How QA Consulting Helps Build High-Performing QA Teams?

What does it take to ship a top-quality highly-functional software product? The answer to this question lies in how effectively the functionalities work for the end-users of the product. All of this boils down to quality, an important metric that can make or break any software.

Onboarding a high-performing QA team is as important as having a technically sound development team. Both of them are the pillars of any software project. When it comes to quality assurance, managers & other key project stakeholders need to form a formidable QA (and testing) team to ensure that a great quality product is shipped!

As per a study by Harvard Business Review (HBR), quality-focused organizations witness close to 46 per cent fewer mistakes than those that do not focus on quality standards.

So, what is the secret sauce of building high-performing QA teams? Can such teams be built by partnering with an experienced QA Consulting Services company that has served a large range of customers? If you are on the lookout to get answers to these critical questions then we have you covered 🙂

By the end of this blog, you would be in a comfortable position to build QA teams that would do wonders for the project. Here are some of the actionable tips for building high-performing QA Teams for your enterprise:

Have Actionable Insights

The first step is to form a quality-first team is creating metrics that indicate what exceptional quality equates to. Though the metrics might differ from one project to another; indicators like customer retention, bugs/fix ratio, time to fix critical bugs, customer churn, etc. must still be a part of the metrics.

QA teams in many organizations only measure the effectiveness at a project level. Though it is a good practice to keep a track of bug density, average issue closure time, etc.; it is also necessary to keep a track of the quality metrics from an organization point of view.

The impact of measuring engineering effectiveness becomes much more when it is coupled with the business goals of the organization. Such a practice will help in building quality-driven teams across the organization.

Invest in best tools (or frameworks)

Time to market for software products has become more relevant than ever before. With the advent of open-source tools, no code tools, CI/CD tools, cloud computing, etc.; development, testing, and release of products have become much easier. Bigger the organization, higher are the chances that different teams might be using different tools for testing and deployment.

Tools and frameworks are used interchangeably in some scenarios. To make the most out of the expertise of the QA teams, it is recommended to choose test automation frameworks (or tools) that are suited to the requirements of the project.

For example, Selenium is one of the most widely-used open-source frameworks when it comes to web automation testing. In case you want to make the most of the framework, there is an option to choose a cloud-based Selenium Grid. Similar principles can be applied to any other form of testing i.e. load testing, stress testing, security testing, and more. Choosing a tool (or framework) on which the QA members have minimal (to no) expertise will simply elongate the learning curve and the overall TTM.

So, invest in the best-suited tools and frameworks to make the most out of the expertise of the QA team.

Also Read: CTO’s Getting Started Guide To Leverage Software Testing Outsourcing

Conduct cross-functional team meetings

Working in silos is never beneficial for teams and organizations. Cross-functional teams (e.g. development, testing, etc.) might be performing respective jobs effectively in silos.

Though such a situation is good for their respective teams, it is not good for the project (and the organization). Members from the QA (or testing) team can help members in the development team in devising scalable test scenarios.

Such an association will help in improving the test coverage for the corresponding functionality, eventually helping in making a top-quality product. A good practice is to have a grooming team that will keep a track of all the high-priority issues across the product lines. This is also termed as Technical Debt.

Regular Scrum meetings to bring high-priority issues to closure is necessary to build QA teams that are customer-centric and business-centric at the same time. Having cross-functional team meetings also helps in building all-round teams that have understanding about all the aspects of the product.

Partner with experienced QA Outsourcing Vendor

QA outsourcing is a trend that is picking up at a faster pace. Not only big enterprises, even new-age startups are now leveraging the benefits of QA outsourcing for ensuring that quality is an integral part of the product.

Building a QA team from ground-up requires time and expertise. It is important to onboard the right folks in the team else you might end up spending time & money in finding the right talent.

Since this activity might eat up precious time & money, many enterprises (and startups) onboard QA Consulting companies like KiwiQA that have expertise in serving clients in different domains (e.g. finance, e-commerce, etc.).

The in-house QA team can work in tandem with the QA vendor to ensure that there is minimal communication gap and issues are identified & fixed at a faster pace.

Startups (as well as enterprises) need to partner with an experienced and proven QA vendor like KiwiQA in order to reap the maximum benefits of QA outsourcing. This strategy also helps save costs since teams do not have to be built from ground-up and respective teams (i.e. in-house and outsourced QA team) can work in accelerating TTM (time to market).

Also Read: In-house Software Testing OR Outsourcing Software Testing Service

Conclusion

Software testing is an integral part of any software project. This is the primary reason why it becomes necessary to build super-strong QA teams. The pointers mentioned in this blog will be helpful in forming QA teams that not only have expertise but also experience in locating issues at a faster speed.

Software QA outsourcing can be leveraged to build high-performing in-house QA teams that can work in collaboration with the outsourced QA team for realizing a common goal – shipping top-notch quality product to the market!