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Every member of the product team in a B2C tech-first company knows how important it is to deliver quality to their customers.
That’s because, in a world as technologically advanced as this one, your customers expect only the best user experience.
A glitchy e-commerce site, social media app or productivity platform just isn’t going to cut it.
Quality matters.
That’s why having a well-developed, wide-reaching QA strategy is of the utmost importance. If you want to beat your competitors and survive in a saturated technological market, you need to be delivering quality every single time - and fast.
*Cue inevitable stress*
But, listen, quality at speed isn’t impossible to achieve. It can be done, and many companies do it well. You just need to make sure you have the right tools in place to enable quality to happen. Enter on-demand QA.
Right, so what is on-demand QA?
We’re very glad you asked.
On-demand QA is software testing, only faster. On-demand QA fits perfectly into your SDLC, meaning you can code, develop and test in perfect harmony. Companies offering this service enable users to have access to both automated testing tools and crowdtesting. This can act as a welcome addition to your current QA team, increasing your testing capacity and test coverage, and giving you the test results you need - fast.
What are the benefits of on-demand QA?
Speed
The main benefit of on-demand QA is speed. With so much pressure to release quickly and keep up with lightning pace SDLCs, on-demand QA helps you release quality products at speed.
On-demand QA is all about instantaneous access to QA services.
This means you wouldn’t have to let the weekend slow down your release cycle. You can send off exploratory tests at 5pm on Friday and have the results ready to work on Monday morning. Partnering with an on-demand QA solution can help you achieve this.
At Global App Testing, we have 40,000 testers in 105 countries, meaning that if you need manual testing conducted at speed globally - we can provide that for you. On-demand QA intends to break down the barriers that may slow you down.
Alternatively, you can use our platform, ADA, and receive test case results in as a little as two hours. Your developers and engineers can work on fixes on the same day as testing. Now that’s fast.
This means that you have QA at hand when you need it the most. No more scrambling to outsource, purchase new tools or find testers - everything is at your fingertips.
If you need testing, fast, to ensure your release cycle doesn’t slow down, your on-demand QA is there. If you decide you want to run a set of exploratory tests on a new feature, your on-demand QA is there.
This means that on-demand QA can be an invaluable tool in your testing toolkit, because it can deliver results at speed.
Cost
Bugs are like parking tickets - expensive mistakes, and pretty irritating too.
In fact, they are more expensive than you might think. In 2018, poor quality software cost organisations $2.8 trillion in the US alone (CISQ). That’s a really worrying statistic.
So what makes bugs so expensive?
It’s all about when you find them.
American software engineer Capers Jones found that 85% of bugs are introduced in the design and build phases of development. At this stage, they are relatively cheap to fix - around $25.
But if the bugs make it past this stage, things get a little more complicated... And pricey. In fact, according to Jones, a bug found post-release could cost $16,000 to release.
Source: Capers Jones, Applied Software Management.
So where does on-demand QA come in?
In the trade-off of speed versus quality, speed often wins out. But this can have costly consequences. If you are rushing to release software that hasn’t been thoroughly tested early on, you could be faced with expensive fixes down the line.
Our motto is: test early, test often, and that’s what on-demand QA can offer.
With on-demand QA at your fingertips, you have the resource to test early and often in your delivery cycle. With Global App Testing, you can run exploratory tests at the early development stages in countries across the globe, with fast results. Our platform seamlessly integrates into your existing DevOps workflow, so that you can run tests at any stage of the life cycle, and as early on as you like.
This means catching bugs early on before they turn into bigger, more expensive problems. On-demand QA saves you cost as well as time.
Productivity
Every team wants to be as productive as it possibly can be. Especially in today’s world, where teams are working remotely, ensuring your team can work at maximum capacity is essential.
But there has been, in the past, a view that QA processes can impact productivity, slowing down the release process and taking up engineering teams’ precious time.
In fact, on-demand QA can significantly improve productivity, and prevent quality from becoming a bottleneck. That’s because on-demand QA provides instant access to testing services, as well as the opportunity for testing to be integrated seamlessly into your existing SDLC.
At Global App Testing, for example, our detailed bug reports can be automatically integrated into your test platform, working with internal tools like Jira so that your QA is streamlined into existing workflows.
Moreover, anyone in your team can set up semi-automated tests on our platform. You don’t need to be an experienced test engineer or QA internal hire to use our testing platform. No technical QA knowledge is required. Just tell us what you want testing, and we will test it. This means developers can keep on coding without QA becoming a bottleneck, and your team can keep attending to their daily tasks without being derailed.
On-demand QA keeps your team’s productivity in check by becoming a fully integrated part of your DevOps workflow. Your team can work at full capacity, without slowing down. It’s all about focusing your efforts on keeping things moving at speed.
Quality
You don’t want to take risks when it comes to quality. The consequences for your business can be massive.
A buggy app just won’t cut it in a world full of competitive tech products. Your customers will simply close your app and head somewhere else. There’s plenty of other apps out there!
Quality makes you stand out from the crowd - but how does on-demand QA help you achieve it?
By enabling you to find high impact bugs before your users do.
At Global App Testing, we offer a full range of on-demand testing services, from functional testing to test automation. By using a blend of automated testing and crowdtesting, we provide wide test coverage so you can catch critical bugs that could impact your users.
It’s all about helping you deliver the best possible quality app for your customers, and doing so at speed.
What do the experts say?
Don’t just take our word for it. We decided to ask tech experts who use on-demand QA the benefits they believe it has. Here’s what they said:
“On-demand QA can be beneficial when you are under tight deadlines and want to get an objective view of the quality of your product. In my work as a UX specialist, I rely a lot on external feedback (e.g. usability testing, and heuristic reviews). Having the possibility to do on-demand QA when time is short can be key to deliver the value that customers and users expect.”
- Andreas Johansson, UX Specialist at Andreas Johansson UX
“We use on-demand QA to rapidly test new features of our marketing automation tools. The benefit is we can scale up or down quickly based on the volume and complexity of features we release. On-demand QA saves money because we don't need to retain a full-time QA person, but instead can ramp up and align QA efforts precisely with weekly or bi-weekly app releases.”
- Dave Riggs, Founder at User Acquisition
“There are various advantages to on-demand QA, as it is cost-effective, managed services, reduced time to reach the market, transparency, expertise, etc. The time taken to test and deliver it in the market is far less in this type of testing when compared to the traditional tests. The sharing of test results in regular intervals and on an online platform increases the transparency, which helps in making changes easily. You can ask for the latest and best testing tools with great records of accomplishment to enhance the testing quality of your product.”
- Kenny Trinh, CTO at Netbooknews
Conclusion
In the fast-paced world of software development, no one wants to get left behind. You need a QA solution that can keep pace with your development teams, providing QA testing - fast.
That’s why on-demand QA is hugely beneficial, and experts agree it can improve:
- Speed
- Cost
- Productivity
- Quality
Want to discover more about on-demand QA? Click here to have a free consultation with one of our growth experts today to discover how on-demand QA can help you.