While launching a startup, founders constantly focus on achieving long-term goals, getting solid funding, cutting development costs, and releasing their product to the market as fast as possible. Rushing a development process to boost productivity could result in a neglect of important processes, such as quality assurance.
At UTOR, we provide QA specialists for our clients, to help them set up a QA process, make it cost-effective without compromising on the end-product’s quality. In this article, we are going to take a closer look at how to set up a QA process in startup more smoothly and not compromise product quality while keeping your project cost-effective.
Do Startups Even Need QA?
Startups are aiming not only to create a unique and exceptional solution to solve customer’s needs but also to build a ‘lovemark’ and receive a great deal of affection from its users. Regardless of how good your development process is, there might be some unexpected bugs or the product might simply not work properly.
Unexpected software defects may appear even in well-funded projects with strong development teams. For instance, NASA postponed the $80 million worth helicopter launch due to an abrupt software glitch.
If such critical problems may occur in projects of leading technological giants, there is no surprise that a small startup, even with a highly professional development team, can face unforeseen software defects. Whether you are building your startup in finance, e-commerce, media or any other field, the quality of your product is crucially important for your end-user.
The quality-focused approach is a successful strategy to gain the trust of your target audience and drive your startup to the next level. Obviously, any software can’t be completely bug-free, but a decent testing process will help to avoid a quality assurance bottleneck and help your product meet its business goals.
Possible Consequences and Financial Losses due to the Poor Quality Assurance
In order to comprehend why testing software is important, here are some examples of outcomes that may occur with your product and company if the QA testing is neglected.
Product Release Delays
One of the issues associated with neglecting proper QA planning and implementation is postponing the start of the next development stage or even your release date. Delays are frequently caused by unexpected bugs found or features of an app or website that do not meet business or customer needs. As a result, your team will spend more working hours on a project than was estimated before. Therefore, work overload will increase development costs for your startup. In this regard, timely QA testing allows to find defects as soon as possible and prevent delays in development timings.
Reputation Damage
If users have trouble using your product, it does not only leave them unsatisfied but may potentially cause them to lose time and money. Critical issues will, at best, lead to complaints to your customer support, but could possibly generate a bunch of negative reviews online. It will affect your future sales as well since your potential customers will see you in an unfavorable light.
Furthermore, frustrated users will not likely use any other software released by your company in the future.
Security Issues
Poor software quality assurance could jeopardize your customers’ personal information and become the cause of a data breach. Depending on the type of information involved, the implications might include database deletion or corruption, private information leakage, intellectual property theft, and perhaps even the compensation for impacted individuals.
Troubles with investors
One of the long-term impacts of poor software quality is that your startup might not meet planned sales goals and generate expected revenue. This might result in decreasing your chances of getting good capital investments for your product’s further development.
Solving Existing Problems is More Expensive than Preventing Them
Establishing QA in startups requires building a proper test strategy and applying various types of software testing. Imagine if you find a critical bug on a release stage: how many resources will have to be involved to quickly eliminate it?
The later defects are discovered, the greater their potential effect on your product quality will be, and the more difficult they are to fix in the future. Changes made to solve an issue may have an impact on the application’s functionality. As a result, developers may need to perform more code modifications, increasing the cost, time, and effort. That’s why it’s critical to discover and resolve any issues early in the development process.
Software Testing in a Fast-Paced Startup Environment
Startups are facing a bunch of challenges at every development stage. You must keep up with constantly changing technology, properly manage your resources, make sure your product’s quality is meeting customer’s needs, and closely monitor the progress of everything in order to get to the market quickly. Here are some tips to find a balance between speed, cost, and quality of the QA process.
Save your Time by Starting QA in the Early Development Stage
Modern development and QA approaches require the product to be tested in parallel with coding, providing continuous feedback, instead of looking for bugs and defects after the software development is done. The main goal is to accurately define and plan your test strategy at an early stage of product development. Applying the quality-focused approach initially will help your startup to discover and prevent bugs from day one.
If you think of when to hire a QA specialist, the cost-effective solution will be to find a tester on a seed stage, after your minimum viable product (MVP) development has been done and it is time to prepare testing specifications and documentation for the later product development.
Testing According to Agile
Such an approach offers the flexibility to keep the testing process on track while product requirements could be changed dynamically. Here are some principles of Agile QA methodology:
- Continuous testing and feedback;
- More direct communication;
- Developers and business analysts are participating in testing;
- Decreased time of feedback response;
- Less documentation;
- Focus on customer’s needs.
According to Agile, the first development iteration starts from “Sprint Zero”, when a team is performing preparation work such as building environments and creating product backlog. Even though there are no tests needed to be performed at this stage, at UTOR we believe that this is just the right time for QA specialist to join your team and build a proper QA strategy and perform initial setup tasks, including installing testing tools, scheduling resources and suchlike.
Read more: Who Owns Quality in a Scrum Team and How QA Fits With Agile
Consider QA outsourcing
Most of the startups can’t afford to hire a QA team in-house. In the early development stages, QA roles and responsibilities are usually spread within a team: between developers, Project Managers, and anyone else available at the moment. As a result, software development testing is done without building a proper test strategy, lack of QA automation, and necessary tools.
Alternatively, software testing for startups could be delegated to an outsourcing company, which can offer an affordable solution to fit the project’s needs.
How Does QA Outsourcing Work?
When your startup signs the contract with a third-party company, they conduct the full quality assurance process for your product, including an audit of your systems and fixing potential problems. Such companies already have a team of QA specialists who can create a robust testing environment, manage manual testing, as well as set up an automation software process. Let’s take a closer look at how your project can benefit from delegating tasks to software testing startup companies.
Advantages of QA Outsourcing for Startups
Saves Budget and Timing
One of the most important reasons why to outsource QA is that you cut development costs by hiring a qualified team of QA specialists ready to join your project at any time. Your startup will not have to spend internal resources and funds on training, accounting, or similar things.
Software testing outsourcing companies are especially interested in successfully completed projects to enrich their portfolio and build a strong reputation. You will not have to worry about meeting deadlines, because accurate timing helps such companies to cover more projects with their QA services.
Want to know more about what affects QA budget?
A Ready-To-Use Testing Strategies and Tools
Outsourced software testing services already have a full set of experienced specialists with streamlined processes. Furthermore, outsourcing teams have all the necessary equipment and testing software. Compared to buying software testing tools personally, your development costs will decrease instantly, since subscriptions might cost thousands of dollars.
Delegating HR Management and Process Support
QA outsourcing could be integrated into any software development process, so you won’t need to waste your time and resources on sourcing, hiring, onboarding, and supporting a smooth working process for your in-house QA team. Conversely, software testing companies offer a time and cost-effective solution and cover the same scope of work.
Flexibility to Every Project’s Particular Needs
QA outsourcing testers and engineers can work as a separate team or as an extension of your startup’s in-house QA department, expanding its capabilities. Depending on your project needs, the number of QA engineers might change during the working process. Employment forms, payment systems, and QA tester hourly rates are also highly adaptable.
If conditions, deadlines, or other factors change unexpectedly, outsourcing teams can respond swiftly and efficiently without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Summing Up
The software doesn’t have many chances to succeed on a market without presenting a reliable quality to its users. Hence, the proper testing and quality-driven approach should be conducted during all development stages.
Taking into account a fast-paced startup environment, hiring a QA team could be a great solution to fit into limited budgets and deadlines. UTOR is ready to provide your company with qualified software QA specialists or even build an entire QA department from scratch to support your software testing needs. We cover the full-cycle software testing process, from creating test documentation to test execution and ongoing quality control.
Contact us to take your product’s quality to a next level!
