and other IT professionals, but not for the customer representatives. Therefore, it was necessary to use terminology of business requirements and prepare test data close to the real ones.

Solution found

We decided to separate the test documentation used for functional testing from the AT one. So we arrived at the idea of preparing separate scenarios for demonstrating the system through business processes – end to end (E2E) scenarios. One more activity was to prepare test data.

What is the reason for using E2E scenarios and what is their advantage? Naturally, there are some projects on which acceptance can be carried out using usual test-cases; however it was not our case. Within the framework of our project, the E2E scenarios were more applicable than test cases due to the following factors:

Reducing the number of test artifacts by grouping several requirements into one scenario. This allowed demonstrating all the implemented functionality faster. By the way, the demonstration of the first release took us five days. Keep in mind that only 180 requirements were implemented.
Demonstrating the product through complete business processes, close to the real scenarios of working with the system. The customer got an opportunity to test the product in conditions close to real ones.

Formulating ideal scenario

The idea of using business scenarios defended itself completely. Working together with the customer, we were able to develop a certain approach to preparing scenarios, and decided on a list of requirements for this type of test documentation.

Based on the experience of previous AT and the wishes of the customer, we provided the following structure of the test scenario:

Title. A short and clear title of the scenario helps to understand the aim of the check.

Test Case Goal. It was necessary to describe the purpose of this scenario.

Description. This part describes how the scenario should be passed, using business terminology and speaking the customer’s language.

Constraints. On large projects, one of the affected modules might be not implemented or implemented partly. But this is not an excuse to skip demonstration of the functions associated with it. For example, notifications of a certain type aren’t generated or some interface elements are displayed incorrectly.
It’s not that important. The main thing is that you, as QA engineers, have found and submitted these defects. This is what should be described in the Constraints section. This will help avoid the customer’s disappointment.

Test Data Description. On our project, this section was appropriate, since various technical test data were used to describe the scenarios, which were difficult to relate to the business components. Therefore, in this section, we described as detailed as possible what all elements of the database using business terminology.

Correlation of Steps and Requirements. Since one of the AT goals is to prove that requirements are implemented, it is necessary to specify which requirements we demonstrate passing the scenario.

Test Scenario Steps. This part consists of three components:

The actions description with the help of business terms. Technical terms are also applicable, but only in exceptional cases. The main point is to use terms that are understood by the customer.
Expected result (again using business terms).
Method of verification. Here we can use a technical terms to describe technical implementation of previously stated business requirements.

Conclusion

Our team has come a long way from AT test cases to complete E2E scenarios that show the system from the business point of view.

To sum up, let’s note the following points:

Not every test case is suitable for AT.
Learn how to write E2E scenarios and your work as a tester will be invaluable.
Do not be afraid to take on new tasks. If we do only what we know, we will never become better.

Good luck on your projects!

We’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

For more than two years, a1qa has been engaged in the project of the payment system development for a huge banking organization. At the very beginning of the project, the a1qa engineers were responsible for testing the system. However, some time ago the customer asked our team to plan, perform user acceptance testing (UAT), and present the results.

In today’s post, we’ve decided to build the basis for effective user acceptance testing, shed light on its nuances, and answer all possible questions that the QA team may have.

What is user acceptance testing?

When it comes to any new concept, it may be useful to analyze its name first. In technical context (as that of the quality assurance) the name will be literal and will give you the first understanding of the issue.

UAT stands for user acceptance testing. Let’s explain the definition word by word.

1. Acceptance = approval, validation.
2. A user = either the end consumer of the product or the customer who ordered the product development.

UAT literally means that the software will be tested by the user to find out whether it can be accepted for further development and production.

Indeed, long before the product is released to its end users, in most cases the customer wants to know that the product has been developed considering all the requirements and specifications and will work correctly in its real environment.

UAT must be an indispensable part of the projects where poorly developed software can cause huge financial losses.

Thus, the objectives of UAT are the following:

Check that all preconcerted requirements have been satisfied and the product fits for business purposes.
Detect last-minute mistakes that could have occurred at the development stage.
Verify that the product is production-ready.

Who and when performs UAT?

Usually, UAT takes place right before the product is delivered to end users and after the QA team have finished their job. However, in some cases, the customer may want to follow the product development (especially, when the project is too costly and any mistake may result in great financial losses). Then, UAT may be performed twice or thrice per project to validate the right course of work.

During UAT, the product is tested either by end users who provide their feedback or someone who has built the software through an independent software vendor.

As for QA, their involvement may differ and come down to one of the following options:

Not involved (a very rare case).
Assistance in UAT – QA engineers may be asked to teach users how to use the software, submit defects, etc.
Directly involved – The QA team evaluate the software and present the results to the customer who decides whether the product has been developed as expected.

If your QA team undertakes the responsibility to perform UAT, then start with selecting those specialists who possess excellent knowledge of the product and business objectives. He or she should be able to think of the software as a guest user.

After the responsible team member is selected, start with preparing a thorough acceptance test plan (ATP). It will regulate and facilitate the process of acceptance testing planning and performing.

Acceptance test plan: main sections

Usually, the specially trained personnel draft the document. Technical writers, for example. However, the QA team needs to fill it in with relevant data and keep it updated.

Let’s look through the contents of the typical ATP and briefly outline the contents of each section.

Introduction – the name of the product under test, background information, and product functionality.

UAT objectives – generally, these are the ones we’ve stated above.

Scope of requirements – the list of environments that must be verified during the testing procedure.

Pay attention that the requirements that are enumerated in this section must be demonstrated during the testing procedure (or at least, they should be planned for). If 100% of requirements have been implemented but only 70% can be demonstrated, then the customer will consider the remaining 30% as non-implemented, until the opposite is proved.

UAT tools and procedure – the list of all technical software and hardware tools applied during testing and the procedure. We recommend to specify all the tools that will be applied during the acceptance testing: databases, consoles, log files, automated tests – all this should be mentioned in this section. Otherwise, you won’t be allowed to use them during the acceptance testing process.

UAT methods – specifies how the demonstration is conducted, what methods are used to verify the implementation of a particular requirement and the expected result for each verification.

UAT exit criteria

As a rule, the criteria that must be met to formally end acceptance testing are determined at the stage of contract signing. One of these criteria can be the percentage of successfully passed test cases.

For example, if 100 test cases have been implemented and the pass rate is agreed on 80%, then 80 test cases must be successfully passed. Otherwise, the product won’t go through UAT and won’t be admitted to production.

However, most often the success of UAT is evaluated by the set of criteria. For example, the percentage of implemented requirements and the number of defects of certain priorities. Based on these results, the customer will judge the readiness of the product.

This ends the necessary theory that the QA team should be aware of before committing to UAT. Jump to this article to learn about 4 main challenges you might face and ways to overcome them.

Next week we’ll tell you how our team demonstrated the results to the customer and ensured the product successful release. Stay tuned!

On August 3, Google has announced it has launched new search and discovery algorithms on Google Play. The new algorithms give preference to higher quality apps.

The announcement was made in the Game Developer Conference. The new algorithm has been launched in early August. What is the reason for this change?

Previous algorithms analyzed only the number of downloads and user reviews. Some unscrupulous developers applied to special services to cheat the number of downloads, thereby increasing the application rating. As a result, not all popular applications had high quality.

Some developers of popular apps do not pay attention to negative feedback from users, striving to add more and more new functions to the application before their competitors will. Of course, there is not enough time to fix all defects then. This fact results in launching new versions of the application with the same defects. It’s understandable that users leave negative feedback and uninstall the application.

When users install first-rate mobile applications on their smartphones, they are expecting to get quality apps without functionality and performance issues. And such factors as excessive battery usage and crashes can cause irritation and make users uninstall apps. Google notes that half of 1-star reviews mentioned app stability.

Thanks to the new algorithms, users will find the application without defects first. Developers who focus on app quality, in their turn, will be able to see a boost in their rating and a greater number of downloads.

What awaits unscrupulous developers?

All applications that are ranked high will be thoroughly tested. Once a bug is found, the application will be removed from the ranking for an indefinite period. The developers will receive a letter with concerns they have to address.

It is unclear how many negative feedbacks and deletions can lead to downgrading. Google does not disclose concrete numbers. But it is known for certain that the algorithms analyze various quality signals, such as application performance, battery usage, statistics of crashes, and deletions from various mobile devices. Feedback from users will be taken into account as well.

According to Google representatives, the result is already tangible: users download higher quality applications and the amount of uninstalled apps has reduced.

How to save the application from downranking?

New algorithms will make developers apply a more responsible approach to software quality issues. It can be frustrating to spend several months on product development and to be punished by Google and get forced to fix defects. You will have to spend extra time not only to addressing the concerns, but also to relaunching the application. Meanwhile, users can find a better analogue.

How can you find all defects in advance and ensure your application has a high position in search results? The answer is evident – test your mobile application before placing into in stores.

Professional testing of your application will minimize the risk of receiving negative comments from Google. You will be able to focus not on fixing bugs, but on improving the application and developing new features.

Right before releasing the application, you can perform basic checks and detect defects using the Google Play Console:

The Android Vitals application will help you identify stability issues and know how the application works on user devices.
The test report will show all defects detected in your application during the alpha or beta testing on the most popular devices.
User feedback will inform you about the problems that your audience is facing and devices that experience most problems.

It is evident that these checks will not reveal all bottlenecks. The process of mobile applications testing is handicapped by various parameters and operating systems of mobile devices, screen resolutions, and usage of different Internet connection types.

How can you benefit from QA engineers assistance?

QA engineers can perform the following actions:

Thoroughly examine the application lifecycle: from installing to upgrading or uninstalling
Check the application operation under different conditions that a real user may encounter (horizontal and vertical screen orientation, different types of connection and switching between them, interrupts, external devices connection). For example, your application is aimed at downloading files from your smartphone or tablet to Dropbox. While the files are being downloaded, the Internet breaks and the application is down. Such operation is a defect. Similar stress-scenarios can be provided for every application
Check GUI and navigation, using different buttons and gestures
Test the application performance with different language settings and localization
Analyze application operation and performance
Check how the application process media and audio, send notifications
Perform specific tests on mobile devices (authorization using accounts on social networks, synchronization with other accounts)

This list includes only basic checks that are applicable for most mobile applications. In fact, this list can be much longer.

QA engineers, who tested tens or hundreds of applications, know how important it is to test the application when switching from a Wi-Fi network to a mobile 2G / 3G network and vice versa, as well as to test the application performance with pure Internet connection.

We can enumerate different types of checks almost endlessly. However, covering all aspects can make the testing process long and expensive, which is unacceptable. Therefore, a QA engineer needs to understand how a particular application works to analyze complex, non-trivial defects.

What about the AppStore?

The situation has also changed. Previously, optimization of the application for AppStore mainly included the selection of keywords and adjusting the design. Now, more and more developers receive messages from the store about bugs in their apps. If they don’t fix defects by the deadline, the applications are deleted from the store.

Summary

The search and discovery algorithms directly link the quality of your application to the number of downloads and the place in the ranking. Once you have invested in development, make sure your app has high quality – test it.

After thorough testing, you will be sure that issues will not spoil the impression of using the product. And besides a high position in the store, you will receive positive feedback from satisfied users.

Let’s face it: missing bugs is frustrating. It will be even safe to say a missed bug is the worst nightmare of any tester.

Why so? There is a myth and misconception that testers should hunt all bugs. Testers are viewed as goalkeepers who are the first to blame if there is any bug leakage to the production.

Yes, missing bugs is annoying. But there are reasons behind it. Let’s look at the most common ones and offer solutions that can help testers fix the situation and never let bugs appear in the final version for the same reason.

#1. The pesticide paradox: with the course of time test suites wear out

Almost 20 years ago Boris Beizer, American software engineer and author, formulated the Pesticide Paradox:

Plainly speaking, it means that when tests that are launched hundreds of time, they stop being effective. As a result, a number of bugs that are introduced into the system are not detected by existing tests get to end users.

What can be done?

Never assume that you can build an ultimate test suite that will detect all the bugs in all product versions. What you should do to ensure your tests are working well and perform successful testing is to keep track of the product changes, review and update your test suites regularly.

#2. Lack of time to test that area

It’s not a rare case when software testing team gets under time pressure and has to opt either to burn the midnight oil working overtime, or skip some tests. Even if you are diligent enough to select the first option, you will certainly be in a hurry. And it’s quite natural: when people are in a hurry, they overlook things and miss the bugs, even the most obvious ones.

What can be done?

If the deadline is fixed, communicate with your manager to decrease the scope of testing and analyze risks. Prioritizing testing is also a great plan here as you can suggest skipping low-risks area and focus on the business critical functionality. Tell your manager or any stakeholders what you can test, and what you don’t have time to. Also, inform on the risks entailed.

Be transparent and never hide the issue from the customer hoping that the bugs won’t reach end users.

#3. Missing the most obvious bugs

You can’t even imagine how often the bugs that seem to be right in front of your eyes are missed! And they are the most annoying ones. Testers miss them because they get accustomed to them while looking at the app under testing. It may also happen when a tester is too focused on another task and switch off the “bug hunting mode”.

What can be done?

Practice multi-tasking and attention to details. Try to put yourself in the end user’s shoes and click the application from scratch.

#4. Requirements documentation is improper

At times, the root cause of the missed can be found on the earliest stages of testing projects, when testing itself hasn’t started yet. And it’s about poor requirements documentation. If the documentation doesn’t cover all usage scenarios, testers will not cover these scenarios when testing.

It’s very important that both requirement documentation and test cases prepared should be complete and clear, covering all functions and user scenarios. From our experience, we’ll say for sure that it’s less costly to prepare comprehensive documentation than fixing a bug on late stage of the development.

What can be done?

While establishing proper communication with the customer and asking proper requirements documentation is the responsibility by test managers or business analysts (depending on your organization workflow), there is something you can also do to avoid miscommunication errors. Make sure you know the expected system behavior before getting down to testing. Once the requirements change, make sure you’ve reviewed and updated your test suites as well.

#5. The bug was discovered and reported, but it was too costly to be fixed

Testers are responsible for providing developers and stakeholders with relevant information on the system quality. However, it’s not their responsibility to decide on the developers’ work or product’s release.

Actually, there are many factors to decide on going live (much more than bugs presence). And at times it makes sense to ship the product even with minor bugs in it.

What can be done?

Report all the bugs to the developers in a clear and timely manner. Before the release, provide the stakeholders with the most comprehensive feedback you can on the system functionality, performance, usability and security.

#6. This area is intentionally left blank

It’s up to you to fill it: add any other reason for missing bugs.

Welcome to the comments!

In the last article of the series, we’d like to cover the benefits our QA consultants experienced after moving from Scrum to the Scaled Agile Framework. Based on our experience of testing software in Scrum and, from now on, in SAFe, we’ll compare the processes and point to the priceless advantages.

From Scrum to SAFe: enhanced speed, collaboration, and predictability

At first, SAFe seemed messy, incomprehensible, and extremely challenging. Mystery of life, so to say. Having no other options but to obey, we got down to work. Days of learning, googling, doing 5 years’ worth of reading up, asking (and answering) questions paid off and in the end we took advantage of the numerous benefits of the new framework.

The most obvious benefits turned out to be the following: synchronized work of all teams and faster delivery of the final product. Let’s have a look at how it was achieved.

To avoid shallow explanations, we’ll use the graphic scheme below. It illustrates the work of the three teams testing software on the project. Scrum is above, SAFe is below.

We hope you remember that for four years almost we were applying Scrum to complete our project goals. As it should be, we organized conventional Scrum events: sprint planning, daily Scrum meetings, sprint review and retrospective.

However, as the number of teams increased, we had to review the entire process and adjust it. It was caused by the customer’s representatives’ desire to participate in all regular events. That’s why we had to defer the sprints start for some days.

This adjustment resulted in the additional week for all teams to finalize all the activities planned for four sprints. Besides, we lacked points of synchronization and didn’t manage to complete end-to-end integration testing and assess the product’s quality before all teams are done.

Only having completed all tests planned for four sprints, we set to the final integration tests and verified the quality of the release product. If it was a minor release, it took us about four weeks to complete integration testing. With the major release, final tests took us about two months.

SAFe helped to change the situation for the better

With SAFe, all teams start and finish sprint activities simultaneously. Synchronization is achieved by the introduction of the intermediate points to sync up (system demo).

Thanks to synchronized work, two weeks of the HIP sprint (check out what HIP stands for here) was quite enough to complete final integration tests. Certainly, if we had to assure quality of the major release, we would allow for more time. Let it be four weeks, it was still two times less than required before.

Put it simply, if sprints started and finished on time and there occurred no obstacles to do the job, the delivery of the shippable product got cut by three weeks.

One last thing

Regardless of scaling, Agile is the same. In large organizations it’s just a matter of making the whole enterprise share the same way of thinking and make everyone feel involved.

SAFe is built in such a way that every person feels valued and invested into the common business. We know the business context, we know the vision of the stakeholders, we collaborate with overseas colleagues and… the Big Picture doesn’t seem to be that messy after all.

Over to you

There are always doubts about the effectiveness of something new. At first, we were thinking that large organization and easy-to-use Scrum don’t mix. After a couple of weeks we made it work on all three levels. We’ve evolved our client’s values and his mindset and managed to keep up our cooperation.

If you are expected to adopt new framework, be it SAFe or anything else beyond your expertise, give it a try! If you give up, a more brave and ambitious service provider will take your place in no time.

Do you have your own tips on how to make SAFe safe, or additions to the article? Please let us know in the comments below.

As we mentioned earlier, SAFe divides the development timeline into a set of five sprints within a Program Increment (PI). However, that is not 100 percent true. There are four full-fledged sprints and a HIP sprint at the tail end of the series.

In this article, we’ll outline the HIP sprint purposes, values, and prospects from the point of view of QA.

What does NOT happen during the HIP sprint?

Ideally, coding and testing should be terminated before the HIP sprint kicks off. So there should be no developing and testing activities during the HIP sprint.

Then what?

The sprint title stands for hardening, innovation, and planning. Each of the components gives us a hint about the purposes of the HIP sprint.

Hardening: Ensures that all PI objectives are achieved, and technical debt is reduced. Time is given to go through checklists again and demonstrate Potentially Shippable Increment (PSI) to stakeholders.
Innovation: Provides time for teams to turn up to a hackathon, pitch new ideas, or introduce some innovations.
Planning: Conducts Retrospective and completes the planning of the next PI.

HIP sprints in QA: no time for innovation. Why?

No doubt, HIP sprints provide great opportunities for creative guys to offer any new ideas and even try to put it in place. However, as for QA, reality is a bit different.

Most often, we use this time to finalize all tests that were left behind in the fourth sprint. The reasons why the tests weren’t complete in time vary: features delivery was halted, the number of defects grew, or there might arise one blocking defect that prevented the team from doing their job.

If the product release is around the corner, the QA team will be busy running final performance and integration tests that couldn’t be conducted before as every team was committed to their own user story.

It goes without saying that developers do enjoy greater opportunities during the HIP sprint.

But nothing is impossible, and we also managed to make time and think about the future. Developing automated scripts with the client’s data is what we were engaged in during the HIP sprint. These tests were launched every time before the service pack was delivered to the production.

Test automation enabled us to save about 30 hours of manual testing every two weeks. Moreover, automated tests help to increase test coverage: now we could apply them for every client, not for the single ones, as we did before.

That’s it! As you see, the HIP sprint is not a myth, but quite a real thing in SAFe. And while there’s no new functionality delivered, it brings great value to the project.

Now it’s your turn to speak up! Have you tried HIP sprints in SAFe? If using Scrum, how do you allow time for hardening and innovation activities? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

We started talking about Scaled Agile Framework that helps to apply agile methodology across large development teams. SAFe is usually implemented on three levels. 4-Level SAFe is applied when there are hundreds of practitioners involved.

As for us, we’ve been working with 3-Level SAFe and will talk about it.

The 3-Level SAFe is implemented at the following levels: team, program and portfolio. Let’s focus on each of them focusing on what is relevant specifically for QA consulting practice and software testers involved.

Portfolio level

We’ll start with the portfolio level, which is the highest level of concern in SAFe and is the scope of responsibility of the organization’s management staff.

A portfolio is a number of value streams. Value streams budgeting and implementation is discussed at the portfolio level. A Backlog with Business Epics is generated at this level. Software testing and developing teams have nothing to do here so we won’t dwell on it a lot.

Team level

At the team level we deal with traditional agile teams and Scrum processes many of you are aware of. There is a backlog with user stories. When planning a sprint, teams define work and efforts necessary to meet their sprint obligations. Once the two-week sprint is over, the team meets for Sprint Review, or Demo, and demonstrates some scope of functioning software that can be released. Daily meeting also take place.

At the end of every iteration agile teams meet for Iteration Retrospective where they discuss what has been done well, what has not and what ways for improvement can be found. It’s worth mentioning, that developers and QA work side by side to deliver working software of the release quality. As you see, the process is the same as it’s in Scrum. The difference is that the sprint duration is restricted to 2 weeks.

Program level

The program level is where most of the SAFe differences from Scrum lie. First of all, the size of the development team is larger. The whole team is made up of the usual sprint teams that are applied to the ongoing development mission. The whole team in SAFe is called Team of Teams and can be composed of 50-125 specialists.

The goal of the team is to deliver a Potentially Shippable Increment. “Potentially Shippable” is about the quality of the software, not its marketability. It should be free of defects and possess release quality. PSI is delivered during five sprints.

With every next PSI, end product gets more value. Value in SAFe is delivered by Agile Release Trains (ARTs), which is one of the center concepts in SAFe. The more products are delivered at the organization, the more ARTs there will be. In our project there was only one release train.

ARTs: why such a metaphor? Let us make it clear.

Imagine that you are the customer and you have to get from Prague to Moscow by plane. To reach the final destination, you’ll have to tackle some risks and restrictions. You have to choose between the offered data options and align your timetable. You also have to purchase the flight ticket in advance and book a place on the plane.

A plane is said to be the most convenient means of transportation, but it isn’t free of risks either. The luggage can be lost, the flight can be delayed. Of course, it will take time to overcome any of them. In brief, you can’t be sure that you’ll reach the destination when you’ve planned to. This is exactly what stakeholders feel when the product is developed incrementally.

Now let’s imagine another situation. You travel by metro and have to get from one end station on line to the other. You go underground, buy a ticket and take a train. You don’t have to make any preparations beforehand and you are sure that you’ll get to the required station at the time needed because trains come and go regularly. Having missed one train, you’ll take another one in a couple of minutes.

The latest example describes the ARTs’ work perfectly well.

They deliver value regularly (cycles of 5 sprints). As a result, it becomes easier to explain the stakeholders that features that haven’t been implemented in this sprint, will be implemented in the next one. The development process gets more predictability and the product development lifecycle shrinks. The customer should be calm and satisfied as s/he is aware that the release deadline won’t be missed and the end product will look like it was intended to.

So these are the basics of each level in SAFe viewed by the QA team. Next week we’ll answer the question: what are the key differences in product development in Scrum and in SAFe?

If you have any questions left, drop us a line in comments.

Read how our QA team had to replace Scrum principles with those of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) upon the customer’s requests and how we managed to achieve win-win results.

The a1qa acquaintance with SAFe started two years ago. A customer, who has been cooperating with us in QA outsourcing for more than 4 years, confronted us with the fact: “As of today, we start working with SAFe, guys.”

However, we had no other options but to obey. We learned the basics, read numerous hands-on articles and started tuning our processes. Looking ahead, we must admit that we did it quite successfully.

To date, we’ve been working with SAFe for almost two years. And our experience is what we want to share. Hopefully, we’ll foretell some of the difficulties that your QA team may come across.

Let’s start with some basics.

When apply SAFe?

Google displayed us the following big picture:

The core thesis about SAFe is that it contains a number of rules and regulations to ensure smooth agile scaling in a large number of development teams.

Are there multiple software products developed and roles in the project?
Do you need dozens of approvals to put in place any new suggestion?
Are there many development teams who are eager to apply the lean-agile approach?

If the answers are “yes” than SAFe is what can be of help.

What are the levels in SAFe?

SAFe basic structure contains three or four levels depending on the specific needs of the company. They are portfolio, program and team levels. The 4.0 SAFe that has arrived this January has introduced the fourth optional level, called the Value Stream that should be applied in companies with over 120 people working on heavy software systems. In teams of 50-125 people (as it was in our case) the three-level structure is more convenient.

To gain a better understanding of every level, let’s take an example of the project and focus on its levels. It’s important to note that the levels will be analyzed from the QA team’s point of view, not the business one.

Let’s imagine that we have to enhance the e-commerce application aimed at selling books. The current functionality of the app is very simple: the customer uses the search bar to find the book he or she needs and orders it. When the book arrives at the warehouse, manager notifies the customer and he/she collects it from the warehouse. Apparently, the app is too simple to be competitive on the market. We need to strengthen it adding some more features that will make it more attractive.

The portfolio level is the highest level of concern in SAFe. The responsibility of the portfolio level is to discover major initiatives (business epics) that would reflect business priorities. Epics can be functional and architectural by nature.

As for our website, the functional epics shall be the following:

Organize delivery across the country with the opportunity to follow order processing in a user’s account.
Develop an online communication platform for books amateurs.

Architecture epics should be the following:

Integration with GIS (geographic information system).
System migration to the cloud.

So far it’s pretty easy, we hope. Now we are going down to the program level.

Program level is where business epics are split into features and development team and other resources work on the implementation of the features. A feature is a part of the product that should give some flow of value to the customer or to business.

Let’s split one of the epics on the team’s level. Online communication platform epic can be subdivided into the following features: user’s account, forum, and private messages.

On the team level, every feature shall be reformulated into clear and short user stories that can be estimated and implemented within a sprint.

For instance, private messages feature can be broken down into the following user stories: send messages and get messages and save chat history options. Architecture epics have to be broken down as well.

In such a manner, with every next level, the tasks get smaller in size and their boarder lines are specified. Estimation also gets more accurate.

In the next article, you’ll learn the workflow specifics on each of the SAFe levels.

By Anton Trizna, Head of the a1qa Business Analysis TCOE, and Elena Goropeka, senior business analyst at a1qa.

The terms “business analyst” and “system analyst” are regularly misunderstood and used interchangeably. But in fact, these are two different positions with different duties and set of skills. We’ve decided to learn how these two positions differ and what commonalities they share in what relates to QA consulting specifics.

First, let’s take a look at the commonly applied definitions.

BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, a table book for business analysts) says that there are many job titles that may perform business analysis: business architect, data analyst, business consultant, process analyst, requirements engineer and system analyst, etc.

BABOK also outlines that the business analyst should ensure that the delivered solution will enable the company to produce the expected outcome. And the solution doesn’t need to be an IT-system. From this perspective, we can assume that the business analyst is a general role applicable to the group of professions working with business requirements to ensure the achievement of the set goal.

Very often analytical roles in IT are divided according to the main sphere of the knowledge area: whether it’s IT specifics or customer’s business domain.

Where does the analyst fit in?

At a1qa, we have adopted the following differentiation:

The business analyst will use business analysis methodologies to gather the customer’s requirements and check them for possible challenges to produce a high-quality solution.
The business analyst in IT is the analyst who will solve customer’s problems by proposing to develop and implement certain IT-systems.
The system analyst is responsible for defining technical aspects of the developed IT system, the platform, integration means, and developed system role among the company’s products.

Business analyst’s main focus is to identify customer’s needs and justify the necessity of the project implementation. Typical tasks performed by business analysts include:

Discovering customer’s needs and problems.
Designing of the project scope.
Functional and non-functional requirements elicitation.

In the last stage, a system analyst may already come into play. However, the performed duties will vary. A BA won’t consider the implementation platform and technologies and will pay much attention to the customer’s objectives and preferences. At that rate, the gathered requirements should be measurable, clear and correct. An SA will choose the most appropriate technology and platform to meet all functional requirements.

At times, the platform and technology may be specified in advance. If so, the primary goal is to correlate functional requirements with the chosen software means, adapt them in accordance with the platform terminology and interaction interfaces to ensure proper developers’ work.

After addressing all the requirements, analysts start consulting development and testing teams. A BA will present the requirements from end-user’s perspective, while an SA will put emphasis on the platform.

Highly professional business and system analysts will possess the following knowledge and skills:

Following the division of the areas of responsibilities, business and system analysts will deliver different sets of documentation. A BA will create the vision and scope document, widely accepted business requirements document and software requirements specifications.

An SA will present the concept of IT solution and indicate the platform on which the system is to be developed, technologies, programming language and interaction interfaces.

Summing it up, in practice, it may be hard to differentiate between both roles as they may intercross on the project.

The titles themselves don’t matter a lot. What is really important is that all employees should be aware of the duties both specialists perform and what problems they are expected to solve.

Electronic commerce is the trading in goods or services via the Internet. Nowadays, e-commerce is developing by leaps and bounds. According to statista.com, in 2013 41.3% of global internet users purchased products online. In 2017 this figure is expected to reach 46.4%. This fact drives the business to enter the online trading market.

To build online stores, most organizations are using Magento, a powerful and multifunctional e-commerce platform. It offers great flexibility due to its modular architecture. This platform covers 24.6% of e-commerce today (Hivemind Research).

A wide range of functions helps Magento win customers worldwide. According to cometrics.co, Magento is used in all parts of the world. The largest number of users is allocated in North America and Australia.

Advantages of the Magento platform

Magento has gained its popularity for a number of reasons:

Stable system with regular updates that cover issues appearing in the system
Possibility to create multiple stores in one control system
Multilingual system
Free Community Edition that gives user an opportunity to try Magento before purchasing it
SEO friendly system
User friendly and intuitive administration interface
A huge number of extensions

Disadvantages of the Magento platform

As any other system, Magento is not perfect and has some drawbacks:

Performance (good hosting is required)
Magento customizing is rather complicated
Enterprise Edition is expensive
Many extensions lead to a great amount of bugs

Setting up the Magento platform

During the setting up process, it is advisable to pay attention to:

Performance
Compatibility of extensions
Payment methods
Responsive design

Testing Magento e-commerce applications

The more functions a platform provides, the more vulnerable it is. Therefore, thorough testing is vital for Magento e-commerce applications to prevent end users from facing defects and errors. a1qa has considerable experience in testing online stores on the Magento platform. We have the first-hand knowledge of all pitfalls and bottlenecks connected with Magento.

a1qa experts advise to use the following testing tips:

Provide cross-browser and mobile testing (front-end testing on various browsers and mobile devices, e.g. we encountered absolutely different issues on Firefox and Google Chrome).
Check that every installed extension is compatible with other extensions (make sure that a plugged-in extension works properly, provide regression testing for extensions with similar or connected functionality, one extension can cause a problem in another one).
Carry out performance testing (check the application under a heavy load and large amount of data to be sure that a great number of orders won’t make your online store go down).
Check every payment method (calculation should be correct and the payment process should be clear to the customer).
Double-check calculation on checkout and basket pages (especially with vouchers, promotions and gift cards).
Automate typical workflows (recommended to run after every change and helps detect problems in the early stages).

Magento offers a lot of possibilities for starting or growing great online business and satisfying end users’ needs. A sound approach to setting up and testing will make e-business work right and bring profit.

Do you know that IT sphere is considered to be one of the most rapidly developing industries? The latest IT trends are changing as fast as the readers’ attention. a1qa team has analyzed the posts that caught the greatest interest and compiled the list of TOP 5 most popular topics.

1. Agile

Agile is called the world’s most popular innovation engine that is why it will never lose its popularity.

The Introducing QA to Agile Team post by Svetlana Pravdina contains practical advice on how to implement QA to Agile teams. This article would be of special interest for those who would like to introduce QA to Agile team, but is confused or scared to face radical challenges.

The article Applying the Agile Manifesto to Mobile Testing by Nadia Knysh states the factors you should take into consideration if you want to follow The Agile Manifesto Principles in testing mobile apps. It provides you with practical tools to implement these principles The Agile Manifesto proclaims 4 key values and 12 that have been adapted for managing a variety of business and IT-related projects.

2. Test automation

Modern IT world requires more and more software QA engineers and test automation. The article Software Testing Needs More Automation by Aleksander Panchenko presents the results of global market research study.

Part 1 tells about the general directions in IT and automated tests results. Learn what future specialist forecast for test automation in particular, and IT world in general in Part 2.

3. Interview

Have you ever heard anything about Alan Page? He is the lead author of books about Software Testing and a software tester with nearly 20 years of experience, who has published a collection of essays on test automation. Read the interview Test Specialists are Essential Members of Software Teams to find out why Alan thinks that “the trends of more frequent releases and wide scale development of web services and apps dictate that the future of testing will change”.

One more prolific specialist is Eric Jacobson, a tester with 14 years of experience in IT industry. Read about Anti-Bottleneck testing and Eric’s attitude towards trivial bugs in A Story by an Anti-Bottleneck Tester post.

Lloyd Roden, a Developer, Test Analyst and Test Manager without any doubt can be called a cross-functional specialist. In the How to Challenge Complexity post Lloyd says why he names himself a Jedi Tester and why he is “a firm believer in Exploratory Testing”.

4. Security testing

Today DDoS/DoS attacks are so ubiquitous that almost every day a new case is highlighted. But do you know when the first DoS attack was registered and what was it like? The article DDoS/DoS Attacks: Experience-based Insight by Aleksey Abramovich points out the modern motives for carrying out DDoS/DoS attacks and defines categories of attacks depending on their target. Find general information in Part I. Read Part II, if you need more detailed information on the subject matter.

5. Mobile testing

What should you know when choosing automation testing tools and test approach to mobile testing? What factors can influence your choice? Find the answers to these and other questions in the Automated Testing of Mobile Applications post by Dmitry Tishchenko. It is obvious that automated tests are gaining popularity and automation of mobile application testing is decreasing testing costs.

As you can see a1qa always stays in step with the latest IT trends and posts valuable information. But there’s still a lot to be done. a1qa holds by what readers say. Comment this article and express your interests. What topics would you like to read about?

The article by Alexander Panchenko, Deputy Head of Complex Web QA Department, and Olga Demeshko, QA Engineer.

Everyone counts

If you have decided that testing is your call, – the easiest way to get the basics of the profession is to enroll in testing course. Preferably, take a course at the QA company which you would like to join afterwards. Although the theoretical basis is mainly the same, different companies apply principles which may vary significantly.

We want to emphasize – there is no need to become a tester first and then to retrain for a software developer. Of course, both jobs deal with software products, but in a completely different manner.

Developers are to create, whereas QA engineers are to criticize and crack the code. In fact, they have different mindset. Only software QA consultants engaged in automated testing are rather close to development, although even this area has its own specifics. If you have really decided to become a developer, then try to take a developer course.

On the contrary, previous work experience is useful. Some companies recruit professionals for specific projects. Having contracts for testing internal wages systems in their pocket they will be glad to welcome accounting or HR professionals on board.The same applies to foreign languages, marketing or even construction – QA engineers test applications for a variety of industries.

No panic!

Now, you have successfully graduated from the training course and you got the job, right? If your first task on the project turns out to be too difficult, do not panic!

The description might be quite confusing for a person with no experience. But even if you got the impression of transliterated Chinese, do not despair. In any case, you are surrounded by experienced colleagues, and Internet is full of suggestions. The main thing is not to be afraid to ask questions. It’s not a shame not to know something. Much worse is to send the results not understanding the task.

If, on the contrary, the task seems too simple, do not accept greater responsibility than you can bear. Excellent performance in a focused specialization will characterize you better than a million of unrealized promises. So, do not try to prepare testing documentation, execute tests urgently, etc. A clear understanding of processes and terminology comes first.

From a newcomer to a top manager

The first thing you will have to face is testing the basic functionality and business logic. A common mistake of young QA engineers is to check an interface disregarding basic functions. The interface is important, with no doubt, but the number one task is to control the correct performance of application’s main functions.

Does it make sense to visit an online shop with a stylish interface, if a client is not able to register on this website? No matter how attractive the interface is, if the application is unable to fulfil the main objective, it is useless.

Along with the main work a tester should continue exploring operating systems, computer networks, virtual machines. The more you learn, the more skills you obtain, the faster you are growing in the profession. The conclusion is obvious, if you want to become a qualified expert in software testing – constant development is required.

Read the first part of the article here.

The article by Alexander Panchenko, Head of Complex Web QA Department, and Olga Demeshko, QA-engineer.

A QA-engineer is a highly demanded profession nowadays. The research made by Forbes this year proclaims that this job has been recognized as the second happiest in the US. CareerBliss lists a QA-engineer salary range of $41,000-$71,000 and up to $91,000 for senior QA engineers. This article provides information on who can embark on a career in software testing, what talents are necessary for this profession and what should you know to work for a QA company.

Job for meticulous ones

Let’s determine basic factors for being a QA engineer. A university diploma is essential but not critical since there are lot of training courses giving necessary knowledge and basic skills. The main characteristic that identifies the “inborn” tester is curiosity. Those, who in their childhood were really passionate about dismantling a PlayStation, and penetrating into a washing machine to see what it has inside, may be sure they can be good testers!

If you’re wondering how the every-day-life devices are constructed, your friends call you a scrupulous person and you don’t leave the work just because you are bored – then Software Testing is a good fit for you. Despite the meticulous character that testers have, do not think that QA is only routine and mechanical work. Certain creativity is always expected from a QA engineer. Intuition and great imagination are indispensable parts of the profession.

Apart from that your manager would expect some flexibility. If you know a set of standard checks and possible errors, you will not be able to work in testing for a long time, that’s obvious. Just try to recollect the way computers looked like when you were a schoolboy (schoolgirl) and note how little kids operate cutting-edge Tablet PCs today. Testers need to be prepared for continuous learning. New applications release, new operating systems and gadgets should be immediately taken into account.

Test… a pencil!

So, you have decided that this profession might be interesting to you. How to start? You can get a general idea from special literature and Internet forums. But in this case you risk getting lost in different opinions and viewpoints.

To find out what you will have to face, the senior testers offer to conduct an experiment – to test a pencil, a chair, a cup of coffee – anything that helps to a standard software testing approach. The aim is to be creative enough and to use another angle while doing your job.

The same principle works for mobile applications testing. It is important to check all possible actions that “a pencil” user might execute. But do not forget about the appropriateness of those checks. While the case when a pencil falls from a desk is close to reality, its cutting with a chopper is clearly not. If you manage to come up with a lot of scenarios of such unusual testing you have successfully passed the first exam to go into the profession.

Read the second part here.

If you missed the first part of the article read it here.

It would be unfair to ignore the risks that testers face working side by side with developers. For me, the description of the defects became the most serious risk.

Sometimes, testers try to save their time and efforts by discussing defects directly rather than receiving detailed written reports. That said, as new developers and testers join the team, having clear descriptions is important to get them up to speed.

Initially, I even tried to adjust the testing strategy depending on the specific functions of the developer. However, that was not correct, as sooner or later, it leaded to missed defects.

The first time I found myself in the epicenter of a developers meeting I felt like I was in another country.

But, as it always happens in the real life, after a while their language didn’t seem so foreign.

In the beginning I appeared at such meetings by chance (all meetings were held near my workplace), but it soon became clear that my presence at the general meetings was quite useful for the project.

Being a part of those meetings I understood every single detail and often was valuable in developing the testing strategy. Moreover, I informed team members how the code or its part would be tested, that helped to prevent defects proactively.

The abovementioned communication rules are pretty clear and simple. However, these obvious steps are rarely executed when the team is distributed across different floors, different cities and countries.

All too often, IT project participants forget that developers and testers have the same goal: to deliver high-quality software. No matter how talented its participants are, the project will never run smoothly if the team doesn’t strive for the same result. Providing a common goal helps establish a team environment and clear lines of communication. Everyone will benefit —software developers, testers, managers, customers, and the company in general.

The article by Anastasia Kotsevich — a QA Team Lead at a1qa — was published on Stickyminds. Read the full article here.

The article by Anastasia Kotsevisch was published on Stickyminds. You can also read it here.

Anastasia Kotsevich is a QA Team Lead at a1qa with 3 years of experience in Testing and Project management and more than 6 years of experience as an IT-coach. She used to manage the team of more than 10 people and specializes in projects with complex business logic, financial technical analysis in corporate ERP-systems. Anastasia is also a frequent speaker at international QA conferences and the local QA Academy.

I have a question for testers: Have you ever tried working in the same room with coders? I expect the majority of responses to be “no”. It’s really no surprise, considering testing is most commonly performed in a separate location.

That’s why, when I faced an opportunity to work such an environment, I was hesitant. I wanted to take on this task but, to be honest, I was afraid. I didn’t have to move to another city or country, or even another building — I just had to go one floor up — but I expected to be like Alice in Wonderland, falling through a rabbit hole into the strange world of coders.

I halfway expected to see Supermen controlling computers with the power of thought and correcting defects like cracking nuts. I was very much afraid that they would find me silly — or, on the contrary, very smart. I wasn’t sure which one is worse.

I felt that I entered a hostile environment; I thought they hated me from the get-go. I can’t say I blamed them. After all, my job was to disrupt coders’ quiet lives by finding bugs and issues in their code. Who would appreciate that?

The first point in my plan was to understand the project clearly in order to not ask stupid questions and annoy the coders with “under-bugs”. However, that group of projects seemed extremely complicated, and the field — financial analysis — was unfamiliar to me. I decided to ask the developers for help.

Unfortunately, I did not get any assistance from the coders because they weren’t any more familiar with the business logic than I. But making an effort to “speak their language” when asking for help made it easier to become a part of the team.

Looking back, I realize that it was the moment we discovered the first rule of the teamwork: try to sort it out together! The earlier you understand this, the better code you will make up and the more effective tests you will get.

The second point of my initial plan was to provide a flawless description of defects. I was pretty confident that well-described defects wouldn’t be too annoying for programmers. That is why I wasn’t hesitant to share the first bug I found, clearly describing fields and algorithms, providing informative attachments, etc.

Imagine my surprise when my new colleagues started to ask questions regarding this “ideal” defect. At that moment, I discovered one of the most important things: I learned that developers and testers perceived defects differently. While testers might think they knew what field would be of the highest interest to coders, they were wrong. Each developer focused on a different part of the defect, often unaware of the fields presented in the description.

Read the second part here.

Decoding the voice

It’s important to consider that testing voice recognition clients differs from any other type of testing. Unlike testing a regular mobile application, the tester has an endless scope of data that could be entered. If you want a good client, you do not limit a person to just 10 words the system recognizes. Modern voice recognition clients should decode as many commands as possible, presenting developers and testers with a very challenging task. But still, even the best voice recognition system doesn’t guarantee correct decoding 100% of the time. The job of the developers and testers is to make the correct decoding percentage as high as possible.

If we talk about voice typesetting, the stage where mistakes are most likely to occur is the decoding stage. Let’s look at the architectural level of the process, when sounds captured by the microphone are going through frequency analysis. First, the voice is converted into graphical wave motion; then it is transformed into characters that build the word. The searching tool in Google Chrome mobile version, and predictive typing on mobile phones and tablets are good examples of this process.

However, it gets more complex when you deal with multi-functional applications, where the voice recognition system consists of two stages. First, the client decodes the voice and forms the whole phrase. Second, a complex algorithm switches on and starts analyzing each word separately and the whole phrase together. This is where the biggest amount of mistakes occur. Those voice recognition systems are pretty bulky, so they are installed on servers, while the mobile device has just a small client to record the voice, send it to servers and receive the commands back to perform them. To optimize testing and the fixing of bugs on the server and the client, mistakes should be strictly differentiated.

Testing the client: with female voice and in the pub

The way we speak and the way we pronounce words – these are the types of factors that have an impact on voice recognition systems. The voice pitch and timbre could be recognized by the system differently. Also, every person has his own voice speed. This should be taken into consideration while working on choosing testing scenarios. It is recommended to choose a quality assurance engineer with average pitch, timbre and voice speed. Ideally, the same functions are tested with both male and female voices. In testing a client for a foreign language, it’s good to have a tester able to speak without an accent, so you don’t end up like the guys in this video clip.

The tester should forecast different environments; it’s not enough to make a test just for a quiet room. Noisy streets, crowded pubs and public transport – the voice client should be adjusted to decode the human voice anywhere.
What else can undermine voice client performance? If technical support, such as headsets, Bluetooth and other accessories don’t function correctly, the client can fail in accomplishing the task at hand. The need for an instant and reliable connection challenges developers and testers to diminish the impact of Internet connection quality. It also helps if the tester emulates other user scenarios, such as playing music on his phone, incoming calls and other interruptions.
It’s not so easy to imitate a user while testing voice recognition clients. However, this is the very case when the “do like a user does” approach is the key to success. An experienced tester can think of many users’ testing approaches to ensure high quality of the final product.

Currently at its peak of popularity, voice clients still have a huge niche in which to be developed and adopted. This gives developers a lot of room in improving current software and creating new ones. At the same time, it is a great responsibility to be involved in this process. Every tester should keep in mind the millions of people using the voice recognition software they have tested and improved. Using correct approaches and optimal strategies in testing will allow every user to be satisfied with the communications channel you have enabled for them.

Read the full version here.

The article was published in RCRWirelessNews.

Voice clients are already installed in mobile devices, computers, TVs, washing machines, elevators and cars. If you are interested in learning more about the story behind maintaining human-machine communication, then read on.

Progress demands

We are witnessing a growing tendency in embedding voice recognition systems in all industries – from tablets to cars. Such a trend could be explained by our hi-tech crazed modern society. The trend is also encouraged by media, cinematography, marketing, TV and the Internet.

But if you look deeper, you can find the roots of humans’ aspirations to start talking to machines in their anthropology. Applying voice recognition systems is natural for people, and whatever feels natural makes the processes of achieving these things simpler. Historically, mankind used to exchange information through interpersonal communication, where verbal communication was it. Before the time when people were writing letters, texting and sending messages by e-mail, the way they exchanged information was via verbal communication only.

The main advantage of voice recognition systems is that the user doesn’t need to develop any new skills to manage the program. In comparison, consider how when becoming a computer user a person should learn computer literacy – how to hold the mouse and how to type on the keyboard. When managing the machine by his voice, however, the person doesn’t need any special skill to pronounce the command. Another important aspect is that many tasks could be completed just with a help of human voice. Then the voice recognition system is applying itself to many components of the system, while the person doesn’t need to switch different interfaces.

Limits stimulate development

The target audience of voice recognition systems is quite diverse. There are groups that are in urgent need of having such an option: people suffering from disabilities and people driving their cars, for example. For many disabled people, voice recognition software is the only way for them to interact with the outside world independently. As for car drivers, they have been pushed to start using voice recognition systems. With security requirements getting stricter all over the world, car manufacturers have started installing voice systems to avoid the official ban on talking while driving.

As a result of these demands, most mobile manufacturers are also developing and implementing voice recognition clients. While the concept of the system is similar, the quality of products varies. The voice client quality is becoming a real advantage for potential phone buyers, since they consider it a serious issue when choosing a new device.

Read the full version here.

You can read the first part of the article here. The article was published on Engineers Edge.

Shortcuts for managing

The administration of the Linux host (where your web application runs) requires frequent job and process managing activities. A few must-knows are listed below.

To interrupt a job, use a shortcut Ctrl-C. When you need to resume a job, use a shortcut Ctrl-Z. The command fg restarts the job, while bg places a job to the background, allowing you to perform additional tasks at the same time. Also add an ampersand (“&”) to your command in the end of the string to start it in the background.

When you need to view currently running processes, run “ps.” While all jobs have unique process IDs displayed in the first column of the output, rest assured there are some more useful options here to modify its result view.
If you need to end a required job, run “kill/killall” followed by the process ID or process name (kill 22064; killall java, for example).

The grep command will help to find a specific job you might need. It is an efficient search tool with a large scope of configurations (for example, ps -aux | grep java). The ps returns the list of all processes. The grep filters the list according your search criteria.

Installing new software

What should we expect when installing new software in Linux OS? This can be a challenging task among former Windows users. Usually it can be done by following these methods: installing RPM packages, installing DEB packages or installing from tarballs (esp. source code).

On top of that, when starting working with Linux, you should always keep in mind software repositories, which provide storage for packages (both source and binary) accessible via Internet to install any required software on your computer. It’s up to you whether to use a certain repository or create your own. See examples for two of the most popular utilities: YUM in files repo in the directory/etc/yum.repos.d/ and APT in file /etc/apt/sources.list and in the files in the directory/etc/apt/source.list.d/.

Types of software

As for software testing itself, there are basic instruments for testing Linux applications you will definitely need. Most of these solutions are applicable to the majority of Unix-based systems and are console-based, which makes them easier to automate.

There are three types of software in Linux: Core (Kernel), User applications (userspace level), and Core + User applications. Core applications include the core itself, the kernel modules and user space level for kernel control (meaning the / proc and / sys interfaces). Since the kernel itself is written on C and ASM, C is the preference for testing. Usually these are small test kernel modules, checking some functions or module with different parameters + script.

Based on many years of testing experience, it is recommended you avoid using one module that checks the entire “feature.” This is why many modules are used to check each of the functions separately. Also keep in mind that you have to check all possible functions return codes.

User applications can be considered any application running on Linux. However, if the application is written in Java, you’ll need to own Java, at least in order to make sure that the program is working.

Core + User applications are the most popular to be used in Linux. If you are dealing with this type of application, it means the core driver provides low-level communication with any device and the user program.

Testing tools for Linux

Since all Linux tools are either present in any distributive or can be freely downloaded, Linux is a convenient OS both for programming and testing. Basic tools for testing Linux applications are as follows:

GCC – Gnu C compiler. To test the compiler, you can use gcc, which is a Basic C, C++ compiler for Linux. Its website has special tests. If you compile the -g option, you can debug the program with GDB.
BASH. The BASH shell is also included in each distribution. It is very useful for writing scripts.
expect is also present in each distributive. It is a simple but quite handy syntax tool command language (TCL).
expect-perl ? expect-python (pyexpect) – libraries expect for scripting languages perl and python.
gdb – Gnu Debuger. This is a standard C/C++ debugger. If you’ve never used it, we advise you to get acquainted with this tool. Use kgdb for kernel.
ltt – Linux Trace Toolkit. If your Linux core supports LTT, you can view the active processes/system calls in the current process.
import ? gimp – can be used for taking screenshots for testing graphics applications.
minicom is a program for manual testing. If you want to automate the console, it is better to use the expect (or in conjunction with the “cat” and “echo”, or just open / dev / ttySx as file – sometimes the second option does not fit).
ltp – Linux Test Suite Page [ltp.sf.net] is a very useful collection of tests. It includes tests of file systems, system calls, etc.

Among other common tools, it would good to mention such as netperf (utility to verify the network performance), ircp, irdump, openobex (utilities for infrared checking), and telnet, ssh (a remote shell). If you need to enter same commands frequently, you can use expect, which is available in any distributive). A more detailed comprehensive list of tools commonly used for testing the various components of Linux can be found here.

Hackers’ security distribution

Linux also has its own distributions for testing. Backtrack-Linux.org is a good example of a specialized Linux distribution that has just one purpose – to test your network, devices and systems for security vulnerabilities. The last version of Backtrack was released in August of 2012.

Backtrack all started with earlier versions of live Linux such distributions such as Whoppix, IWHAX, and Auditor. As it’s said at Offensive Security, after years of development, penetration tests, and unprecedented help from the security community, it evolved to what is now known as a GPL-compliant Linux distribution built by penetration testers for penetration testers with development staff consisting of individuals spanning different languages, regions, industries and nationalities.

Backtrack consists of more than 300 security open source tools and utilities. While there are many commercial programs available, many security professionals prefer BackTrack tools. The interesting thing is that BackTrack is also popular among hackers because of its anonymity; when installing this distribution, you don’t have to register.

Many security practitioners use BackTrack to perform their security assessments. BackTrack is an open-source, Linux-based penetration testing toolset. It makes performing a security assessment easier, because all of the common tools that you need are all packaged into one nice distribution and ready to go at a moment’s notice. As with other Linux distributions, BackTrack is supported and developed by a community of users that range from skilled penetration testers in the information security field, government entities, information technology experts, security enthusiasts and individuals new to the security community.

Conclusion

The above should provide a good overview of some of the basic Linux tools, singularities, process management, specific limitations, etc., that are vital for quality assurance services involving Linux. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Linux, the most stable, efficient, safe and legal operating system ever.

The article was published on Engineers Edge.

Even though Linux has a relatively small percentage of desktop users, that small percentage must be provided with well-developed and tested software. That means testers all over the world should be ready to fulfill any customer whim, including testing Linux-based applications. This is where the following tutorial comes in – to help prepare for this scenario.

The great battle of Linux and Windows

Unlike the majority of operating systems, Linux is a free one. It does not require any license to purchase it and can be downloaded at no charge. A lot of available software is developed for Linux, so a user doesn’t experience any inconvenience when choosing Linux over Microsoft.

The main difference between Linux and Windows is the superior flexibility Linux provides. While Windows has the same settings for all users, Linux settings and configurations can be easily adjusted to fit each user’s preferences. This is why every user has a unique system, which can’t be said about Windows. It is these standard Windows settings that most PCs have that make Microsoft PCs more vulnerable than Linux systems.

Being a stable system, Linux is also well-known for its extremely high security. Despite many attempts hackers have made to break the system, Linux has managed to remain secure.

Another important Linux characteristic is the productivity it supports. If you run two identical programs on two identical computers with the only difference being the OS (Windows or Linux), you’ll find the Linux OS operates faster. Consider the statistics; more than 95 percent of supercomputers are operated by *nix, and a significant number of servers are run on Linux distributions.

Linux standard base (LSB) testing

Unlike Microsoft, Linux doesn’t have hundreds of hired developers and quality engineers to maintain the quality of software produced for its users. Regardless, the community of Linux volunteers has found a way to underpin long-term compatibility guarantees and comprehensive compatibility testing.

Together, the Linux Foundation and the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences are putting huge resources toward developing new tools and technologies to break through LSB testing challenges. These resources, known collectively as the LSB Testing Framework, include such components as Linux Application Checker, Distribution Testkit (DTK) Manager, AZOV Shallow Test Development Framework, T2C Normal Test Development Framework and UniTESK Deep Test Development Framework.

Also, a great number of paid-for tools are developed for testing software that runs Linux distributions. Now we can move on to the technical differences testers should be aware of when it comes to Linux.

Introduction to *nix

To distinguish between two operating systems we’d like to share some hints to help avoid their specific singularities. We suggest every novice Linux user start with the “isman” command, which displays online manual pages for specified commands. If you put “man ls,” for instance, this will return info regarding the command you may want to learn: Name, Synopsis, Description, Options.

Pay attention to the fact that command names, paths and file names are case-sensitive. For example, “test.log” and “TEST.log” could be different files in the same directory.

Spaces were originally used for pointing multiple arguments of the command, so if you use them in file names within the terminal (console), that will cause incorrect behavior. Therefore, you should use underscore or CamelCase (PascalCase) instead (e.g. “test_log” or “testLog” instead of “test log”).

The “mv” command should be used if you need to rename a file: mv test.tar.gz temptest.tar.gz. That will change the name of “test.tar.gz” to “temptest.tar.gz.”

Overwritten or modified files couldn’t be restored to their original state in Linux, since this OS doesn’t have an “undo” function. The same thing happens if you need to restore a file that was deleted earlier. Linux has neither a “Trash” nor “Recycle” bin. Moreover, you have no chance to restore deleted files and folder using standard tools in most Unix distributions. This is why you should be careful when working with Linux. You have to make sure you delete files you really don’t need; specify unique parameters for the rm command. For example: rm -i test*.txt (user will be prompted). Finally, the alias command will help to reconfigure the rm command call if you really care about data loss (which most of us do).
You should always keep in mind shortcuts: current directory (.) and parent directory (..). Never miss them and do not run: rm -r .* This command will delete the parent directory (the expression matches “..”).

Be aware of the autocomplete function for command or file names if you work within a console: type a few first characters of the name and press the Tab key.

If you need access to recent command history, you can use up and down arrows on the keyboard to browse commands you previously ran.

What are the limits?

Next, let’s explore path types as well as name length limitations in the *nix OS. It’s best to start with common terms.

There are two types of paths: absolute and relative. An absolute path is the location of a file or directory from the root directory (top level): e.g. /var/log/protocol/log. Relative path means path related to the current directory (pwd). For example, you are located in /var/log and you want to go to the directory /var/log/protocol/log/. You can use relative path here, so apply: cd protocol/log/.

As for limitations applied to folder and file names in *nix, there are 256 characters for a name and 1,024 characters for an absolute path (these limitations should also be checked during the test of your web application).
When working on Linux, you cannot log in as the root user (technically, the top level user or administrator), which is either prohibited or impossible due to an unknown or hidden password used as part of the security policy. At the same time, most of daily routine administrative tasks require administrator permissions: web app start/stop, database restarting/cleaning, new build deployments and so on.

To complete those tasks, you have another solution: use sudo commands (requires a password as well – stands for super user do). Just use sudo followed by the required command to perform activities with so-called super user permissions: sudo apt-get install shellutilities.

In the next part of the article we`ll continue discussing testing specifics of Linux OS.

When talking about bugs and defects detecting, the two most common problems are:

First, when you read the bug description and can’t understand what it means. These unclear defect reports can come from users, customers and beta testers, saying things like, “I pushed the button and everything collapsed.”

Second, how do you handle it when the real challenge is not in fixing the bug, but in “decoding” the report about it?

I have provided some step-by-step instructions below that can help any automated testing company in such situations.

Write your own algorithm

First of all, let’s think about the nature of all those defects with indistinct descriptions. Why does everyone write bug reports in his own way? Well, there are many reasons – the most common being “underqualifying” or “overqualifying.” On the one hand, it could be a tester who is new to the field and didn’t describe the bug correctly. On the other hand, a tester could be so experienced that he treated the bug as an unimportant one. You could also have meticulous developers and project managers reporting bugs.

In all of these cases, bug reports are written inaccurately in one way or another. The best solution, therefore, is to create clear regulations for dealing with bugs – a detailed algorithm on how to describe and fix bugs. Any form for that algorithm could be chosen; most importantly, it should include the three following points:

A list of attributes that must be filled (in other words, which graph and how should the graph be filled);
A description of the defect life cycle, accepted by all project members;
A list of parameters and samples for every stage of the life cycle, if possible.

Do not be afraid to spend a couple of hours on this writing detailed regulations step, since it will save you time in the future. Also, if you have well-structured regulations approved by your team, you can always refer to them when you find yourself in the middle of a controversial situation that requires a fast decision.

However, it is not enough to just write the regulations. The second step is to persuade every team member to follow the regulations you developed. To achieve that, you should develop an agreement with everyone involved to move all bugs that do not match your regulations to the “better definition required” status. Since the automation of that stage is impossible, the project manager is the one who will ultimately be the judge on all controversial defects.

Automate bug registration

Once your team agrees to follow the bug reporting regulations you have defined, it doesn’t mean all bugs will be reported automatically. We can’t forget about the bug reports from customers and users, as well as from beta testers, none of whom are part of the team that has agreed to the regulations. While you are not going to teach them how to report on bugs, you can create an algorithm for reporting. How, you ask? Consider the creation of a reporting form that excludes loose descriptions. Also, every field should have as many preinstalled parameters as possible, describing possible problems.

Another approach is to automate bug reports. Let’s say a user has a button he can push to report the bug he found (configuration parameters, logs, screenshot or even a video showing last activities of the user). A good example of this type of bug reporting function was used by Microsoft – useful when they released the first versions of Office and Windows.

Quite often, users don’t even need to push a button. Android and Apple apps offer to send a bug report to developers once it has collapsed. Even more, platforms like Ubertesters allow users to test apps themselves, which helps developers and testers to automate the bug reporting process.

Nevertheless, you should be really sensitive when thinking of installing the bug-report button, because it has the potential to scare users. Imagine when a user installs an app and sees that button. He may be under the impression he has installed a bugged product. Also, you must keep in mind limitations on a user’s confidential information, such as direct reporting from his own device.

In prior posts, I have discussed test models as a package of test scenarios. Each scenario has specific requirements. The development of software for the telecommunications industry deals with large systems like OSS/BSS, and requirements creation is the initial phase of the project.

This phase is critical, as requirements errors can result in wasted time and increased cost. Analysis shows that the later readjustment phase can consume 30 to 40 percent of the total effort expended on a software development project.

Researchers have even indicated that about 50 percent of the bugs can be caused by requirements errors; thus, requirements errors may lead to between 70 to 85 percent of all project readjustment costs.

As you can see in Figure 1, the correction of requirements defects can cost up to 110 times more if found in operation than it would if the same defect had been discovered during the requirements definition phase.

*Figure 1. Requirements cost to correct a requirement defect depending on when it is discovered. Source: M.P.Singh and Rajnish Vyas*

We as QA consultants advise that two main parts of the requirements creation phase should be separated – into requirements development and requirements management.

*Figure 2. Difference between requirements development and requirement management.*

The requirements development phase aims to collect information, make analysis, review and approve requirement. As a rule, it results in documents package creation. These are documents about image and product borders, software requirement specifications, data vocabulary and a corresponding analysis model.

The review and approval of this package defines the base requirements version (i.e. the agreement between developers and customers). The requirements management stage includes all actions supporting integrity, accuracy and timeliness of renovation of the agreement on requirements during the project.

Management of requirements includes:

Management of changes for the base version of requirements;
Maintenance of project plans actuality according to changing requirements;
Management of versions of separate requirements and the documentation of requirements;
Control of a condition of requirements in the base version; and
Management of logic connections between separate requirements and other materials with the project.

The best practices and characteristics for requirements management are as follows:

Completeness – Each requirement should completely describe the functionality that will be implemented in the software. In other words, it should contain all information necessary for developers to create the fragment of functionality.
Correctness – Each requirement should describe the desirable functionality precisely. Connections (links) with sources of requirements is necessary for correctness.
Practicability – Possibility to implement each requirement under certain conditions and restrictions imposed by the system and operating environment. Here it is needed to provide interaction of developers with experts in marketing and analysts the ability for extraction of all requirements.
Necessity – Each requirement should reflect what is really necessary for users or necessary to meet external system requirements or standards.
Setting of priorities – Setting of priorities is necessary to cope effectively with budget reduction, infringement of terms, loss of personnel, or the addition of new requirements in the course of development.
Clarity – All readers of requirements should interpret them the same. All special and potentially confusing terms should be provided in a glossary.
Verifiability – Requirement management helps to identify the incomplete, not agreed upon, impracticable or ambiguous requirements.

First, let’s have a “helicopter view” on what comparative test provides and which cases are appropriate for back-to-back in Telecom industry.

Most commonly, comparative testing is used in the case of the full replacement of OSS/BSS solution, which is absolutely crucial for any Telecom business. Rarely, new version of existing OSS/BSS is installing and requires verification.

Comparative testing checks two identical OSS/BSS with the same input data in order to reveal incorrect data processing.

Three main goals to use comparative tests

Detection of functional defects in Rating and Billing systems;
Detection of migration errors when user data transferred from one system to another;
Configuration defects identification (setting tariffs in both systems).

The general workflow for comparative test (proposed by the author while implementing projects in Telecom) is shown at the picture below.

As you can see, two identical systems are required for the testing process: the master (“Golden”) and the test system itself.

Sometimes the input data for “Golden” system cannot be accepted by the test system without additional pre-processing. Then, test data must undergo further conversion phase for compatibility with the test system. After getting results from both systems, they have to be compared – the essence of comparative test – that is, as a rule, an automated process implemented independently from environments. The final step is an empirical data analysis activity that is performed by the tester.

When we analyze the efficiency of comparative test regarding OSS/BSS solutions on real Telecom projects, we must have a critical view and list some of the shortcomings:

The test involves a lot of empirical work, which is difficult to automate (final stages of divergence analysis are performed manually).
During late iterations of the test, a lot of records with numerical discrepancy that cannot be considered as defects can be revealed. These records must be filtered from comparison
Sometimes the test indicates good results while in reality the situation is bad. For instance, during the collection of final statistics, two critical defects might neutralize each other when one of them increases and the other decreases the final amount.
Completely relevant comparative test should be performed for at least one full billing period (about one month), which is not usually the case as the test lasts less than 30 days.

As for the billing systems comparative tests requires achieving a sufficiently high level of coincidence of the output results for both systems (for instance, 99.99%). Achieving this result is a bit tricky, due to the following factors:

Different rounding of floating-point data in two systems;
Incorrect development of mapping tables (service A in the system 1 corresponds to service B in the system 2);
Different order of records processing in two systems may lead to divergence in tariff discounts application;
Peculiarity of some data types in database (example – rating results for call forwarding);
Dynamism of the master (“Golden”) environment. In the real life, clients are frequently changing tariff plans, phone numbers, SIM-cards, contract statuses etc. It’s almost impossible to synchronize all these changes in the test system;
Confirmed changes in business-logic, that is the differences in behavior between the two systems envisaged by Telecom operator requirements to the new system;
Uncertainty and indistinctness of the system requirements;
Inability to implement the requirements of the system under test.

All these factors lead to numerical discrepancies in the results, which may be up to 25% from reference values.

Nevertheless, based on my experience I would advise implementing back-to-back testing due to the many advantages that this method provides:

High level of test coverage for the system;
The opportunity to get additional metrics of the system quality;
Availability of implementing migration and configuration tests, not only functional tests;
High automation level of the testing process.

This is confirmed by the picture below illustrating results of several testing iterations on a real Telecom project.

These statistics contains three metrics:

Defects – the number of functional, integration and configuration defects in the test system
Discrepancy in records, % – the percentage of data units which gave different output results, relative to the originally loaded amount
Discrepancy in amounts, % – the ratio of the total discrepancies amount between the master and the test system relative to the total amount of charges in the master system

Conclusion

We can note high efficiency of this type of test in relation to OSS/BSS. A good practice is to use a back-to-back test together with other traditional strategies for testing, since they are not mutually exclusive and able to detect defects of different classes of the same functionality. You should also keep in mind that an adequate strategy must be developed for back-to-back tests, taking into account all advantages and shortcomings presented in the article.

The article was published at SoftwareTestingMagazine.

IT management needs to first have a solid understanding of budgeting concepts to effectively use the IT budget as a management tool. Then, they must focus on business needs and how the IT organization can address these needs through the use of IT. Finally, IT management should communicate the approved IT budget to all stakeholders to share the information about available resources throughout the organization.

Two IT budget allocation strategies

IT budget is formed as a percentage of revenue or on the basis of costs per employee; in this case, IT budget usually ranges from 2% to 4% of total income.
IT budget is formed on the basis of the RGT (Run, Grow, Transform) model. This means the whole IT budget is split into three parts depending on the project development stage of run, grow, or transform. The model has drawbacks, but its advantages outweigh the disadvantages when it comes to IT budget planning.

According to industry analyst firm Gartner, companies spend up to 66% of their IT budgets for project launch initiatives (i.e., on what needs to be done to implement new IT systems). The remaining funds are split 50/50 between maintenance and new research and development (R&D).

This means most companies can allocate only 17% percent of their budgets for R&D needs. When you consider that companies typically generate 70% of company income as a result of R&D efforts, you can see a clear imbalance.

Dynamic market conditions, changing technologies, and continuous improvement require more IT financial transparency than ever.

Demand-side drivers of higher IT spending as a percentage of revenue include:

Highly integrated IT components in the product suite
Higher service levels for mission-critical systems
Higher usage of knowledge workers
Decentralized IT environment.

IT management is constantly under pressure to understand how to free funds from an already allocated budget. They are reallocating resources within the budget through traditional process automation, cost optimization, service management, and externalization.

Therefore, the question becomes: How can we increase the share of R&D in the IT budget of a company without changing the desired value of deductions from the IT budget – thereby achieving the highest efficiency of R&D and increasing the company’s income? The answer lies in increased attention to the quality of IT projects at and before their launch. Incorporating testing and requirements analysis early on will help to reduce unnecessary spending, allowing companies to use funds for other important projects.

The article was published at NetworkComputing, you can also read it here.

Have you ever found yourself in a multi-tasking environment dealing with a range of small IT projects at the same time? Chances are, yes. If that is the case, keep reading, as it is my goal with this article to provide recommendations that will help better set priorities, allocate tasks and balance the workload among the participants, using the example of small-scale projects in software testing.

Most people think that working with small projects in QA is quite simple, because they are short-term, small and do not require too much effort. But they are quite mistaken. Imagine 15 small QA projects “in the task list” for one tester in one month. You might say 15 different tasks can be “stacked” within one large project, nothing unusual. But let’s have a look from another angle.

Each of those projects is headed by a project manager, which means you have to deal with 15 PMs monthly and about 45 software developers, each of whom has various questions, desires, plans and personal interests. This is when managing the workload and still managing to be effective can become challenging.

And it’s no wonder when each of the 15 PMs requires his/her project to be tested as soon as possible; many may say they “want it done yesterday.” In order to control the flow of spontaneous desires PMs express, and have a clear plan, you need to use a Query Forecast for the near future. This instrument is considered to be indispensable in these types of circumstances.

You can “shape” it with any convenient form (MS Outlook, Jira, or any other tool that allows you to obtain systematic information). What is most important is that you not waste your time questioning each of the PMs, and make it clear to the development team that they must provide planning info up front.

Once a plan is in place, PMs tend to get “on fire,” and they all want to test the projects the same day; no one is willing to concede. This is when the “live line” principle is applicable – the team that sent info earlier and chose a free day captures the tester’s attention. This encourages project managers to not postpone things until the last minute and promptly respond to such requests.

The “live line” principle certainly has value when it comes to improving proper management; however, some other circumstances should be considered. Some urgent projects may have a release date right around the corner. Quite naturally, such projects should come in line before less immediate ones. Builds are also different in size. One may need four hours of testing, while another may need 32. There is no need to make a small build wait a week. Sometimes plans change; imagine the build, planned for instance, from Monday to Wednesday, has been canceled. Accordingly, with these three days freed, we can admit another project (the “free cash” principle).

When a project manager is a former developer himself (which occurs often) and burning with desire to check bugs just after fixing, he may focus on one bug when handing it off to the tester while not mentioning 50 other existing bugs, which is unfair to the tester. In order to prevent a nervous breakdown for yourself, be clear with the PM that the build will be accepted for testing only when all active defects have been corrected.

Incorporating “risk” time into the testing timeframe you promise to the PM is generally acceptable. If you end up completing the project ahead of the estimated time, of course, the PM will likely be grateful.
Regarding timeframes, another consideration is that developers are rarely punctual in providing builds for testing. For example, you were promised to get one at 9 a.m. The developer arrives at the workplace at 10 a.m. and says the build will be ready in a half hour. Midday arrives, and you are informed that the developer is already in the process of writing the notification, but in the evening, the developer says something went wrong and the scope of work will be provided the next day.

Now we have two problems. The first is that you already have another project planned for tomorrow, and the second is that you ended up with no workload during the day. The solutions to these two problems are flexibility of staff planning and a “pool of tasks.” Thus, employees are able to solve the problem by taking the task out of a pool, or offering assistance to an overloaded colleague.

Testers usually deal with projects containing two hard limits: overall timeframe and time spent for a particular project during each day. For such projects, you always need a pre-planned strategy, and the approach of “we’ll see how it goes” does not work. So, set a time limit – for example, a half hour on research and an hour to create test documentation.

Another situation that could arise is when a lot of different testing combinations are needed. For example, a webpage or an application form of any kind may have five drop-down lists, each containing 50 unique values. To check all the unique combinations, you need a lot of time, which is not always acceptable for small projects. In such cases, the test matrices are applied in order to check optimum combinations for a limited time.

In conclusion, one should say that working with a large amount of “small” projects is not so simple. The advice presented in this article could be useful while managing several small IT projects as well as bigger one with many tasks. You will find you have a significant advantage if you learn how to incorporate the aforementioned techniques.

We continue the topic of design defects. In case you missed the first part of the article, you can read it here.

Graphic description

There is another group of graphic defects connected not to usability, but mostly the application functionality itself.

Among them: FPS rate (frames per second). Is it good enough for high-performance games? Does the application display properly both in portrait and landscape orientations on the screen?

This group of possible defects is a must-know for any mobile QA engineer since they are official mobile development compliances.

The most useful and known among them are iOS Human Interface Guidelines (iOS HIG) and Android User Interface Guidelines (Android UIG).

These documents could help provide serious arguments in discussions with developers about potential “won’t fixes.”

Recommendations presented in these docs are not strict rules, especially for Android, but they are really useful in terms of user interaction and pretty stable for a long time with minor changes, which is a good sign that they are truly functional.

Below you can find a selection of such recommendations concerning design and a small part of the whole list. For the full version please see the original documents:

The app should not contain depictions of gratuitous violence (iOS)
The app should not contain materials advocating against groups of people based on their race, religion, disability, gender, age, etc. (iOS)
The app should not contain sexually explicit or erotic content, icons, titles or descriptions (Android and iOS)
Use illumination and dimming to respond to touches, reinforce the resulting behavior of gestures, and indicate what actions are enabled and disabled (Android)
UI elements should have 8dp spacing (Android)
Touchable UI components should be laid out along 48dp units (Android)
Custom UI elements should not be used for a standard action (iOS)
UI must be optimized both for Retina and non-Retina displays (iOS)
UI elements from different versions of iOS should not be mixed (iOS)
The app must not contain materials or services that facilitate online gambling (Android)

THESE ARE just a few examples of usability and graphics recommendations that are presented in the official documents for iOS and Android – easily accessible when needed to state your case with developers during “won’t fix” discussions.

If nothing else, remember this: even if the application is extremely good in terms of the idea, if fonts are too small to read, colors are too bright, backlighting of important areas is absent, and other usability challenges exist, users will not get past the exterior to experience the gem on the inside.

The article Why app design defects should not be “won’t fix” was published in Mobile Marketer online edition.

Are you sure that users will love the application that you are going to produce? After all, this is the key for commercial success. Unfortunately, sometimes, even great ideas fail due to bad implementation. How do you prevent this from happening?

The answer is proper testing before the product hits the market. At the same time, however, when it comes to usability and design issues detected by a tester, it is quite common to hear things such as, “Not too serious,” “No time to fix” or “Too expensive!”

It is important to avoid the “won’t fix” reaction from the development team in the event that the tester finds a significant defect. Below are some tips to help ensure applications’ quality and that all defects found will be fixed.

Views on use

First of all, let us talk about usability of a mobile application. No, we will not touch the usability testing in its full and heavy sense – with a lot of users for evaluation and scrupulous analysis of the target audience.

Rather, I mean the base layer of usability checks – the layer that the functional tester is able to perform himself or herself without investing a huge amount of time and money.

The key things are, of course, clear logic and simplicity. This applies to all kinds of applications – games, office suites, enterprise software, everything.

Is the application intuitive enough to use it easily right after the installation? If no, does the application have clear help, FAQs, tips, other useful FTU (first-time user) resources? Are these resources easily accessible?

These are the questions that the tester should answer while implementing usability tests.

If we consider games, it is important to examine the power balance and energy saving system.

For any type of mobile organizer, it is essential to find out if users are able to see the most important events and functions at the starting screen. They will also want a quick and easy way to add a new note to the organizer.

Listed issues are based mostly on the functionality of the application. In fixing them, you could help to keep users from abandoning the application – considering it illogical or useless.

Also important and connected to usability is an application’s graphics – how the design corresponds to the application’s purpose.

Would you find it appropriate to use all the colors of the rainbow for highly secure government applications? Certainly not. This is unnecessary and would look ridiculous.

That is why it is so important to use testing methods while evaluating application design. In doing so, you will most likely need several devices with different specs.

Texts and objects used in the applications should be noticeable enough and stand out against the background color.

If the font is difficult to read, this may lead to increased user’s annoyance.

You also need to get a negative response to the following questions to ensure that the application is good in terms of design.

For example, is the text too small for the 5-inch device screen? Are there too many targets or icons on the screen? Does the application respond correctly to standard gestures – for instance, “pinch in” is commonly used by mobile devices for zoom-out?

In the next post we`ll cover the issues of graphic defects.

The article Why app design defects should not be “won’t fix” was published in Mobile Marketer online edition.

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote studying basic computer science at schools. Raspberry Pi was first introduced as a prototype in late 2011 as a tool to teach and learn programming.

Most buyers, once they get their hands on the new RPi, follow the getting started instructions on the Raspberry Pi site running recommended Raspbian proprietary OS. Kano OS is a fork of Raspbian OS, a Debian Linux Distro. It’s an operating system designed for simplicity, speed, and code learning, targeted at new Raspberry Pi users. It dynamically adjusts the Raspberry Pi’s clock-speed when load reaches 100.

Still, there’s a wealth of other operating systems available on the market. But the more alternatives, the harder to choose. Thus, the preferences should be defined and then compared. QA consulting comes to help with this – below, we provide our benchmark on the three operating systems for Raspberry Pi based on our comprehensive testing.

How the benchmark was performed

We selected three Operating Systems Raspbian OS, KANO OS, Pidora OS and conducted different benchmark tests to define how performance characteristics of these operating systems varied.

21 different tests were run, and the results were compared and analysed based on the benchmarks` characteristics.

The following characteristics or measurements were considered:

Each test was launched in the same system state.
No other functions or applications were active in the system unless the scenario included some activity running in the system.
Launched applications used memory even when they were minimized or idle, which could increase probability of garbling the results.
The hardware and software used for benchmarking match the production environment.
Three identical boards were used with Kano OS Beta 1.0,2 , Pidora 2014 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix, version 20) and Raspbian Debian Wheezy (version January 2014) operating systems, installed on SD cards.
Benchmarks were launched via commands in Terminal, where real-time activities and results were displayed.

Benchmarks used

Below is a list of all Benchmarks used and the information on successful or failed launch.

Final OS benchmark score

Not all operating systems had success in launching some of the benchmarks and several benchmarks were not objective (PSTree, Top, HardInfo, sysv-rc-conf), so the score can be considered an approximate one.

Overall, Kano OS outperformed Pidora OS and Raspbian OS.
The measurements are approximate and are not 100% scientifically correct. Still, we intended to get a rough idea of how the systems perform. The performance benchmarks and the values shown here were received using particular well-configured and carefully installed systems. All performance benchmark values are provided “AS IS” and no warranties or guarantees are given or implied by a1qa. Actual system performance may vary and is dependent upon many factors including system hardware configuration, software design, and configuration.

Full report with test results data and benchmarks descriptions can be provided upon your request.

As a continuation to my former post, Testing Models: How Did You Ever Live Without Them, this post will detail the most effective testing model tools: Microsoft Test Manager, JIRA Zephyr and HP Quality Center.

The table below provides an at-a-glance comparison of these test tracking systems that can be used when delivering both manual and automation testing services.

Parameter/System	Microsoft Test Manager (MTM)	JIRA Zephyr	HP Quality Center
Possibility of requirements control	No specifed modules or functionality for this task	The requirements can be controlled due to interconnection of test cases with requirements on WIKI or/and JIRA User Stories.	Includes specified module of requirements control
Integration with defect tracking system	Full integration with TFS (Team Foundation Server) MTM	Full integration with JIRA	Includes implemented bug tracking system
Price	$2,169 (with Visual Studio Test Professional 2013 included in package)	Year license for 100 users costs 300 USD	HP doesn’t announce prices for Quality Center. Prices of the main version, as provided by sales representatives are the following: $37,000 for first five users $5,400 for every additional user
Customization possibilities (addition of custom fields)	Included	Included	Included
Usability	System can hang up Screen shifts in the process of testing Not handy for frequent operations	One of the easiest to use test tracking systems	User interface is not intuitive

Below is a more detailed description of each of the above test tracking systems.

Microsoft Test Manager

Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) simplifies testing of a developed application. It saves testing plans results on its Team Foundation Server (TFS). If you don`t need all Microsoft Test Manager functions, use Team Web Access to plan and launch tests.

Exploratory testing – Allows writing down actions during test execution without pre-planned steps.
Performing manual tests – This function allows displaying of the test case on the screen side during test performance. You can automatically record actions, make screenshots and perform other diagnostics to include in results and errors reports.
Test configuration: Specification of testing platforms – You can develop several website versions for different hardware or software configurations.
Collection of extra data for diagnostics in manual tests – This function allows you to record the event logs, data IntelliTrace, videos and other diagnostic data during the test.
Windows Store applications testing – Applying Microsoft Test Manager installed on a separate device can help to collect diagnostic data and screenshots during test performance.
Plan application tests in Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word – This function allows you to use Microsoft Excel for editing of testing plans and synchronizing with them.
Testing in lab environment – This function allows collecting diagnostic data from servers during test performance. Testers can manage functioning of server/computers and can quickly set up new test configurations including usage of virtual machines.
System tests automation – MTM allows interconnecting testing methods in code to imitate manual tests and regularly repeat them. You can also automate whole process “build-deploying-testing”.

JIRA Zephyr

If your company currently uses Atlassian JIRA, JIRA Zephyr would be the obvious choice. JIRA is a commercial product licensed for operating on a local server or accessible as a remote application.

Full integration with JIRA – You can create test cases, test plans and testing reports applying only the JIRA system. All team members can be involved in the testing process. Developers get easy access to test cases. In the event changes are made to the test model, they get immediate notification. The system provides quick access to testing reports for managers, clients and the development team.
Similar configuration with development projects – As soon as a project is created in JIRA, the testing team can launch the process of test cases and test plans development. Unlike other systems, you don`t have to create new users, components, or iterations for testing tasks, which saves time.
Simplified search of tests and entities – You can create test plans with saved filters, or set up a search of a certain group of test cases. Testers can create infographics using standard JIRA means and make them available for the entire team.

HP Quality Center

HP Quality Center includes five interrelated modules providing process continuity:

Management – used for registration of OS releases planned for testing. Release entity can have child entity “Cycle” indicating testing cycle.
Requirements management – module of requirements creation. Each requirement typically corresponds to one “requirement” entity. One entity can have several sub-entities, and there also can be several types of entities.
Test plan – module of testing plans development. You can generate a testing hierarchy compatible with a requirements hierarchy. A detailed description along with the expected system state can be included in test cases.
Test lab – module used for combining tests in sequences and setting conditions for test launch. Depending upon the success of previous tests, you can schedule tests to launch or do it manually.
Defects management – applying the module, you can track the system of defects, and it is integrated with other modules; thus, you can register the defect in requirements, in test plan or in test lab modules.

Considering the above, we can make the following conclusions:

JIRA Zephyr is the preferred option for those who already use JIRA, as these systems are fully integrated. The advantage of this system is a convenient means of visualizing and collecting metrics and a relatively low price compared to similar products.

MTM is a very powerful tool, especially combined with Team Foundation Server. It has a number of unique features, allowing users to automate system tests, and conduct exploratory testing with simultaneous search of defects and the creation of test cases.

HP Quality Center is a professional product for control of test documentation. Its main advantage is a separate unit for monitoring requirements. It allows users to visualize and make transparent the coverage of requirements test cases; and easily manage the requirements for large and complex systems; however, the cost of the product is high.

Chances are you have not heard of Social Payment Media (SPM), and for good reason. This is a new term. But the trend behind the term – the integration of social media and payment systems – is growing.

Facebook recently announced the development of its own payment system. The company is close to obtaining approval from the Central Bank of Ireland to start a service that would allow users to store money on Facebook and use it to pay and exchange with others, including mobile payments.

Apple is getting close to releasing mobile payment services as well, illustrating the trend: the divide between payment systems and social messengers is fading fast.

Why is this happening?

With the onset of mobile digital communications, people’s behavior has changed dramatically. Data transmission time has reduced, making it easier to organize and monitor business and personal activities. The interaction between people has reached a new level. At first, the mobile message traffic share did not exceed 30 percent of the total communication services’ scope, but with continuous technology developments, the mobile Internet is flourishing. Even popular online business domains strive to mobilize their businesses: E-Commerce => M-Commerce.

The uprising of e-trade has led to a considerable boost of payment services from pioneering online payment systems, such as PayPal and Authorize.net. As a result, today, everyone can get what they need without leaving home; the “pay and be paid online” principle has been established. For example, anyone with a bank account (credit or debit card) can create an eWallet account and pay online for goods and services, using both cash and its electronic equivalent. Furthermore, often the exchange of e-money is more profitable due to partnership programs run by different payment systems.

Simultaneously, highly interactive social media platforms have launched. Social media seriously change the way people communicate in the modern world. It’s no wonder this medium is becoming more and more dependent on mobile technology, and deeply connected to instant messaging tools.

As is the case with social networks, popular instant-messenger offerings like WhatsApp and Viber are becoming an essential part of our smartphone or tablet desktop. The use of push-notification technology has given new life to the development of mobile messengers. As a rule, they are very simple but have comprehensive functionality; they transfer different types of images and videos, and even geo-location parameters. The only thing missing is mobile payments. To place this last piece in the puzzle, we must connect the link between social media, instant messengers and payment systems. In doing so, we get the fastest and safest method to transfer money, providing that mobile apps testing has verified there are no security breaches.

What does the future hold for social payment media?

I foresee the near future will bring a merging of mobile messenger-identification passwords and electronic wallet IDs. Not only will this allow data transfer, but it will significantly assist in quickly and easily transferring money and e-payments. This will expand the functionality and turn the messaging channel into a cash transaction pipe. Thus, e-Wallet could be linked directly to a mobile phone number (not a nickname, username and password), which makes the overall system much more safe and efficient. SPM is a completely new domain – an alliance of payment systems, social messengers and networks – with a bright future.

Previously we have covered all necessary things that are to be tested and checked, but there must be something to be skipped in software testing. Of course, there are a few things.

What can be skipped

There is no need to check basic columns, content types in Site collections; columns and content types in the libraries, they are usually different from those in the gallery and get changed regardless of the columns. You can also skip testing those lists, libraries, standard page templates that won`t be used in your application. System pages can be seen only administrators, so there is no need to check them. The same with the standard web parts, especially when they don`t fit standard application page.

In the process of web application testing, you can get puzzled, it can be difficult to identify page as standard or updated. In fact, it is easy to find it out: create a standard SharePoint site collection and compare the columns. Usually, every application is developed on the basis of standard site collections. If the application doesn`t need the standard fields then they are usually hided from users.

Program restrictions of SharePoint platform

SharePoint has lots of restrictions that are either static or custom. Static ones are those that cannot be exceeded structurally; custom are those that can be exceeded due to certain requirements. Being aware of these restrictions you can avoid registering defects aka “SharePoint defect”.

When you work with lists and libraries, remember that the 250 MB is a maximum file size for lists and libraries, still it can be expanded to 2 Gb. Another valuable option of a user interface is that you can choose 100 elements simultaneously and open 10 documents in different file formats in the same time. Working with page mind that one page can include 25 web parts.

As for the security restrictions, SharePoint has the option of including users and Active directory groups in one SharePoint group. Each group is limited by 5000 members and each user can member in 5000 groups.

There are also some restrictions for Excel, for example, maximum available size for a book is 10 Mb. And one more thing about SharePoint – Datasheet view is available only in Internet Explorer as it needs Active X.

In the end, I would like to say, there would be lots of things that were not touched here, when you`ll be working with SharePoint. Still the covered points will help you to understand the specifics of SharePoint applications’ testing.

Typically, testing needs proper documentation explaining where, what and how to test. If testing of standard software needs checklists or test scenarios, OSS/BSS testing definitely requires a testing model.

What is a testing model?

It is a set of all possible scenarios connected with business requirements and stored in test-tracking systems. In the testing model test, scenarios are usually described best of all. They include all the necessary scripts, links to the documents and requirements.

Naturally, testing won’t go through absolutely all tests every time; it will only go through those that are required for that particular stage.

What provides such a detailed testing model?

First, requirements get changed when new functionality is implemented. Specific requirements and test cases allow organizations to easily define what they need to test in the near term and what to leave for the regression. Beginning this process with this step makes it less likely to miss a defect and significantly saves time needed to prepare for the test.

Second, the test cases can be used to train new engineers who need to support the billing system. Executing test cases with good content extends their knowledge of the system and its business processes.

Third, during the testing process, the cases described in detail can be performed not only by test engineers, but also by CSRs. When simultaneously developing OSS/BSS and executing test cases, it also aids in saving time and budget.

No matter how good the system is documented, organizations will benefit even more from knowledge and documentation of testing model implementations. Stay tuned: I’ll discuss what tools are most effective in my next article.

In the previous post we have learned what SharePoint is, how it can be used and started to talk about the components that need to go through web application testing.

So, you are to test:

Name, description, group. It is good when the updated content is included in the group;
The Columns included in the content define what metadata can be included in the content and what the content goal is. Check that all the columns are the descendants of the standard content type, to avoid problems when the content is updated;
Check automatic workflows, if they are included in your project.

Remember to check the settings of Libraries and Lists that will be used in the application to store documents and information (included in web-parts). The following items should be checked:

Navigation settings: check that the library or the list is visible in the website navigation;
Versioning settings: define whether the added documents get moderated, documents are edited, draft copies are created and, in the end, who can view all that. The check-out setting can be included here to avoid simultaneous documents editing;
Advanced settings: define whether the documents of the library are included in the search results. Advanced settings are also in charge of creating new folders in the libraries, documents opening, new document templates recognition;
Audience targeting settings: the option allows to use targeting for library documents;
Permissions for this document library: you can control it only if the library rights or the document should be unique. Otherwise, when a user gets rights to the website s/he gets the rights to the library as well;
Content types: check whether all the necessary types of the content added and which of them is set as a default;
Check also the Views of the list and library content, just in case the application views them in an awkward way.

Pay your special attention to the Versioning settings, Advanced settings and Audience targeting settings, as they control the circulation of documents, the search and the library views in the web-parts.

Verify that the page layouts and design have all the necessary controls and comply with the design. There also should be no problems with viewing the page in the full screen mode or editing layout. Check that everything is in the right area and functions well.

Test how the websites get created on the base of the Site templates. The settings are to be correct; all the lists and the libraries should be displayed.

Apart from that, check the settings of the Web parts. When you test the Web Parts use lots of test data and check the Web Parts with the documents created for different groups. After installing the application check that the necessary user groups have no problems with Permissions. Check them under different accounts with different rights. As long as the Search is often used check the availability of the fields and profiles.

Though the checklist is quite long and some items must be completed, there is also a list of points that can be skipped, keeping in mind the restrictions of the platform. This topic will be covered in the next post.

What is SharePoint?

In fact, it is a Content Management System combined with a well-developed Document Management System. The possibilities of document management in SharePoint are quite impressive and it manages these tasks perfectly, but using it as a content management system takes a lot of effort. SharePoint is often used for development of corporate intranet portals to ease the employees’ interaction.

This web-oriented platform applied for teamwork and document management was developed and launched by Microsoft. In fact, it`s a unified communication center and a universal data storage. The solution can be used for corporate web-portal to storage and public use of various documents and specialized applications.

Data in the SharePoint is organized in the form of lists (tasks, discussions and calendars) and documents` libraries. Functionality includes several web parts, which, in fact, are the control elements used to show the lists and edit them. These web parts are placed on the pages published on the portals; users can access them via browser. Giving more technical details about SharePoint, I can say that SharePoint is ASP.NET 2.0 application that uses IIS to show the web-pages and SQL Server to store the data.

What to test?

When starting web application testing, you should know all the specifics of SharePoint applications, as long as you are to test not only the functionality, but the platform also.

Site Columns and Site Column Gallery testing is obligatory and goes without saying. Site Column is an attribute managed by users. It can be a fragment of metadata in lists or content. The Columns are added to the websites or lists; you can also give link to them in different content types.

The check of these attributes helps to avoid potential defects in the application. If the project includes several site collections, each of them can use its own columns. In case like this you are to check all them separately. Remember to draw your attention to the column`s name, data type, a group where the column is situated and to its settings.

Apart from that, concentrate also on the Site Content Types, which is a set of parameters used several times. Content Types provide centralized management of metadata and documents behavior, elements and folders. Again, if the product you test uses its own content types, they are to be tested for every site collection.

Things that are to be checked and skipped will be touched upon in the next blog posts.

Network Computing provides IT community members with in-depth analysis on new and emerging infrastructure technologies, real-world advice on implementation and operations, and practical strategies for improving their skills and advancing careers. The journal is appreciated by IT professionals globally.

Cloud storage: pick the best option

The modern enterprise workplace includes an abundance of mobile devices and computers that generate a serious need for safe, accessible, and convenient storage and sharing of data. Cloud storage provides the flexibility of accessing files from anywhere in the world, with the benefit of knowing that important documents, images, videos, and other data and software are securely stored and available at all times.

Cloud storage is used both by IT professionals and simple users for saving all kinds of data and exchanging information. Large companies are experiencing a heavy increase in demand for this technology for internal documentation and nomenclature storage. While it is not difficult to check the price per gigabyte and the level of security each option offers, the trick is to find an optimal combination of these and other factors that are important to your business. It is ultimately up to IT manager to prioritize these criteria and communicate them to users.

To read full articles click here.

Popular American online IT magazine “Network computing” published a1qa engineer’s Pavel Andreev “Cloud storage: Pick the best option” article on May 14.

Setting up a test framework is no easy task when it comes to choosing the right approach. In the article below, we discuss the object-based design as the one helping to cut required resources and time.

Object-based design, or object-oriented design, is called for to validate object-based code, which includes testing of requirements, software design, code itself, and integration. This approach helps not only to create a simple-to-understand and easy-to-use hierarchical structure, but also assists in development of more flexible systems. Object-based design typically helps to get a higher level of abstraction that could increase understanding of the complexity and costs.

In addition to that, it significantly decreases the time of test development and support. So, in some way this could work, but how to cut both time and money spent? To explain this, we should mention other approaches widely adopted in QA outsourcing – the one based on behavior and the other based on keywords.

In the behavior-driven approach, testing is carried out based on how the system behaves, and together with other approaches to designing test frameworks, can give a more comprehensive overview of how system objects interact with each other and whether they meet user expectations. In the keyword-driven approach, testers simulate user actions too, but all of their activities revolve around certain keywords such as ‘closing a window’, ‘clicking the contact button’ and the like.

Object-oriented design can be opposed to behavior–based (or keyword-based) design, although it wouldn`t be correct. Just like with the behavior- and keyword-driven designs, you can use object-based design along with almost any other approach to test design too, for example, unit testing. For those testing professionals combining a few approaches, it could possible to get rid of negative effects thanks to the basic structure resulting from the application of object-based design, and the simplicity of keyword-driven testing.

Also, object-based design is in some way based on hierarchical patterns. Your test framework should use the class hierarchy to maximize the test coverage and to re-use tests or even test suites in subclasses. This approach is also the key to testing abstract classes. The hierarchical testing is based on the substitution principle, which means that an instance of a subclass can be used anywhere as an instance of its super-class. This is generally considered to be one of the main rules of object-oriented programming, so using this in a test framework can even encourage better object-oriented design.

One important notion to keep in mind is that the object-based approach isn’t always applicable. For example, if the tested system cannot be split apart into simpler objects and is purely functional, it’s better to consider another test design, as it is likely to serve better.

We’ll keep covering various testing methodologies, in particular, keyword-driven testing along with its advantages and drawbacks, so stay tuned.

The article is prepared by Yan Gabis

Want your business running 24/7? Probably the answer will be yes. So in terms of quality assurance you’ve been doing everything that depends on you: proper QA at development phase, acceptance testing and finally monitoring. Now you’ve got full circle QA, each process works on 100% and everything is seems to be ok… or not?

Let’s figure it out, what are your monitoring and what are your expectations? Usually you apply hardware monitoring or something equivalent to get sure that your server wouldn’t run out of free disk space or memory. But what can you expect from such approach? Probably that your product, as well as your business, is running. Will it be informative? Certainly not. The only information that could be gathered depending on hardware monitoring is hardware status, not your application status, so the full circle QA looks more like a Pac-man. Yet to avoid this, the best practices of QA outsourcing would tell you to look at the entire pyramid:

In terms of business it might seem ok to monitor only the top of application pyramid – business level. It could be implemented via slightly modified automated tests from development phase or other special tools that can interact at application level. With such monitoring approach you can be sure that the most critical part of your business is well functioning. But this will be never enough in fact. This is the only way to make sure that everything is good for now, but to prevent problems you should go deeper.

The main reason for that is feedback. The quicker is the feedback, the quicker would be reaction in case of emergency. Deeper in this case means faster, but sometimes less relevant. At business level if something goes wrong – it’s absolutely wrong. At application level if something goes wrong – it’s probably wrong, or will go wrong in near future.

If something goes wrong at hardware level it could be either absolutely wrong or not important, with “would go wrong somewhere in the future” between them. So if you want to be sure that your business is up and running – consider extending monitoring from one level of application pyramid to at least two of them, to have faster feedback along with high relevance of result.

The article is prepared by Yan Gabis

Julia Liber is head of Telecom and Web application testing department at a1qa . In this role, she manages the Internet applications and telecom systems testing team and provides consulting for wireless operators. She also assists with organizing the testing process and the acceptance phase for modification or new billing solution implementations.

Would you say testing in OSS/BSS is a trivial task? Definitely not

It usually takes at least a couple of days just to test functionality. While implementing a new system/subsystem or changing functionality, there are so many questions to be answered. Which product to choose for testing? Which tariff plan to choose for testing? What kind of charges to check, and what type of subscribers to use?

It is obviously impossible to cover all possible options and combinations during functional testing, so it is necessary to select the most important products and services.

At this point, the thought comes to mind to turn to the good old engineering approach of back-to-back testing, which is based on the law of large numbers. The point is simple: It is necessary to compare system behavior using the same data. Imagine that we have two environments:

Production — your live system serving subscribers
Testing — your environment intended for testing.

First, at a specific date/time, usually after a billing period has been completed, we transfer copies of user data (migration data) and the product catalog (configuration data) to the testing stand. At the end of the reporting period (month or week, depending on the timing of the invoice), a copy of the input data for each transaction (payments, charges, maintenance fees) is loaded into the testing environment.

First, the output data has being processed from both environments. Second, it is placed on a comparison server. Then, specially developed script checks if the number of transactions and the charges from both environments match. The matching and unmatched numbers, the results of this comparison, are the input data for testers.

What’s next? The testing team goes to work. Testers analyze the records based on any discrepancies between the two sets of results. The causes for the differences are identified, the records are grouped into causes, and we get the results in the following format:

Numerical discrepancies:

5 percent of records could not boot due to a functional defect 1
3.5 percent of records could not be loaded due to a functional defect 2
1 percent of records could not boot due to a functional defect 3
0.5 percent of records could not be loaded due to a functional defect 4

Discrepancies in the amount of write-offs:

7 percent of records are processed improperly because of a defect in the configuration No. 5
1 percent of records are processed improperly because of a defect in the configuration No. 5
0.5 percent of records processed improperly because of a defect in the configuration No. 5
0.1 percent of records processed improperly because of a defect in the configuration No. 5

What is the outcome of this approach?

It provides complete coverage of the product catalog, through the activities of real users. The system tests exactly what is used by subscribers;
It checks the quality of the configuration and system migration, as well as the most critical functionality for OSS/BSS parts: rating, billing and payments;
It helps clearly prioritize defects that are present in the system based on the needs of the business. Let’s say, it is more important to correct defect No. 1, compared to defects No. 3 or No. 4, since defect No. 1 does more damage to the business;
Because testing takes place on a large volume of data, this is a good way to test how well the new version of the system can withstand real-world loading.

Of course, there are limitations to this approach.

First, the data comparison is always dependent on what type of OSS/BSS you use. It will be necessary to develop a unique script for your system to compare and select data to analyze. Second, in the ideal case, the test environment must comply with the product environment. Otherwise, there is a risk that you won’t meet the deadline because the test environment processes transactions too slowly.

In previous articles we discussed, how to define the quality rate, evaluate testers` capacity and covered bug description method. All these things concerned tester`s work, but a tester is the one who detects a bug, while a developer fixes it. So this time I would like to cover some bits of a DEVELOPER`s niche on the QA consulting map. Taking bug statics as a basis, I want to tell about the indexes that reflect developer`s work efficiency.

First one is about defect lifecycle continuity. The index comprises “defect processing period”, “defect fixing period” and some other elements.

When running these metrics pay special attention to the fact how long it took to fix the defect and which step was most intense. Remember to track the index changes and put them in to the diagram, like this one, for example.

Defect lifecycle

The method of data collection resembles the one I described in the first article of QA metrics for managers, when told about defects having status “functions as designed”.

When you start calculating, you`ll see that index increases due to the defect lifecycle longevity. Considerable can be observed on stages like processing, assigning and queuing.

The other one index is the percentage of Rejected bugs. Defect is considered to be rejected, when a tester gives it status of a non-fixed one after checking. That means that a cycle has to be renewed: report to a developer, re-fix, re-check. The time is actually wasted for additional communication. On large scale projects such things cause additional expenditures, which is quite tangible.

Having exercised multiple projects, I noticed that 10% is an acceptable value for the index; try to keep to that limit. It is better to calculate the index after every release, especially on a large scale project, when more than two builds is released per week.

Remember to add the index in every report, to keep the tester and developer teams informed. Doing this you stimulate the team members to bring down the index percentage and define the positive work dynamics.

Full-cycle testing services

Engagement models

Quality engineering

Complete test coverage

Systems & platforms

The compatibility matrix

1. Stopping surprises before launch

2. Reducing operational firefighting

3. Safeguarding brand reputation

4. Protecting revenue streams

5. Speeding up delivery

6. Securing market expansion

Conclusion

1. Switch the focus by 180 degrees

2. Make Gen AI the next chapter in ERP reliability

3. Reinforce automated efforts through next-gen approaches

4. Maintain sharp security strategies to lower potential liabilities

5. Uplift quality through a perfect duo of Agile and QA

6. Attain a new equilibrium of power by supplementing data with AI

7. Integrate Gen AI into your testing strategy for maximized efficiency

Before the move

Preventing surprises with a risk-first strategy

Defining what success looks like

Building the engine for speed and safety

Planning for new cloud-native challenges

During the move: the command center in action

Protecting the crown jewels: automated data checks

Automated functional scans

Functional and integration testing

Security and compliance checks

Migration rehearsals and resilience testing

After the move: from stable to optimized

Post-migration validation (automated smoke testing)

Performance and load testing (simulated peak load)

Conclusion: your playbook for success

Current trends in software testing for media and entertainment

Challenges in software testing for media and entertainment

Best practices and solutions

Building loyalty through quality

5 clear signals your team is ready for test automation

#1 Your time-to-market is s-l-o-w-i-n-g down

#2 Critical defects are reaching production

#3 Your QA team is trapped in a regression rut

#4 Your test coverage is dangerously inadequate

#5 Your DevOps pipeline is hitting a wall

The risk of inaction

Conclusion: from bottleneck to engine

What changes when AI enters the stack?

Five steps to test AI in eLearning

Conclusion

Reason #1. Optimized performance

Reason #2. Improved scalability

Reason #3. Minimized cost of failure

Reason #4. Eliminated downtime

Reason #5. Enhanced end-user satisfaction

Reason #6. Accelerated releases without quality compromise

Reason #7. Streamlined resource utilization

Summarizing

What is output-based engagement?

Advantages of this model

Cost predictability

Efficiency incentive

Scalability

Risk transfer

Transparency and accountability

Simplified contract management

Challenges worth addressing early

Quantity replacing quality

Accurate pricing

Scope fluidity

Who benefits most from output-based contracts?

Enterprises with strict compliance or audit needs

Organisations managing large, stable systems

Businesses that need budget predictability

Leaders driving efficiency gains

Global programmes seeking consistent execution

Conclusion

Analyzing the pressure of present-day game testing

Revolutionizing game testing with an intelligent approach

Why level up game quality assurance with AI?