You have developed your product sparked by brilliant ideas and are ready to go-live. But have you caught all the bugs in your application? The customer finding it could damage your reputation.
Negative online feedback is just a finger’s swipe away. We all know social media’s viral nature. It can easily make or break brands. It’s nice to have your customers testing the application. But, that’s not feasible, right?
Do we have any smart solutions available?
Crowdtesting is the answer.
Successful brands globally are increasingly using Crowdtesting for flawless products. It is a cost-effective and real-world multi-platform testing approach. Let’s explore more.
Crowdtesting is simply testing through broader groups of people. You widen the spectrum of testers to get effective results. The testers may be spread across different geographic locations. They may even span countries and continents. You can have a variety of devices for testing. Crowdtesting offers multiplatform, multi-version devices and environments for testing.
The chances of detecting bugs increase with more (crowd-)testers. Cost-effectiveness and better results are some of the key advantages.
Let’s look at the primary “Crowdsourcing” concept first.
Industries are being disrupted by digital technologies today. We are witnessing rapid growth in the Cloud, SaaS and mobile space. Due to this disruption, traditional ways of innovation are insufficient. This has led to the process of inviting ideas from groups. The collation of inputs from large groups is called crowdsourcing.
You are participating in an increasingly interconnected world. Crowdsourcing happens online. You can engage with your employees as well as your customers. You can collaboratively have a problem-solving exercise.
According to the 2017-18 World Quality Report, 34% of organizations in the software industry have used crowdsourced solution as a way to increase testing bandwidth.
Crowdtesting is solely for testing your applications. You have a broader set of people involved in testing. Testing is conducted in a diverse range of conditions. This is not possible with your in-house testing team. You gain the advantage in discovering problems prior to customers. It helps you in quick fixes, saving time, effort and valuable reputation.
Mobile apps, gaming software and new software product launches are front runners in crowdtesting.
Crowdtesting is mainly used for mobile and web applications. Common crowdtesting usage includes:
Getting good testers and retaining them is a challenge. Here is why:
Organizations are facing challenges in motivating and incentivizing employees. Organizations are having difficulty in retaining talent in this scenario.
You can overcome all these challenges through crowdtesting. It offers a global testing force at your service. You can hire crowdtesters directly or through a crowdtesting firm.
Once we have our product ready, we can get it crowdtested. Crowdtesting also follows the normal testing lifecycle. However, there are a few minor variations in the process.
Crowdtesting service organizations provide crowdtesting groups in any geography. You can choose or mix and match as per requirements. Alternatively, you can source crowdtesters directly as well.
Crowdtesting follows a few sequential phases. Unlike internal testing, some extra details have to be taken care of as external testers are involved. Here are the four phases of implementing crowdtesting.
Identify testing scope: Crowdtesting can be done on a developed product, feature, partial module or prototype. You can specify ‘in scope’ and ‘out of scope’ areas.
Providing the background: Crowdtesting involves external testers most of the times. You must keep the business requirements and testing goals ready. Crowdtesters will be able to understand test activities and perform better.
Identifying tester skill set: You should specify the skill set required for crowdtesters. Example – if you need to test a bank application, you will naturally expect a tester with banking process knowledge. Specifying testing skills helps in selecting the right crowdtesters.
Making test plans: Crowdtests will have to be scheduled as per plans. You may be planning a product launch before Christmas shopping. Your plan will contain schedule and location details.
Specify budgets and deliverables: You have to prepare the budget for crowdtesting. Have your crowdtesting group ready. Make sure expectations and deliverables are clearly defined. Specify deliverables like test reports and other metrics. You can specify a system for bug reporting.
Point of contact: Set up a coordinator to supervise crowdtesting activity. This can be a test manager from your organization. In parallel, you can have a coordinator from the crowdtesting firm too.
Arranging crowdtesters: You can arrange crowdtesters through a crowdtesting firm. Alternatively, you can do it directly as well. After selection, you can set up a contract and payment terms.
Now, we move into the next phase.
Test cases and configurations: In this phase, you will get all your test cases ready. Configure functional scenarios and requisite data for executing test cases. Technical configurations on application and test environment must be done.
Access: Access credentials for crowdtesters has to be set up securely. The test environment must be configured to monitor test activity.
Trial crowdtest round: You can set up a trial testing phase with crowdtesters. It will gauge readiness for testing with some sample results.
Once you are all set, the crowdtest execution can be initiated. You will have to supervise the crowdtest execution.
Post-execution, the test results can be validated to assess performance. Bugs can be classified as per severity and addressed.
Crowdtesting teams will be compensated as per agreement, which is based on the number of bugs reported. This output-based pricing module is another advantage of crowdtesting. We will discuss more in the paragraphs below.
You can also rate the crowdtesters based on their performance. This helps in hiring good resources for future crowdtesting.
Popularity of crowdtesting is on the rise, but you should still understand the pros and cons of it to use it correctly.
Some additional managerial effort may be required to ensure sufficient test coverage. It may become difficult in case of globally dispersed crowdtesters.
? Innovative features and strategies:
To be competitive, organizations release new features and innovations. Products having these cannot be crowdtested. There is a possibility of the competition taking advantage of the company strategies. Corporate espionage can be done easier when the product is crowdtested. Therefore it’s better to have an in-house QA team test these innovative features.
? Confidential data:
Applications containing or accessing confidential data in any manner are not suitable for crowdtesting. Cyber security risks can be high in these scenarios if crowdtested.
? Fitment for crowdtesting:
All test cases are not good candidates for crowdtesting. A well defined QA program will have a multi-prong strategy for QA. It will include manual testing and automated testing. Crowdtesting is another method to ensure all features are tested before release. QA manager with expertise can identify these test cases.
Crowdtesting is a great way to test digital products and is getting very popular. However, you must ensure that the following mistakes are avoided during crowdtesting.
The main agenda of crowdtesting is to detect bugs. And crowdtesting by global testers is great. But have the crowdtesters captured application bugs clearly? You have to analyze bugs reported globally, plus crowdtesters report bugs with different devices or environments.
How should the testers capture bug reports? Would it be detailed enough with steps? Can I get clear mobile app bug screenshots? Do crowdtesters need to be trained? All this sounds challenging, isn’t it?
The best bug reporting tool for crowdtesting is Usersnap. Used by global leaders like Microsoft, Cisco, and Facebook among others.
Absolutely no training required. You don’t pay for testers in licenses for crowdtesting. Bugs can be captured with easy screenshots and annotation. It captures location details automatically. Just start using it right away, here’s a sneak peak of what it looks like – Learn More.
Crowd testing platforms are plenty. You need to choose the right crowdtesting platform for best results.
Select based on experience in similar projects. You have to select platforms as per your crowdtest requirement.
Crowdtest platform compatibility with various software has to be determined. You will require visual bug reports to be captured. The crowdtesters are in different locations. You need an able tool that can capture results efficiently.
There are a few guidelines you can use for selection listed as below.
What to look for in a crowdtesting platform
✔️ Experienced crowdtesting companies: Experience counts while making a choice in crowdtesting platforms. Crowdtesting has its challenges in managing distributed teams and operations. You must ensure high-quality results by selecting an experienced company.
✔️ Nature of your project: You can seek out companies that can service your requirement. You may require testing to be done across multiple countries. Choose companies that have expertise in delivering global crowdtesting projects. Some firms may be more experienced in mobile apps. Other companies may be experienced in enterprise applications. You need to choose an appropriately experienced crowdtesting company.
✔️ Financially stable firms: It is advisable to partner with financially stable companies. It will bring confidence in cross geography and global test execution capabilities.
✔️ Ethics: One must engage with a responsible crowdtesting firm. They should stand by their decisions and they should own the execution with their teams.
✔️ Broker companies: Avoid crowdtesting companies that only provide a connection with testers. Companies that act like middlemen will not ensure quality or operational efficiencies.
✔️ Quality factors: Ensure quality service with firms that provide reliable service. Here are some more factors for you to consider.
Some popular crowd testing platforms are:
Crowdtesting is a proven and reliable methodology to test products. It is efficient, cost-effective and provides a real-world test experience. However, it is not a replacement for internal testing. Crowdtesting complements other manual and automated test practices. Use crowdtesting to reduce the risks of bugs in your product and your chances of a bug-free product success increases.
“Don’t fix bugs later; fix them now.” – Steve Maguire
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