Outsourcing the testing of your website or app can seem a big step. Here are some of the queries that frequently arise in our initial discussions with prospective users of our services.
Any advantage to third-party testing?
Is there any advantage to engaging a third-party testing company when developers or an agency already undertake testing?
Remember that your development team or internal reviewers may make assumptions about how your site/app should work; they are close to the project and would be, in effect, marking their own homework. In contrast, our testers bring a fresh eye.
In addition, our testers can test across the whole breadth of a site or app, not just the latest functionality, as your development team might. When undertaking exploratory testing, we also encourage a ‘free-range’ approach that replicates the way your target users will behave in the real world – they don’t stick to the script! This helps our testers to expose issues that your development team may not identify, however hard they try.
As well as avoiding bias or ‘browser blindness’, due to over familiarity with the domain/software, it is easier for an external, independent team of professionals to challenge the status quo if development output or quality is poor. Our testers are immune from internal politics and peer pressure.
Our system is unique
Our system is unique; testing it would require too much domain knowledge.
The test scripts that control quality in terms of test management are fundamental here. Through our approach to test case writing, we are able to reduce the complexity involved in testing a domain, while also improving the thoroughness of coverage and accuracy in checking specific critical journeys, such as the checkout.
The way we write our test cases is so granular that anyone can read and easily execute them, including our testers. Every step of the testing journey is clearly defined.
Consider, too, the heightened risk you incur in relying on one or two key individuals within your team. If they find a new job, are off sick or take leave, this single point of failure puts you in a vulnerable position: no one can execute the test cases and no one knows what has already been tested.
We have one rigorous QA pass – surely that’s enough?
Cutting corners on testing is false economy. The more issues you unearth before the go-live, the quicker and easier it is to fix them.
According to an IBM report, fixing an issue during the design stage is approximately six times cheaper than during the implementation stage. And the costs just keep on escalating the later in the software development life-cycle that an issue is found.
Outsourcing our testing feels like overkill.
It sounds like lots of noise will come through, such as duplicates and insignificant cosmetic issues.
At Digivante, we won’t just log defects and pass them back to you in an unstructured heap. We closely manage our testing community, vetting their work for accuracy and integrity and ensuring their feedback is actionable.
We separate out minor deficiencies from those that could compromise the user experience; so, for example, defects are classified as ‘critical’, ‘conversion’ or ‘customer experience’, helping you to prioritise where your fix and development budget should go.
When one of our testers identifies a defect, they also create a short video to demonstrate the defect. This enables quick identification by development teams – there’s no need to replicate the defect – and clarifies how the issue impacts the user’s journey. This shows the importance of the UX heuristic principles that are set out in our usability testing.
We have limited resource.
Won’t your feedback give us too much work?
Once again, we’re here to make your life simpler, not more complicated! Our reports let you target areas for remediation, so you can start working on your priorities asap. They also contain clear steps to reproduce the defect, with screenshots and recordings, and a list of platforms where the defect is having a negative impact.
This is one reason why so many of our customers make testing by Digivante an integral part of their development process, regularly passing new functionality and features by us.
If your resources are limited, you may not have direct access to a test platform or other testing management software. You may not have integration with Jira, a powerful work management tool that adds value in managing defects with an external development agency, as opposed to a list in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
These are just some examples of the testing and workflow management resources you can draw on by working with Digivante, reducing your workload, releasing time and avoiding the need for upfront capital investment.
Delivery deadline is crucial
App and website quality and stability are important, of course, but so is meeting the delivery deadline. How do we know that involving your testers won’t mess with our timescales?
Being able to draw on professional testers in 149 countries who collectively work round the clock, including at weekends, gives you access to a flexible resource that can be deployed in an agile manner. We can deploy 200 testers per test, delivering 90 days of testing in just four days.
This frees your internal resources to focus more time on other areas of the business, such as back-end systems. You gain in agility: you can scale testing at short notice when there is a major release and quickly scale back again post-release, rather than committing to paying for internal resource at a fixed cost.
We also understand that, with the best will in the world, your development timeline might slip and, therefore, we can adjust our testing schedule accordingly. In short, we can help you balance rigorously testing your code with meeting commercial imperatives.
