Crowdsourced Testing
Tags: QA, Testing, Crowdsourced Testing, Crowdsourcing, Quality Assurance

Crowdsourced QA is an increasingly popular testing method. Leveraging a dispersed and often temporary workforce, companies can expedite testing more effectively. This makes for more financially sound and efficient testing.

What is crowdsourced testing?

Crowdsourced Testing consists of delegating software testing tasks to a community of expert quality assurance testers through an online platform.

It is quickly emerging as the most efficient way to streamline interactive software products and improve the quality of the web and software products published by developers.

Crowdsourced testing offers numerous advantages:

Flexibility: Given that our crowd encompasses testers in all timezones, there are always testers available, no matter the time of day. This comes in particularly handy when working late at night trying to meet a deadline.

Given that our crowd encompasses testers in all timezones, there are always testers available, no matter the time of day. This comes in particularly handy when working late at night trying to meet a deadline. Instantaneity: Unlike traditional software testing companies, Crowdsourced Testing services are available on short notice and allow you to get results in as little as a few hours.

Unlike traditional software testing companies, Crowdsourced Testing services are available on short notice and allow you to get results in as little as a few hours. Real-world multi-platform testing: When dealing with external users, your products are likely to be used on a much wider range of hardware and software combinations than those you have in-house. These include older browser versions, other operating systems, and different hardware devices. By working with a large crowd of testers, you ensure that your product is tested in various real-world situations and on a large variety of hardware and software combinations.

Who’s involved in crowdsource testing?

Crowdsource testing is in no way a challenger of in-house QA experts. Rather, crowd testers augment internal QA resources allowing managers to allocate resources in a more efficient way.

This provides the highest possible quality with the lowest possible investment. But it also requires QA teams to carefully consider how to deploy these resources for maximum efficiency.

Why crowdsourcing and software testing is a natural fit

Creativity is difficult to crowdsource or outsource. Can you crowdsource design? You can, but you might find it hard to find people who will convey your vision exactly as you would have liked. If you employ a talented designer or developer, you’re lucky; keep them on staff and keep them happy.

Creativity is more easily harvested within a company

The entire web or software development process can be called creative. From conception to market, products are constantly evolving and your staff makes creative decisions until the very end. However, the software testing process represents a key part of the creative interactive development process which is entirely rational. Software testing is about attention to detail and meticulousness.

Although quality assurance tests can be about judging the quality of an interactive product and making suggestions on how it can be improved, the unfortunate reality is that they are often conducted by rushed copywriters or project managers with very limited time at their disposal.

As a project manager, I would find myself too often in a situation where we would send an interactive project to a client, all the while suspecting that it contained bugs, and praying that he would not find them. We were under so much pressure to deliver that we didn’t have time to properly test it.

Programmers ran late, the team kept finding bugs, and we would finally ship the product several hours late without proper testing, hoping that our prayers would be heard.

Crowdsourced testing offers the advantage of enabling companies to conduct tests when it is most convenient for them, no matter the time or day of the week. This means that programmers can make a test request before they leave work and return to find a clear and concise list of bugs to fix in the morning. This can help you save an enormous amount of time and money!

There are many benefits of crowdsourced testing: It enables companies to work with professional testers in different environments, with a variety of languages, and who has access to various devices. Additionally, these testers can be scaled up or down at any time. Furthermore, because crowdsourced testers do not belong to an organization, they are generally unbiased.

However, with that came another challenge: How Crowdsourced Testing delivers excellent quality

Our solution is in a limited, elite group of freelance software testers who are passionate about what they do and equally passionate about doing it right.

At Crowdsourced Testing, we constantly review the work of every tester participating in our software testing projects to ensure great results. The more a tester gets involved in projects and the better his work, the more likely he is to be invited to test our clients’ projects.

You as a client only work with our community’s best testers. We do this so you won’t suffer through the pitfalls often associated with traditional crowdsourcing: poor results, incomplete bug descriptions, or language barriers!

Our mission is to help web and software developers deliver their projects on time and on budget by providing them with excellent quality assurance testing services at flexible hours. We’ve been testers for a long time. We understand your reality. We know how we can help you. Most importantly, we enjoy what we do, we care about a job well done and we’re easy to work with.

Crowdsourced QA testing works in various ways:

BYOD(Buy Your Own Device) or simulation: Testers either receive device emulators or virtual machines, or they utilize their own devices.

Testers either receive device emulators or virtual machines, or they utilize their own devices. Direct or indirect: Companies either work through the crowdsourced testing companies which act as a middleman, or they can go directly to individual testers to give directions and input.

Companies either work through the crowdsourced testing companies which act as a middleman, or they can go directly to individual testers to give directions and input. Types of testing: Crowdsourced testing ranges from exhaustive exploratory testing to very specific functional testing.

Pros and cons of crowd testing

With the ever-increasing demand for product quality coupled with a need to push to market quickly, QA mobile app testing is absolutely essential. Each application should be free of bugs and tested for ease of use and security.

Crowdsourced testing is a powerful approach that harnesses the power of crowd talent and wisdom. And when utilizing modern development practices of CI (continuous integration) and CD (continuous delivery or continuous deployment), crowd testing scales better and is more flexible than other methods such as manual and automation testing.

But not all mobile app testing methods are equal. So before quality assurance managers spend resources on the latest testing trend, it’s important to understand what testing techniques will bring the best ROI.

Pros

Crowdtesting involves many individuals, often with better QA and a reduced cost. Other major advantages that ensure an application is ready for launch include:

Speed: The importance of developers getting timely and relevant bug information is crucial. With such a large, global number of people involved in the testing, crowdsourced testing leads to fast execution and better results.

The importance of developers getting timely and relevant bug information is crucial. With such a large, global number of people involved in the testing, crowdsourced testing leads to fast execution and better results. Efficiency: Crowd teams help some clients in time-varying bursts to manage peak workloads. This peak-demand testing strategy leads to the most efficient utilization of testing resources. Companies benefit from these burstable instances because they receive a high volume of QA resources for a short period of time only when necessary meaning they can manage day-to-day testing with fewer resources when necessary.

Crowd teams help some clients in time-varying bursts to manage peak workloads. This peak-demand testing strategy leads to the most efficient utilization of testing resources. Companies benefit from these burstable instances because they receive a high volume of QA resources for a short period of time only when necessary meaning they can manage day-to-day testing with fewer resources when necessary. Cost-effective: To reduce labor costs and dramatically improve efficiencies, today’s software development teams tap into on-demand crowdsourced QA services. It allows you to conduct testing without adding a permanent employee… and the salary, pension, and other costly benefits incurred. Costs are dramatically reduced by applying the time-varying resource provisioning of managed crowd testing.

To reduce labor costs and dramatically improve efficiencies, today’s software development teams tap into on-demand crowdsourced QA services. It allows you to conduct testing without adding a permanent employee… and the salary, pension, and other costly benefits incurred. Costs are dramatically reduced by applying the time-varying resource provisioning of managed crowd testing. Localized insights: Crowdtesting is great for testing localization projects. With access to diverse thoughts and variation in language… well beyond the traditional translation-based approach

Crowdtesting is great for testing localization projects. With access to diverse thoughts and variation in language… well beyond the traditional translation-based approach Usability testing capability: Through the power of crowdsourced testing, companies are able to determine quickly where their mobile application needs to be revised, updated, or fixed in order to avoid losing out on potential users. Crowdsourced testing delivers real users, on real devices, in their target markets.

Cons

While the pros of speed and flexibility of crowd testing are remarkable, some issues can arise if you haven’t created a concrete test plan or rely on unsupervised testers from a marketplace.