How to set up QA testing for startups

The importance of QA for startups is hard to overestimate, as it plays a crucial role in ensuring the reliability and performance of products from the very beginning. Companies start seeing benefits from QA investments within 6 to 12 months after implementation. With further QA process improvement - 24% of companies witnessed immediate ROI from test automation. In addition, another 28% saw growing ROI within a year.

Why does a startup need quality assurance?

For those who want to not only attain a stable and fruitful performance of their product but also prolong it, QA tests at an early stage of development are integral.

Mainly, QA is used in startups to:

A good quality assurance start up will help your company gain and maintain a competitive edge and improve overall user trust.

Common challenges faced by startups

QA processes in the development stage are essential for ensuring the quality of the product pre- and post-launch. Startups face multiple challenges in the course of their existence, and establishing an adequate QA process in software testing can be key to most of them.

Limited budget and resources

Often startups that require a QA process are limited in resources, including financial ones. The budget is usually tight in the beginning, and there is no room to build a dedicated QA team or even cooperate with a reliable quality assurance company.

On top of it, startups often have small teams, in which developers are multitasking: as a result, it is difficult to appoint a dedicated QA personnel for managed testing services that will oversee the testing process exclusively.

Lastly, due to the limited resources, fledgling projects tend to prioritize the features and functionality of the product itself over a good QA testing workflow. Consequently, a lot of potentially serious issues get overlooked, which negatively influences the product’s final quality.

A plausible solution? For starters, you may begin with smaller but critical QA steps, such as regression or smoke tests. If you lack the expertise to perform them, it would be wise to partner with an outsourcing company that can find a fitting solution within your project’s budget.

Lack of in-house QA expertise

Most often, when startups don’t hire specialists to perform QA testing, developers end up checking their code. Such multitasking can result in many errors and oversights because of the natural familiarity bias and the lack of a fresh look.

Besides, the core expertise of the team, in general, is likely far from the best QA practices, automation frameworks, or the most popular performance testing techniques.

Employing startups software testing services dedicated experts is often a long and costly process, especially when the startup is limited in time and finances.

Is there a way to bridge the gap in expertise while saving on the budget and meeting deadlines at the same time? The best approach is to partner with an external software testing company that provides quality assurance services for startups and outsource an effective team of experienced professionals.

DeviQA, provides best-in-class quality assurance services to startups with outsourcing and outstaffing cooperation models.

You’ll experience a free proof of concept and streamlined communication process, regardless of geography or time zones, and you’ll benefit from the company's many years of experience in outsourced software testing services.

Time constraints in fast-paced development cycles

It is not a secret that startups are often under pressure to step into the market faster, especially in highly competitive sectors. This is the primary reason that forces them to choose speed over quality. This results in insufficient startup quality assurance and a failed testing process. If the company doesn’t properly streamline its software QA process, any further testing may delay the timelines in development, mixing up the original product launch plan and creating undesired tension between teams.

To address this problem, consider implementing a detailed QA test at the earliest possible stage and automated testing. Start integrating QA seamlessly into the development workflow and improve the startup QA process without slowing down releases. A striking statistic shows that 44% of IT companies have automated 50% of their testing processes by now.

Struggles with scaling QA processes as the product evolves

Once the product starts growing and acquiring a larger user base, the codebase grows with it. Consequently, it requires more advanced testing techniques to prevent or fix existing performance issues. Besides, it becomes crucial to set smart goals for quality assurance to include new features, integrations, or platforms, which can all potentially exhaust the testing systems. The more your startup grows, the less effective it becomes to rely on manual testing due to many oversights and human errors.

When is the right time to add QA to a project?

When should you consider implementing quality assurance in a startup? Although there is no universal answer to that question as every project is authentic, there are several points you can rely on. If you integrate QA as a Service for your startup at any of these stages, you will likely significantly improve the general product quality and properly prepare it for stepping into the competitive and crowded market.

Prototype completion

Once you finish your product’s prototype, it’s important to implement QA tests to check the basic functions and design. For this, you may employ several QA strategies: usability testing, smoke testing, and early bug detection. Usability tests help ensure that the final user interface (UI) goes hand-in-hand with the planned design and user expectations.

Another one of the quality assurance process steps is smoke testing, which basically helps you ensure the core features of your prototype are operational. Finally, early bug detection identifies critical errors in the base architecture of the product.

MVP development

In the majority of novice projects, creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is an integral step. The objective of MVP testing in a quality assurance startup is to verify that all the core features and functions work as expected.

When the time comes to add new features, testers might employ tests to ensure that the updates do not break existing functionality. On the next product development iterations, if you want to check how well your product works on different devices, browsers, and operating systems, you might resort to compatibility testing.

Early customer feedback

The final step before the global product release is pre-launch testing. It can be broken down into end-to-end testing, beta testing, security testing, and final usability testing. End-to-end is the most elaborate process, in which you check the entire workflow to mimic real-world user interactions.

In the beta test, a small group of users is engaged to provide real feedback before the global launch, and security tests are used to ensure user data protection. The last brushstroke is final usability testing, which helps you confirm that the product is seamless and user-friendly.

The universal way to speed up the long product qa testing is to implement automated testing. According to a recent study, 30% of developers favor test automation over manual testing. It allows startups to integrate proper QA solutions early on and potentially avoid costly bug fixes in the post-launch phase.

Benefits of outsourcing Quality Assurance services for a startup

If you’re asking yourself how to improve the QA process for your startup, outsourcing might be the solution you are looking for. The best way to approach an outsourcing solution for your project is to cooperate with a dedicated company that will provide the most fitting professionals on your behalf.

This is a valid approach for companies that struggle with a poor and inefficient QA process, which hindered its growth and stability.

For example - Shops, a platform designed to empower individuals to generate income through the sale of digital products. The project initially faced challenges due to an ineffective QA process, which hindered its growth and stability.

Upon DeviQa engagement, the QA workflow was transformed by introducing comprehensive regression and smoke testing, which allowed for faster release cycles—taking just one working day for regression testing and under 60 minutes for smoke testing. Hired dedicated QA team of 2 engineers developed over 500 end-to-end test cases, ensuring that 75% of the platform's functionality was rigorously tested across multiple devices and localizations.

As a result, Shops significantly enhanced the quality of releases, streamlined task management in Jira, and created a robust payment testing approach that detected critical bugs, ultimately enabling the client to release stable applications without the need for constant developer intervention during launches.

There are many more benefits to outsourcing QA professionals than simply saving your time and budget.

New and unbiased perspective toward the product

When you outsource external QA testers from a reliable firm, you are likely to end up with a team of experienced professionals with deep knowledge of products similar to yours. In addition, these specialists provide a fresh look at a startup they’re working with for the first time, which is perfect for startup owners seeking unbiased expertise.

Relatively more affordable

Most startups face financial shortages, especially at the early stage. It is not a secret that outsourcing external QA experts is cheaper and faster than building an in-house team from scratch. Observe the main comparison points in the table below:

In our quality assurance blog posts, we often dwell on the cost benefits of QA outsourcing compared to traditional in-house team building. If you want to properly test your product without cutting back on the budget needed for other aspects of development, QA outsourcing is the best existing solution.

Access to a greater pool of talent

Quality assurance for a start up requires deep and multifaceted expertise, which is not always available through manual hiring. When you use outsourcing services, you get access to QA testers from all around the world, and each of them has unique experience and specialized skills.

Besides, global QA testers always keep themselves updated on the newest testing tools, techniques, methodologies and can bring new insights into the development of your product.

Finally, when you build an international team, your testers will be able to check and adapt the product for different user bases, depending on their location and culture. This, in turn, will increase the global reach of your product.

A diverse set of specialized services

QA teams outsourced for different kinds of startups most often specialize in setting up and using automated testing frameworks, which are getting increasingly popular across products in different niches.

Automated checks reduce manual effort and ensure better scalability of your product. Professionals who specialize in performance testing verify how well your product handles high traffic, huge loads of data, or simultaneous user interactions.

Moreover, security testing employed by outsourced specialists can detect the vulnerabilities of your product early on and test its test data protection mechanisms.

Lower turnaround time

When you outsource external QA testers, they work exclusively on your project and this accelerates the overall testing process. Besides, if you have a diverse global team with workers in different time zones, your product will be tested 24/7, lowering the risk of project delays. In addition, outsourced QA professionals often have pre-established testing frameworks and tools, which will minimize the setup time and speed up testing processes.

Experience in similar products

Lastly, outsourced QA teams have experience working on products similar to yours in the past. As a result, they can anticipate the most common bugs and challenges and be able to address them promptly.

For example, if you are working on an e-commerce startup, an outsourced tester can excel at testing payment gateways, inventory management, and user flows. Such dedicated experts can apply lessons learned from previous projects to meet industry best practices and ensure the best possible quality of your product.

Conclusion

Quality Assurance (QA) plays an essential role in every startup since it can help developers detect and get rid of critical issues early on, improve the general user experience, and save the company from potential revenue loss due to oversights in the development process. It is recommended to implement QA at such project milestones as prototype completion, MVP development, and scaling: it will significantly improve the overall quality of the product and prepare it for stepping into the market.

If you choose to outsource QA specialists instead of building an in-house team, you will gain such benefits as access to global expertise, unique skills and capabilities, faster processes, and valuable expert feedback. These advantages make outsourcing an excellent solution, especially for startups that are limited in financial and other resources.

Ready to improve your product with QA at the snap of a finger? Consider reaching out to DeviQA for expert QA consulting services. Our team will guide you through the QA implementation process and curate the best strategy depending on your project’s unique needs.