Portfolio
a1qa delivers QA support for a global fashion brand’s website
a1qa assisted the client in releasing a high-quality website while optimizing QA processes and QA budget.
Overview
The client is a high-street fashion brand headquartered in London that runs 300+ brick-and-mortar stores across the UK, Ireland, and internationally. They also have 6 dedicated online stores.
To rapidly release new features for their online stores, the retail player began searching for additional nearshore QA specialists with vast expertise in both functional testing and test automation. Thus, they selected a1qa.
Services offered
Functional testing
Mobile app testing
GUI testing
API testing
Microservices testing
Test automation
Project scope
As the client was constantly adding novel features to the online store and was transferring their eCommerce platform from monolithic to microservices-based architecture, the QA engineers were assigned to support the development of new modules during this migration. They assisted 2 client delivery teams and worked with:
- Server side of the website (API)
- Site-manager (used for configurations and settings of the main website)
- Client side of the website (UI)
- Mobile applications.
Delivery team 1 (API layer)
Once a new microservice was planned and designed, it went through development on an API level.
Before performing checks, a1qa’s software development engineers in test (SDET) delved deep into each feature, configured the environment, and applied the necessary settings harnessing the site-manager. After that, the team carried out the following testing activities:
- API testing
With the help of Swagger and Postman, the specialists created API scripts and checked that microservices operated as intended.
To pull up the necessary information from databases and form queries, the QA engineers leveraged DbVisualizer.
The modules of payment and discounts underwent high-level scrutiny and needed to use the site-manager to set extra attributes.
To speed up the delivery time and optimize regression testing, the team automated the vast majority of checks and adapted scripts to the client’s test automation framework.
Delivery team 2 (UI layer)
While the feature was being developed and tested on an API level, the team devoted to the UI of the online shop was designing and planning front-end components.
a1qa’s specialists executed:
- Functional testing
Thorough checks included 3 levels:
- Isolated service – verifying one microservice (e.g., user profile).
- Integration – ensuring that microservices interact flawlessly with each other (e.g., going from the user profile to the shopping cart).
- End-to-end – validating certain user flows (e.g., scenario from logging in to adding items to the shopping cart).
The team also had to deploy the software locally from the development branch and use a MockServer for test data manipulation.
- Mobile app testing
Before going live, QA engineers added checks for web and mobile versions of the IT product as well as native mobile apps (Android, iOS) in the regression testing scope to ensure full test coverage. They harnessed both real and virtual devices.
To accelerate testing time, the team carried out nightly tests. To check recently developed software build in terms of regression, QA specialists performed automated tests against many devices using emulators. Doing so helped guarantee the solution operated flawlessly regardless of end-user devices.
- GUI testing
Adhering to mock-ups designed in advance, the QA specialists compared the UI elements with the expected results.
What’s more, a1qa’s experts helped the client perform A/B testing. Based on the statistics gathered after the allotted response time, the client chose the most attractive and convenient design and deployed it to production.
- Test automation
For the automation, QA engineers selected those tests that need to be executed on various platforms and added them to the regular regression suite. Automated tests were developed with the help of the test automation framework based on JavaScript and WebdriverIO. Applying proper configuration settings allowed running automated tests simultaneously on different platforms and browsers.
Thus, the team assisted in accelerating time to market and freeing up QA efforts for the higher priority tasks.
Adjusting to the client infrastructure
Being flexible and having experience in working with experts distributed geographically, the a1qa specialists were able to join the client’s teams with ease while actively participating in all Scrum ceremonies.
While working on the project, the QA team faced a challenge: some tasks were too large to complete them within a sprint according to the definition of done, despite the team members’ best efforts. To address this issue, the specialists at a1qa proposed splitting these large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, effectively resolving the problem.
Today, the client continues cooperating with a1qa due to its proactiveness and complete adherence to the project needs and requirements.
Technologies & tools
- Java
- Cucumber
- JavaScript
- WebdriverIO
- Atlassian Jira/Confluence
- DbVisualizer
- BrowserStack
- Kobiton
- Qubit
Results
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Released fail-safe software while decreasing QA costs through top-tier operation of online shops.
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Ensured a pleasant CX due to high-performing websites with easy and intuitive product search and navigation.
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Optimized QA workflow and budget due to adopting test automation.
In numbers
2+
years of project duration
4
QA specialists engaged