What’s it like to start partnering with a software testing company? Why is it so important to partner in order to move forward and grow? All you need to know is here. 

One of the best advantages that companies experience when having a quality partner in software testing is the ability to scale up and down the test team, according to your needs. 

We already know that the software quality and the focus on customer experience are the master keys for IT companies’ growth looking to innovate in the current market. In a context of increasing competition, with complex systems and more demanding customers, the standards are higher and higher. 

Software testing is becoming more and more crucial every day for corporate sustainability and scalability. Every day, every second.  

According to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. Hobo disclosed that slow load times would be one of the main reasons visitors abandon checkout processes. But these are not just numbers. All this data has a major impact not only on the scalability of companies but also on their very permanence in the market.  

Just to illustrate this, let’s look at the following data. According to a CISQ publication, the cost of poor quality software in 2020 was $2.08 trillion (T) in the United States. 

“The cost of finding and fixing bugs or errors is the largest single expense element in the software lifecycle. Large systems have much higher defect potentials that are more difficult to remove than small systems due to size and complexity. The earliest you find the defects in the development’s lifecycle, the cheapest the overall delivery will be”, outlined the CISQ report.

So why not leave testing to solid, well-trained teams to focus on the company’s core challenges?

Partnering with a software testing company can help you bridge the gap between testing and development, giving developers faster feedback, while also reducing costs and business risks. And all this into a continuous feedback culture, which is key to success.

Undoubtedly, strengthening ties with a quality partner specialized in software testing lets companies increase the capacity of their teams by hiring specialized talented professionals from other companies, with proven success in software testing. Professionals with new ways of doing things that could greatly benefit your global and specific objectives.

Not only is there flexibility with the ease of adding or subtracting team members, but also, companies can draw from the knowledge and various skillsets among the new people.

Of course, a mutual adaptation time will be necessary. That is why it is very important to establish close ties and processes at every step from the very beginning: from communication methods to operational work. 

So not to hurry up and take time to choose who to work with should be at the top of your priorities. While we believe it’s important to deliver software quickly without rushing it out the door, it’s also important to find the right software testing company for you to ensure long-term success.

Getting started

At Abstracta, we work daily with a handful of our clients, making sure that their needs are met and that our engineers are working well with them, being aligned as far as processes, communication, objectives, and so on. 

We also meet with companies that are looking into finding a partner for testing. Many times, they ask about what a relationship between us and them would look like and how we’d manage software testing.

There are two different scenarios when we start working with a new client. The first of which is when the client may have some testers already but is looking to fill a specific need. For example, they need help with creating an automation framework or running functional or performance tests. 

In this case, we’ll start by getting everything set up and running, integrating with their team and processes without losing any momentum. As the relationship grows, we make sure to take care of their specific needs while also providing an opportunity to identify other areas for future improvement.

The other scenario is in which the client is looking for more end-to-end testing solutions. They want to learn how to prioritize what to test and how. What tools to utilize. Good practices and methodologies, and what kind of roles they should bring into the team. We love this kind of opportunity because we are passionate about spreading our knowledge to help organizations create high-quality, reliable software, in the best way!

So, how do we help these types of clients? First, we want to understand their business context, what resources they currently have, what they want to achieve, etc. 

After getting a good understanding of the client’s goals and context, we carry out an initial assessment, with the goal of further understanding the inner workings of their technical activities and processes.

The initial assessment is based on our testing maturity model and methodology. The model is based on the experience we’ve obtained after almost 14 years of working for various startups to Fortune 500 companies like CA Technologies, Shutterfly, and Verifone. 

It takes into account the best practices championed by industry leaders, synthesizing them with our own, to create a methodology that determinates the proper actions that will bring about the best benefits for teams in the shortest time possible.

More specifically, it helps us have a notion of the level of maturity the team is at, and to determine what steps to follow in the pursuit of a continuous testing and continuous integration environment.

There are several quality engineering software areas and activities that can be carried out, that will help any organization to reach an efficient agile testing and CI scheme.

Our analysis focuses on reviewing the current status of these key areas:

• The source code.
• Environment and infrastructure.
• Bugs and incident management.
• Test management.
• Functional testing.
• Automated checks.
• Performance testing.
• Security testing.
• Usability testing.

After getting a sense of the client’s management in these areas, we build an action plan to outline a testing strategy with all of the necessary activities, from the highest priority to the least, and the types of tests to be carried out.

                                             This graphic shows this whole initial process 

According to the action plan, and the particular project, some of the aims of testing may include:

✔️ Finding potential problems with the system and its use. This can encompass programming errors; misunderstanding of the business logic; requirements according to specification documents or user expectations; and problems with the configuration or environment set-up, in any environment where testing is involved, such as testing, staging, and production.

✔️Starting testing activities as early as possible, reducing the probability of finding errors during systems integration, making them easier and less costly to solve.

✔️Detecting usability problems according to modern heuristics and verifying that the user interface is easy to use.

✔️Verifying response times and resource consumption according to the requirements and user expectations.

✔️Controlling security aspects of an application, and looking for potential vulnerabilities before they get exploited.

These objectives help to shift to a continuous feedback culture, where the information about all quality aspects is accessible in time and with confidence for any team member. For us, this is where the magic happens; when DevOps, Agile, CI/CD, and testing come together!

The next step we take is to assign a technical leader to be the main point of contact with the client and centralize communications. The technical leader will then assign a team based on the defined plan and put the strategy into place. 

The types of tests to be carried out and technical complexity are taken into consideration to assign the most adequate resources to ensure successful delivery. If priorities change or new needs arise, the technical leader will adjust the assigned team accordingly.

Choose a software testing company. Make it a Success

Choosing the right software testing partner for you could be not so easy. If you are just starting to look for a software testing provider and want to make sure you make the right choice, we recommend having more than one discussion with the companies you are evaluating. 

Make sure they share your vision, culture, preferred management style, and so on! 

Have any questions about partnering with a software testing company? Check this other blog!

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