End-to-End Agile Testing: The Key to Faster Time to Market

Have you ever had your software project ran out of time or budget? You possibly did.

Believe it or not, improper planning isn’t often the root cause of a software development running out of time. Sometimes, the real issue lies in the way you validate the code.

Let us proceed with a story of our client you can relate to. The client is providing industry leading recreational safety courses. They were developing the most comprehensive online product for safety courses. They had an in-house development team responsible for all development and testing. Though great effort and a lot of time being given by their in-house team for each release, the released product isn’t benchmarked, not having the quality as expected and also there is a frequent slippage in release date.

They underestimated the power of testing regularly with each code increments. This leads to delayed releases or worse, releases with bugs, which the customers discover later. The costs that stem from software quality defects made a huge dent in their financial as well as social health.

Reduce Time-To-Market with Early Testing

If a product has to deliver quickly without any bugs, it should be tested throughout its development process. They were also under the pressure to roll out frequent upgrades of their flagship products. While the in-house development team can help build the project, without the dedicated testing team, their releases were being delayed.

In the competitive environment where users are spoilt for choice, these issues could easily lead to their customers switching loyalties. They’ve decided to overcome these issues and started to search for the best application testing services in the market. Finally, they set off on their journey with us.

Clarion’s testing experts are experienced in automated web testing services & mobile application testing services and help clients to reduce defects & time to market.

Our solution is about to push testing towards the early phases of software development as described in agile methodologies. The main goal is not to detect any critical defects during the deployment phase, which required code patching. As such, there are no bugs in the project and increased code quality. To deliver them the right solution, we did a thorough analysis of the specialized nature of their product and then, went on to identify the challenges at hand.

Real Challenges

They had several challenges to overcome to accomplish these goals:

• They were working with legacy systems with large gaps in knowledge of the applications’ behavior
• Inability to respond to the market quickly
• The ineffective testing process, which was highly manual & time-consuming
• The application had over 15+ browser extensions and had to work across different operating systems such as Win XP, Windows, and Mac. So it had to be tested across a wide variety of platforms and also needed to display properly on computers, smartphones, and Tablets.

Our Testing solution

We’ve deployed a QE (Quality Engineering|) initiative with a structured approach that streamlined the QA process along with SDLC and reduced the number of defects to be fixed. The key highlights of our approach are:

• Designed a robust testing strategy that included Compatibility Testing across various OS and Browser combination
• Introduced test automation based on Selenium for wide adoption needed for continuous regression testing
• Onboarded automation testers to automate the critical functions, which reduced the regression cycle
• The dedicated manual testers documented the test cases and provided consistent feedback on the release quality
• Requirements Traceability Matrix to ensure the timely execution and completion of the project

Results

• Streamlined the testing process for all their courses and completed automation for courses across 50 states
• Actively monitored user experience through automation
• Increase the test coverage of all applications by 90% and reduced the regression testing time by over 70% through our automation initiatives. The automated regression suite saved 40 man-hours per release cycle
• All issues and enhancements to the product were listed systematically and tracked according to priority

Explore the test case scenarios for UX testing, here. 

With comprehensive testing strategies, we were detecting bugs even before the product reached production. We ensured that they had built a robust process for product testing to ensure that the final product would achieve consistent customer satisfaction. With the effective testing initiatives, they’ve reduced their development time, cost as well as associated stress for all stakeholders in business operations.

You can juggle many balls to keep your project release on budget and time, but should never compromise in quality by underestimating software testing. The costs of not testing software properly far outweigh the benefits of a fast yet defective software launch. Connect with us to learn more about Clarions QA and application testing services.