Startups and QA – Is it Good to Get QA On-board Early?

One of the biggest challenges faced by most startup software product companies is their aggressive release cycles. With ever-changing requirements in order to cater to the needs of their potential clients, QA often takes a back seat, and all activities are channelized to get demo-able features out at the earliest.

From our experience with many of our startup clients, we have noticed that getting the QA team on board early on has helped them reap some tangible benefits.

Why QA is Important for Startups?

• The requirements get nailed down to the details so that the teams, particularly if they are geographically distributed, work towards the common goal, and QA gets to test what is expected.
• Furthermore, as features get flushed out, QA gets to validate end-user scenarios; early on, to avoid major design changes later in the application.
• To ensure good code is being developed that is manageable and scalable and does not break as the product grows, the need for good unit test coverage and code review mechanisms comes to the forefront.
• As releases get ready, the need to have a good deployment process in place comes to focus; leveraging continuous integration practices to ensure continuous quality control.

Overall, QA drives to bring in a process that gets the teams to be more productive.

Additionally, as the QA contributions, the following get chalked out:

• What is the testing strategy to be planned?
• What are the types of testing – performance, security, API that need to be planned, and when?
• When to start test automation, and what are the tools to opt for?
• How will test align with the development process and release cycles?
• How to integrate testing with the deployment process?

At InApp, this is how we start working as an independent software testing partner

• At the onset, we bring to the team an experienced leader who will plan out the test strategy keeping in mind all the challenges stated above.
• A process for QA is outlined, working in consensus with the development team
• The apt tool for test automation is selected with POC (Proof of Concept), if required, to handle frequent UI changes and cross-browser compatibility

To know more about our QA processes write to us at mktg@inapp.com