Frequently Asked Questions
Surprisingly, people confusing Q&A and QA is something we see a lot, but it's QA, standing for Quality Assurance! If you don’t know the purpose of QA, QA101 will answer your questions.
Money spent on QA results in cost savings later: post-live maintenance budgets are reduced, margins increased, and client relationships strengthened.
Neglecting QA during development, on the other hand, nearly always results in build issues that could have otherwise been avoided during the QA and testing process. These problems inevitably emerge during Live resulting in expensive emergency fixes, pulling your team away from other projects, and damaging your reputation or client relationships.
If you want to maximise benefit, the sooner the better; ideally, QA should be planned before kick-off. The timeline should allow adequate windows for QA phases (before and after Code Freeze) and time to remedy issues.
Although the main function of QA is employing testing strategies to ensure your deliverables meet specifications, QA should be incorporated early in pre-production and throughout your project for the best results. This ensures your timeline and scope are defined with a QA-first approach, greatly increasing the efficacy of production.
We can advise during the early stages of scoping and production: you don't need to wait until you desperately need testing to engage us!
This can be complex. Resource estimation involves considering user scenarios, testing repetitions, and the time needed to document defects and provide supporting materials. You'll also need to factor in appropriate time to test across a project’s agreed support matrix of browsers/devices. We can assist you in quantifying required resources, testing cadence, and timelines.
We can implement testing strategies to check your team’s work meets your needs, your client’s quality standards, and the specifications defined in your Statement of Work. Our testing report will give you a clear idea of your project’s current state and recommendations based on our findings.
The more material the better! However, we can proactively test-plan with minimal material if required. Ideally, we’d like an SOW, technical specs, functional specs, and UX material such as wireframes, designs, motion references, project decks, etc. Open communication with the project team to refine our planning is also key.
We are flexible in delivering specific, project-tailored outputs as needed, but you can always expect the following:
A test plan encompassing systematic test suites and cases, breaking your project into easily understandable testable pieces.
Test coverage reports outlining exactly what was tested, when, on what configurations, and what the outcomes were.
Bug reports in Jira (or preferred tool) documenting issues in an easily understandable language, with steps to reproduce and accompanying material such as screenshots, videos, and logs.
Although QA testing may seem straightforward, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Properly implemented QA isn’t sporadically spot-testing various features, it’s a heavily process-driven and specialist task. Leave your producers and developers to focus on their strengths; we can expertly handle your QA. You’ll see a dramatic increase in the efficacy of your team and the quality of your deliverables.
Absolutely! We can support your team in a variety of capacities:
Our experienced testers can help your in-house QA team navigate a heavy testing load.
If you have a QA strategy or a skeleton team in place but require more than just a few testers, we can plug in an experienced team, including lead or senior-level staff; this way, you can benefit from solid QA without the overheads of building and maintaining a full in-house team.
It’s not ideal, but we can still help: any QA is better than none in terms of mitigating risk and being able to make necessary fixes. In situations like this, we aim to laser focus on the most important aspects of testing and ensure hit list recommendations are provided.
We understand the importance of UAT, especially the significance some clients place on this as a contractual criteria. We’re happy to take on quick assignments to run through a project’s UAT, giving you peace of mind that content or functionality has been thoroughly and independently audited.
Absolutely. We can devise a short suite of test cases and assess the project for ourselves, confirming whether client-reported issues are legitimate and providing clear and useful information for the project team. We can also determine whether client issues are within the project scope, giving you a clearer picture from which to make decisions.
Unlike many QA vendors who engage in a race to the bottom, we provide a premium, specialist service. We want to hire and retain the best staff and to do that, they need to be fairly paid. While our services offset the usual costs for internal QA staff to drive and monitor testing, quality and value-added are where we differentiate ourselves.
Of course! You don't need anything in place internally: we can implement a QA strategy that makes sense for you and plug in our expert team to help execute the strategy across all of your projects, ensuring you see the most benefit from QA implementation with as few overheads as possible.
Definitely. Leaving more of the testing until nearer the event or live environment is risky, adding unnecessary stress and workload. Testing can be broken down into elements and carried out in isolation. It’s better to test in increments and address issues throughout development.
We recommend you raise the topic of QA with project stakeholders, explaining how the project will benefit from a solid QA strategy (you can read QA101 for info). We have vast experience in the creative tech space and would love to elevate your work.