QA as a Service — Vetted Experts Available on Demand

When it is applicable

The product has a QA team or regression test suite and want to speed-up regression testing phase.

Required input

Testing environment, project coordinator, access to regression test suite, bug-tracking system (optional).

QA service output

Executed regression test suite, test execution report, found defect reports.

Service flow

• Investigate testing environment and accessibility
• Check quality and readiness of regression testing documentation
• Adaptation of test-cases for QA service participants
• Define terms and number of service participants
• Setup intermediate tools for QA service execution
• Post intermediate results during service run

When it is applicable

• You need to clean-up all possible defects and inconsistencies within tight schedule to launch the product to market for the first time.
• You need to clean-up all possible defects and inconsistencies without testing documentation to release the new product version to production.
• You have a QA team but need fresh independent feedback on product quality and usability.

Required input

Testing environment, project coordinator, functional documentation (SRS, user stories) or other project business documentation (user guidelines).

QA service output

Testing checklist for further regression/smoke testing (if required), found defect reports, usability feedback.

Service flow

• Get access to product and development environment
• Investigate project requirements documentation
• Integrate into communication with development team
• Build testing check-list
• Perform testing according to defined test plan
• Highlight observations to the team
• Prepare final QA service execution report

When it is applicable

• The product development is on initiation stage. You need to build proper, effective and well-defined QA processes and roll them out to the team.
• There is ongoing product development with shallow or nonexistent QA process. You need to create robust testing process inline with existing development model to reduce time to market and ensure predictable high quality.

Required input

Communication with product leadership, information about the development process, infrastructure, brief product architecture, development model, milestones, existing tools, goals, requirements and product growth plans.

QA service output

High-level testing documentation describing all aspects of the testing process and its phases (test strategy and test plan), pre-selected and configured bug tracker, test management tool, document management system, established communication between QA team and other project functions (Development, Business Analysis, Project Management, User Experience, and others), automation testing infrastructure setup and automation testing framework design with integration into the CI/CD process.

Service flow

• Investigate the project development model
• Investigate infrastructure, architecture and existing technical stack
• Check product goals, milestones and roadmap
• Compose the draft QA process and map it to the existing development process
• Wrap up the QA process with high-level testing documentation
• Onboard the QA team and align them with a defined process
• Observe and tune the established process
• Conduct demo of the process and QA team work to the project leadership

When it is applicable

• Product quality is not acceptable or you need to increase it.
• You need to reduce time to market.
• Product leadership feels like QA processes could be improved but don’t have visibility how to improve them.
• You need feedback about the current QA processes efficiency and a list of suggested improvements.

Required input

Contact point with QA team, access to all existing QA documentation and artifacts, access to testing tools (bug-tracking system, test management tool, document management system), description of software development model specific and QA processes, release management information.

QA service output

QA process evaluation report, a list of suggested improvements.

When it is applicable

• Existing QA team has a lot of manual test cases and want to speed up regression testing.
• You need to automate post-release testing to get quick report about critical functionality status after release.
• You need to set up automation testing team and proper initial architecture of the automation testing framework, infrastructure and process.

Required input

Automated manual test suite, product environment access granted; requirements for automation tech stack, access and information about the current CI/CD infrastructure and CVS.

QA service output

Automation testing framework, automated test suite, configured CI/CD pipelines for automated execution, installed and configured automation test execution reporting system, integration of automated tests with existing team management system.

Service flow