A new decade is upon us, and many QA teams will be taking a retrospective look at the past year, and beyond. Your testing approach might have lead to some big wins - maybe a new app delivered a great user experience or a new website launched bug-free and high quality. But, inevitably, you might have faced some setbacks in 2019, or, perhaps, you just think you could make your testing approach slicker.
Whatever your thoughts are on the year just past, the question on every testing professionals mind is:
"How can we supercharge our testing approach in 2020?" Every testing professional, 2020
Making sure your quality assurance techniques are streamlined, cost-effective, and delivering the best possible test coverage isn’t as difficult as you may think. So we have compiled 5 top tips to improve your QA testing strategy, so you can smash your 2020 targets.
5 Ways to Supercharge your Testing Approach
1) Test according to product maturity
As your product grows and changes, so should your testing approach. Let’s say your app was newly launched 6 months ago. Automated testing would not have been a priority at this point. Your team’s sole focus would have been to create a minimal viable product. Ad hoc testing would most likely have been used to unblock any critical quality issues and test core users flow, making sure that early adopters could use the app freely. But, as your app gains popularity you need to adjust your testing approach to make sure that it fits your new product maturity. Automation testing may become necessary in order for your product to scale. But, equally, your company might want to invest more in a range of testing techniques, like exploratory testing and localization testing to ensure that you have wider test coverage as your product scales.
Carefully adjusting your strategy as your product changes is a key way to supercharge your testing approach. You may find that your QA team have been stuck in old habits, and a change of pace, either by increasing or decreasing the range and number tests you are carrying out, could help you drive better-suited test results.
Find out more about testing according to product maturity here.
2) Track the right test metrics
Testing metrics help QA teams clearly define your testing goals and attach a quantifiable number to success (or failure). Because of this, they are a vital part of the QA process. Test metrics can provide the data to tell you how many critical bugs were caught by the team, how long the release cycle was and how many bugs were reported by users to the support team, but how do you know which metrics are most important to your company?
The answer is dependent on what type of organisation you are and your business goals. By making sure you are tracking the right test metrics, you won’t be missing out on valuable data that could inform your business decisions.
Find out our top five metrics we’ve helped our customers implement below. We recommend you take a look through and evaluate for your own needs.
3) Work with external partners to open up new markets
When Survey Monkey wanted to grow beyond its native market, CTO Selina Tobaccowala’s team had to rethink their entire QA strategy, right down to text boxes.
“English is short. On average, every other language takes one and a half times the length of the same thing as English” First Round
Her development team set about leaving 50% more space in text boxes to prevent truncation problems in other languages. But, it is not only the development stage of the software where adjustments need to be made to expand to other markets. Your QA process also needs to diversify and scale.
The market need for professional testing in real-world conditions can present an issue for companies looking to expand to global markets. Flying your in-house team out to each new locations with a suitcase full of devices is not cost or time-efficient. Pairing with an external partner, therefore, can open up a whole world of testing capabilities through crowdsourced testing.
Using an external partner with access to a crowd of testers across the world opens you up to whole new markets to test and launch to. This is a great way to supercharge your testing approach.
4) Use Automation Testing to Streamline Repetitive Tasks
Where possible: automate.
Automation saves time on repetitive testing of products that do not need frequent code changes and updates. You can reduce the margin for human error, and run hundreds or thousands of automated tests at once. This means that you can run tests overnight, 24/hours a day, saving your teams valuable time.
Automation could also save you money. Rather than budgeting for more in-house testers, by automating repetitive tests you can reduce overall cost. Test scripts are also reusable, so don’t necessarily need to keep writing test scripts.
Automation is not always the answer, however, as we mentioned in point 1. In some cases, you might need a crowd of testers to investigate an app through exploratory testing or require localization testing on real devices in real local environments to ensure your product works effectively abroad. The key to a great testing approach is knowing when to automate, and when to adopt a manual strategy.
5) Make sure your testing approach is scaleable
Once your product scales, your testing needs to scale with it. A tiny bug affecting just 1% of Google Maps users amounts to over 10 million people. That’s the size of Sweden or Portugal unable to use Google Maps. Those high stakes can’t be ignored, especially for tech-first organisations. That’s why scalability in your testing approach is extremely important.
You need to ensure your QA process is scaleable by incorporating a wide blend of testing types, from exploratory testing to localization testing to performance testing. Why not partner with an external company as mentioned in point 3, and use crowdsourced testers to expand your testing resources. You can get direct access to a crowd who can complete functional exploratory testing without hiring new employees. Investing in testing infrastructure is crucial.
By partnering with Global App Testing, QA teams can have access to 40,000 testers in 189 countries. That means there is huge opportunity for growth, as tests can be run in countries across the globe, 24/7/365. Global App Testing's in-house team then moderate test results in 48 hours or less, meaning QA teams can receive fast access to high quality bug reports. It's all about achieving quality at speed.
Conclusion
Giving your testing approach a huge boost this year doesn’t have to mean lots of extra work for you and your team.
From the experience we gained from working with top QA teams across the world, we have learnt that your team need to:
- Test according to product maturity
- Track the right test metrics
- Work with external partners to open up new markets
- Use Automation Testing to Streamline Repetitive Tasks
- Make sure your testing approach is scaleable
By following these 5 steps, you can supercharge your testing approach, and be ready to meet and surpass your 2020 targets. Let’s get going!