How to Create Efficient QA Team in Startup

by Emma Dallas | March 29, 2019 8:12 am

‘Effective QA team[1] in a startup? Really? Startups usually worry how not to fail during the first year. As for the high quality of the software, and the team that will control it – this can wait’,– if you are familiar with the work of a startup, that’s what you would think after you read the topic of this article. And to some extent, you will be right.

To launch a minimum viable product and fit into the planned budget is a traditional goal for a startup project[2]. We don’t mean it is bad but want to show one more way. This article holds a real case on how a startup managed to organize an effective workflow with the help of an independent QA team. But first, let’s answer the age-old question that every leader cares about.

When is it the right time to include QA to my project?

It is like to answer a girl’s question: “How do I look in this dress?”. Everyone has their own truth, and it is useless to answer as expected. I could say that quality assurance is not so important and can be equally effective at any stage of implementation. But I will not say just what you want to hear. The earlier you add independent QA team to your project, the more effective feedback you receive. That is the truth.

According to statistics, 32% of software projects worldwide fail because of the insufficient time allocated to testing. Who are that 68% and what did the do to succeed? One of them included independent QA to the project, and there is how things turned out.

How can startup deliver high-quality software by organizing QA process?

This is an example of how the QA process is organized at the development stage of the product. A startup that produces video optimization solutions applied to QATestLab[3] at the start of the project. Clients aims and business goals were:

• to develop the auto-preview video platform for web publishers;
• to release a ready product on a defined date;
• to enter the video preview market area with a high-quality software.

One more important issue that was revealed at the start of cooperation was the unsettled management at the project. There was no clear assignment of tasks and responsibilities among the members of the team. To handle the stated and revealed difficulties QA team worked in several directions.

Communication and Management. Previously, the development department communicated only with the Team Lead to handle the project issues. That brought misunderstandings and lack of communication between development and QA teams. To make the interaction more effective, we let the project team communicate with every QA engineer in our team.
To make the process of task assignment[4] more clear, QA team suggested using new task management tools (Trello) and a single communication channel.

Process of Task Estimation. During the process of work loads evaluation the development team did not consider time necessary for testing and bug fixing. This caused working overtime and missing the deployment dates approved with customers and investors. QA specialists cooperated with the development team to prepare the accurate task estimation and correspondent timeline.

Development and Interactions. QA team spent additional time on build testing because of the absence of changelog and build versions. To speed up the testing process we suggested to keep the version history and record all changes.

Bug Tracking and Test Documentation. Every member of the project team got access to the bug tracking system to check the testing progress and structure. QA team prepared test cases, test suites and checklists to systematize testing activities and cover the functionality of the platform. The client also received regular testing reports and was able to control the whole process.

Results of Cooperation. Due to the proper arrangement of activities and their efficiency, the following tasks were accomplished:

• implementation of task management tools at the project;
• configuration issues of test and production environments solved;
• version history and changelog applied;
• the software was released on a defined date.

QA Team in a Startup. Final Thoughts.

Judging from the above material, being a startup does not mean that quality assurance matters can wait until the project growth. We revealed the real example when a startup included the QA team to the project and used our tips to handle not only quality but management issues[5] that interfered with the effective project run. This case is the proof that it is never early to add quality to your project and lay the foundation for its effective development and success.

Related Posts:

• From Troubled Launch to Excellence: A Startup’s Real-Life Success Story[6]
• How to Achieve a Balanced QA Approach in a Startup?[7]
• Testing of MVP: What Is the Benefit for Startups?[8]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2019/03/29/qa-in-startup/

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