{"id":18172,"date":"2025-12-16T20:47:44","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/?p=18172"},"modified":"2025-12-19T10:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:39:07","slug":"how-givebacks-reframed-quality-at-qsconf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/testing-strategy\/how-givebacks-reframed-quality-at-qsconf\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Had Zero Testers\u201d: How Givebacks Reframed Quality at QSConf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Inside Givebacks\u2019 journey from zero testers to a quality-first culture, shared at Quality Sense Conf in Uruguay by Alexa Altez from Abstracta and Matt Harrell from Givebacks.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Matt<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The post-lunch slot at Quality Sense Conf in Uruguay is not usually where one expects a confession. Yet that was exactly how Matt Harrell, co-founder of US-based K-12 platform Givebacks, chose to open a talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing on stage next to Alexa Altez from Abstracta, he admitted that for years the company had grown rapidly, handling millions of dollars in school payments, without a formal testing team<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had zero testers. We had no formal QA process,\u201d he told the room. Product owners did some checks, smoke tests ran before releases, and the business moved on.<\/strong> \u201cLooking back on it,\u201d he added, \u201cI really don\u2019t know how we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The session, part of the 2025 edition of Quality Sense Conf<\/a>, held on November 11th at the Radisson Hotel, in Montevideo, Uruguay<\/a>, quickly turned into a live case study<\/strong> of what happens when startup habits collide with high-stakes reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>From Small PTA Platform to Critical Infrastructure<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"From<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Givebacks started in 2008 to build best-in-class software to help nonprofits and volunteer-led organizations work smarter, and raise more money. In 2018, it was \u201cpretty much a membership management platform\u201d for Parent Teacher Associations, as Matt described. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That year, the company served around 1,000 PTAs (Parent Teacher Associations), processed roughly three million dollars in payment volume, and operated with two developers and one support representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2023, the picture had changed. <\/strong>Givebacks had evolved into an \u201call-in-one parent engagement and fundraising platform,\u201d used by around 11,000 school PTAs and moving about 80 million dollars through several products. The engineering team had grown to five developers, with product managers and a larger support crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What had not changed was the testing model. There were still no dedicated QA specialists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, Matt said, had \u201csubscribed to this \u2018move fast and break things\u2019\u201d philosophy. \u201cWe were moving fast and we were breaking a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>When \u201cBreak Things\u201d Becomes Risky<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"When<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The breaking point arrived in 2024 during the back-to-school season, the most sensitive period in Givebacks\u2019 yearly cycle<\/strong>. The team had reworked major modules, including membership functionality that local PTAs rely on to report data to their state organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had broken that,\u201d Matt told the QSConf audience. The result was a string of critical bugs affecting customers at the worst possible time<\/strong>. State-level partnerships, such as one with New York State PTA, were suddenly under pressure as schools struggled to obtain the information they needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur support ticket volume was skyrocketing up as well. We had frustrated customers, burned-out customer support agents, and tired product teams. Product owners were running around trying to figure out, \u201cWe have to fix this now, we have to fix that there.\u201d We had a disappointed executive team. Everyone was disappointed with some of these things that were happening\u201d, he remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brand perception, Matt recalled, started to sound like this: \u201cGivebacks is great, they have this great platform, we need to use it. They have some bugs, but they fix them.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just remember thinking so many times,\u201d he said on stage, \u201cis that what we want to be known for?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>The No-code Shortcut that Wasn\u2019t<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath, the leadership team agreed on one thing: \u201cWe need QA.\u201d <\/strong>The first concrete option that appeared was an AI-based, no-code automation platform offered by a local entrepreneur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pitch was familiar to many in the QSConf audience: automate hundreds of tests in a few months, \u201cship faster, ship better,\u201d and require only minimal time from internal staff. According to Matt, the vendor suggested they could automate around 600 tests in three months with \u201c15 minutes from one person on your team a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can imagine how that value proposition landed,\u201d he said, especially with the CEO. The idea that a tool could \u201ccheck that box and we\u2019ll have all our testing done\u201d was powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Givebacks agreed to a 15-day proof of concept. <\/strong>The vendor\u2019s software generated about 100 tests for the memberships module, a critical area they could not afford to break again. When both sides met to review the outcome, enthusiasm cooled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt described the result as \u201cuncertain.\u201d Some test cases were \u201cshallow,\u201d not covering full user journeys. Parts of the coverage overlapped, and \u201cthey just missed some critical user flows altogether.\u201d Engineers, he added, struggled with the opacity of the system: \u201cThere was little transparency in the code and engineering was just kind of confused\u2026 what did it do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told the room he could imagine this kind of tool working well on a simple app with \u201conly three or four user flows.\u201d On Givebacks\u2019 multi-module platform, which handles money for schools, the team concluded \u201cthis isn\u2019t going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>A Different Offer: \u201cWe Are Your Allies in Quality\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Around the same time, Givebacks was introduced to Abstracta, recommended by another company. The framing was different from the automation pitch.<\/strong> Abstracta presented itself as \u201cyour allies in quality\u201d and proposed starting with a maturity assessment instead of tools<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Matt, this was not a traditional slide-deck exercise. Abstracta\u2019s team joined sprint meetings, spoke with engineers and product owners, and \u201cwere immediately sort of embedding themselves into the organization and just observing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assessment surfaced a conclusion that shifted the internal conversation. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a QA problem,\u201d Matt said. \u201cWe really had a delivery problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company was missing release dates, shipping bugs during peak seasons, and struggling with silos. Automation alone was not going to solve that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of the assessment came a 90-day plan. <\/strong>Alexa, representing Abstracta on stage, described it as \u201ca plan that outlined every single thing that we were going to be doing for the following 90 days to start building this foundation,\u201d from selecting a test case management strategy to defining how critical test cases would be written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Incremental Changes: When Process Meets People<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Incremental<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The plan looked solid. Implementation was another story.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the early changes focused on how bugs were reported. Until then, defects were logged as comments inside the main user story in the tracking tool. Abstracta proposed a more structured approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe thing is people had worked for months or even years following that process,\u201d Alexa<\/strong> recalled. \u201cAnd suddenly some outsiders appeared to say, \u2018Oh, you need to change this<\/strong>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, she framed this as a classic trap in transformation projects: focusing on tools and best-practice checklists while underestimating the impact on people\u2019s habits and routines. \u201cWe focused so much on the tools, the good practices, what the book says, but we forgot about the people, instead of trying to collaborate with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resistance was not only about bug workflows, Givebacks also had to confront its internal assumptions about responsibility. <\/strong>\u201cQA is not solely responsible for bugs\u201d became a key message that, in Matt\u2019s words, required \u201ca mindset shift<\/strong>,\u201d from a blame culture to a quality culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite having cross-functional product pods, \u201cengineering, product and QA were not crossing, they were not mixing very well,\u201d he said. Blame circulated in familiar patterns: incomplete requirements, missing acceptance criteria, edge cases that slipped through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progress came through incremental changes:<\/strong> inviting the VP of Engineering into the channel where automated test runs were posted, asking functional testers to speak up in sprint reviews and grooming sessions, and involving founders directly in discussions about risk and expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Numbers, and a Refusal to Pretend the Story Is Over<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Numbers,<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After more than a year of collaboration, Givebacks can point to measurable changes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe now have over 2,000 test cases. We\u2019ve got some level of automation on about 90% and they have found literally over 500 defects caught before the release went out,\u201d Matt said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he chose not to present a tidy success story. \u201cI\u2019d love to sit here and say, \u2018We had bugs and then we partnered with Abstracta, and we don\u2019t have any more bugs,\u2019\u201d he told the audience. \u201cBut the reality is that even this back-to-school season we had several bugs that still made it to production.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those incidents led to \u201ca deep root cause analysis,\u201d prompted also by the CEO\u2019s blunt question about why, despite the investment, bugs remained. The analysis reinforced an idea Matt repeated several times: \u201cIt\u2019s not just a QA thing.\u201d Many causes live on the product and engineering side, and in how teams work together.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Giving Change a Place to Live<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Giving<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One Giveback’s structural response has been the creation of a change management, a structured approach to transitioning from a current state to a future state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt remembered his team sitting with so many needed changes, just wondering, \u201cWhere do we start? How do we do that?\u201d So, as Matt stated, they created this change management function \u201cbecause change management is about people. It\u2019s about shepherding people through all the changes\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on that internal effort, the company now maintains a backlog of changes related to quality and delivery.<\/strong> Items are ranked, and representatives from engineering, product, QA and delivery meet to discuss them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practice grew out of an internal Givebacks initiative. Abstracta\u2019s ongoing assessments and root cause analysis contributed insights that were translated into concrete, actionable backlog items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, all these things that we\u2019re learning and trying to change to be quality-focused and customer-centric are going through change management. We\u2019re talking with everyone involved:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is changing?
Why does this matter?
Who is impacted?
What is adoption going to be like? Is it going to be smooth? Is it going to be measurable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is very new. This management function in our organization has been huge to supplement what we\u2019re doing from a quality standpoint and to drive some of this change forward,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>Lessons for Leaders Listening in<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Lessons<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The session closed with several pieces of advice from Matt and Alexa,  aimed especially at business and product leaders who were attending the Quality Sense Conf.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexa, for her part, left the audience with three conclusions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Good practices, tools, and processes are insufficient if we don\u2019t consider the people who are going to get involved in them.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Change requires patience<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Collaboration must include everyone involved in the product, not just the traditional triad of product, development and QA.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Matt encouraged them to educate themselves on the latest quality trends<\/strong>, to \u201cbe able to talk the talk\u201d when trying to introduce quality practices in an existing organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Lessons<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    He also suggested preparing for pushback<\/strong>: \u201cAnticipate what your engineering lead is going to come back with. Anticipate what your product owners are going to have a problem with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On the metrics side, he shared a moment that simplified a complex dashboard discussion. One co-founder, Bobby, told the team he simply wanted to \u201cstop shipping regression bugs\u201d and listed three priorities. For Matt, that was a reminder to \u201ckeep it simple\u201d when framing ROI for quality initiatives<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/span>In a Nutshell<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The story Matt and Alexa brought to Quality Sense Conf was not about a magical tool or a perfect framework. It was about a company discovering sometimes the hard way, that scaling quality means changing how work is done, how responsibility is shared, and how uncomfortable conversations are handled, on and off stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    By 2025, Givebacks has become the leading giving and payments ecosystem for the K\u201312 market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/span>About Givebacks<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Givebacks<\/a> leads in philanthropic technology, helping schools, nonprofits, and brands integrate giving into daily life. Their platform enables fundraising for over 14,000 nonprofits, fostering a culture of giving while unlocking innovative ways to raise funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n