At the beginning of 2019, we thought about how to start moving into new markets. We didn’t clearly understand how unknown markets work. And sure we didn’t know where to start. If you don’t know something – ask somebody who already knows. So we’ve asked people who already operate in the market of our interests – UK. We`ve asked our socials to spend some time answering our questionnaire. In return we offered free consultations about their current Testing process or free Test Automation.
Why we are telling you all this?
We`ve collected useful information and obtained insights along the way and decided to share the results. It would be helpful for companies that operate in the Software testing domain to know more about what their clients want and what they value more at the UK market.
So…
The research started in Spring 2019. We are still collecting answers.
The questions about success, challenges, testing and QA processes inside teams along with key skills for QA engineers.
Conclusions below are based only on the answers of who allowed to use their answers for stats.
The original spelling and punctuation have been retained.
- We’ve received 760 completed questionnaires.
- The respondents are United Kingdom based Founders, Owners, CTOs, CEOs, Directors and Senior Managers.
- The size of the companies – range mostly from 10 to 200 employees.
- The companies are software development (64%) and product (36%) from most of the horizontals and verticals of the UK Software market.
The most popular difficulties of implementing QA engineers:
- To find the right engineers with proper skills.
- Testing takes a lot of time and effort.
- Costs.
- To find an experienced person who can lead the testing process.
- Don’t know from what we should start establishing QA flow from scratch.
Imagine: somebody tells you that they have development without testing in the flow. What would be their reaction?
- They must be lying.
- Insane and сrazy!
- That’s not a company that I would want to deal with.
- They write bugs not software.
- Untested app is a time bomb waiting to explode.
- To me, that’s bullsh*t.
- Sounds crazy but a lot of people, unfortunately, do it…
“Software development without testing is like a vessel designed in a workshop being asked to navigate the Pacific Ocean in a hurricane season.”
When QA should start?
- 61% of respondents think that QA needs to start at the idea, prototyping and mockups stage.
- 28% think that QA needs to start in the middle of the development at MVP stage.
- 11% of respondents answered that QA should start just before the release.
“QA Should start the sooner the better because their involvement may help drive better requirements and thus better development which results in less bugs.”
What are the key skills of QA besides technical knowledge?
- Communication.
- Creativity and ability to think outside the box.
- A completely different mindset from a developer.
- A keen eye for details.
- Analytical skills.
- Discipline.
- Inquisitiveness.
- Persistence.
What are the key criteria that QA engineers perform well?
- User positive feedback and satisfaction.
- Stability of the app, site or SaaS.
- Software is released without many defects and few bugs get deployed to production.
- Short list of reported bugs from customers.
- Faster development process.
- Clear reports.
- The product meets the requirements.
What matters when you outsource QA?
- Good feedback from previous customers.
- Understanding of requirements.
- Empathy to clients.
- Ability to offer Automation of testing.
- Smooth Testing flow.
- Clearance of reports.
- Testing techniques, technologies and processes.
- Well integrated into the development organization.
- Easily managed.
What rates are okay for outstaff Manual QA Engineer?
- 40 % – $20/h
- 26% – $25/h
- 34% – $30/h
What rates are okay for outstaff Automation QA Engineer?
- 14% – $25/h
- 39% – $30/h
- 31% – $40/h
- 16% – $50/h
What is the most harmful for development process:
- Testing the work of the developers and they should write tests on every level.
- QA shouldn’t be a specific job title – instead quality should be built into the system. Developers should take responsibility for the code they produce
- I expect devs to test what they push.
- Make developers code features without bugs.
- Trying to engage good programmers to work with to reduce bugs.
- CEO/PM/Developers are covering testing gap.
- Start the testing process at the release stage.
What does QA mean for you?
- Cornerstone for a successful product.
- It`s a constant of ensuring that the software works as expected under all conditions, from the first line of code being written through to the production environment.
- QA means quality management during the development (sometimes after).
- QA is an ongoing process, because your software is getting improved all the time to meet customers’ changing needs and expectations.
- QA and testing means for a software exactly what water means to the human body.
What we’ve found out:
- Around 30% hadn’t a chance to work with QA Engineers.
- 75% were considering to hire more QA engineers or create testing process from scratch to be faster than competitors.
- 61% think that Automation of Testing is necessary for the growth on the market.
- 83% of respondents think that it’s impossible to deliver good crafted products without proper testing.
“Always have the benefit of ‘another set of eyes’ to catch things you or your team might miss. Lack of experience you or your team may have which an experienced QA engineer would possess.”
Most of the respondents of market analysis believe that the following criteria allow them to be successful in their leading roles:
– Happy customers.
– Happy team.
– Growing cash flow.
– Being on the top edge of tech trends.
– Life-work balance.
So here is our first experience in market research but we don’t want to stop there. Thus, you will see further insights from the market from us.
