What is crowdtesting? What are the benefits of crowdtesting? Is crowdtesting right for you? Find the answers to all these questions in our ultimate guide.
After months of hard work, your new software has finally been completed. It’s taken hundreds of hours and late nights, but at last, you’re ready to launch it to the market. Or are you? It’s rare, extremely rare, for software development to be perfect at the first go. So what do you do? You want people to test it for you, and you want as many as possible with diverse viewpoints.
The solution is to crowdtest your new software—Have the various aspects of the program examined in detail by a group of people who will, hopefully, notice any flaws or errors so that they can be corrected. But just what is crowdtesting? How do you do it? Why is it important? And what advantages and disadvantages do using crowd testers offer?
Crowdtesting (also known as crowdsourced testing) is a process whereby a company or developer uses a group of people to test their software to increase release velocity. This can include mobile apps, SaaS, any sort of program, desktop apps, digital products, and even websites. Testing can take place at the end of development or in its various stages.
Crowdtesters run the software on their devices to see if they can spot any errors, bugs, or areas for improvement. They can be asked to look at the program as a whole or specific aspects such as feature testing, accessibility testing, functional testing, usability testing, etc. People chosen through crowdsourcing will usually have diverse experience, skills, etc., and use diverse devices.
It can sometimes be challenging to spot bugs and errors until a certain level of usage of a piece of software has been reached. This usually equates to a usage that covers every aspect of the program. To carry out comprehensive and extensive testing in-house would be a lengthy and costly process. By outsourcing to crowd testing services or crowdsourcing, that process can be carried out quickly, allowing developers to fix issues before the product reaches end-users.
Testers may be professionals (working on a freelance basis) or experienced and dedicated amateurs. Indeed crowdtesting can be a career or just a part-time option. It allows a company to have a diverse group of individuals look at the functionality of their software from different perspectives and ensure that the program works well across a wide range of devices.
Crowdtesting is about putting your customers first. You want to eliminate bugs and errors before the product goes to market, so they don’t experience potential issues and have negative customer experiences.
QA testing used to be carried out in-house. But that process was not only time-consuming, it was also inefficient as far as the use of QA teams and other staff was concerned. By freeing up resources and personnel to focus on other projects, any costs incurred using external crowdtesting services or teams are offset, making the process cost-effective.
The level of testing, and thus the cost, can vary greatly. Depending on the tasks to be performed, you may require a team with a certain level of technical knowledge (or none at all).
Crowdtesting can be used to test a wide range of aspects of your software. But the two primary areas it covers are user experience and quality assurance. But what would be a typical crowdtesting use case?
1. Test objects. One of the most common areas for crowdsourced testing, this can cover a variety of objects. Testing may be carried out via a centralized cloud platform or by providing the testers with the app, program, or access to the website. Objects that can be tested include:2. Industries. Many software programs are industry-specific and may be designed for particular tasks such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) programs. Each sector, and sometimes each company, has its own needs and requirements, and ensuring your software meets those needs is essential before implementation.
3. Needs analysis. Knowing what you need and at which stage of the development cycle is crucial. That can include the sort of development model you’re utilizing (waterfall or agile) and whether you aim your software at consumers or organizations.
So, you’re an organization in the process of developing a new software program. You’ve identified that opting to crowdsource software or application testing is a cost-effective choice. How do you set up that testing process?
Once you’ve planned every aspect of the process carefully, you can move on to initiating it.
Once you’re happy that everything is in place and that your testers know what’s expected of them—they know how to make a bug report, what testing methods to use, etc., you can then officially commence the testing process as a whole.
Once the testing process is complete, you need to collect all data, reports, etc., and evaluate these. You can also assess the performance of your testing team (this can help expedite the hiring process next time). All the reports and data should be reviewed, and decisions made on what action is now needed. For complex testing processes, you may then repeat the cycle.
Crowdtesting has both advantages and disadvantages. Knowing what they are can help you make a balanced and informed decision or put a strategy in place to minimize any disadvantages.
The market leader for web and app testing, GAT combines crowdtesting with intelligent automation to ensure your projects are realized efficiently. With the ability to test in over 189 countries and a thoroughly vetted team of more than 50,000 professionals, it’s no surprise that GAT is employed by global enterprises, such as Microsoft and Facebook. They offer rapid testing and scalability to suit any timeframe or project.
Cobalt is a specialist PtaaS (Pentest as a Service) that can help with the compliance and security needs of DevOps teams. It provides workflow integrations and high-quality testers. However, GAT features a greater range of existing integrations with software development and project management platforms so that your team can track bugs, collaborate on solutions, and tackle known issues within your app effortlessly.
As a specialist service, Cobalt only focuses on a narrow field and lacks the experience and breadth of solutions offered by GAT.
Bugwolf is a SaaS platform that allows you to formulate a testing plan and assemble a team quickly. Its primary focus is on identifying and tracking bugs. When it comes to efficiency of service, GAT is unbeatable. It can perform exploratory testing in under 36 hours and manual test case execution from 30 mins to 150 mins.
As with some other solutions, Bugwolf lacks the broader experience of Global App Testing and is less suited to larger projects or organizations.
Crowdsprint offers reliable testing for mobile apps as well as either web or cloud-based applications. They provide your projects with both test and delivery managers to ensure that planning and communications are of high quality. However, their lack of specialists for testing can be off-putting compared to GAT; these make up only 1% of their testing pool.
With testers speaking 40 languages, Userfeel may be a good choice if your website or app needs to be multilingual. Userfeel offers the ability to create a ‘highlights’ video where testers explain and demonstrate issues they’ve encountered.
However, the pricing may not be to your liking compared to an industry leader such as Global App Testing. GAT can also test your apps in localized settings worldwide and produce high-quality bug reports. These aren’t limited to videos of each issue but include step-by-step test execution details, screenshots before and after for each step, and crash and session logs.
The Beta Family is mainly aimed at offering testing solutions of beta versions of iOS and Android operating systems applications. As with some other options, the narrow focus when compared to GAT will not suit many organizations.
Stardust offers a range of different testing options, including functional, operational, and regression testing. They also cover multilingual testing, making them a good choice for organizations launching programs globally. However, as one of the smaller testing companies, they may not offer the same capacity as GAT.
Providing ISO-certified QA services, QA Mentor serves every level of business. They combine the expertise of professional testers with onshore and offshore resources to offer solutions. But they only focus on specific sectors, which limits their usability. Also, ISO-certified, GAT offers testing across every industry type.
Rainforest is an on-demand crowdtesting and QA platform that offers automated testing processes. You can choose to integrate any processes into the existing workflow of your project, and an AI-powered engine executes the tests. Rainforest is not as simple to set up as GAT, which may put many potential users off. With its user-friendly software, GAT easily integrates your tech stack with its platform to increase team productivity.
User testing offers customer-centric crowdtesting, swift feedback, and the opportunity to view videos of people using your product. But the site has poor feedback from many users and testers, especially when compared to GAT.
With tests commencing in real-time, MyCrowd QA offers a range of testing processes for websites and apps. Results are delivered quickly in the form of insightful reports that highlight any bugs or other errors so you can take quick action to fix them. But it’s a pricier alternative to GAT, which may put some companies off, as GAT also offers detailed reports with analysis of any issues.
Test IO is aimed at agile development teams and offers QA testing on real devices at any or all points of your development cycle. Setup and results delivery are both quick and precise. However, Test IO is a pricier alternative to GAT, and, unlike GAT, Test IO has a habit of duplicate bug reporting.
While the aspects of QA testing you require may vary, most organizations need efficient end-to-end testing of overall functionality. And depending on the complexity of the plan, you should take advantage of the high level of integration that GlobalApp Testing offers you.
Picking a company that offers the most focused and varied testing processes can help you identify bugs and errors so that they can be fixed promptly. With potentially tight schedules to adhere to, knowing you won’t be trapped in an endless cycle of test and retest can give you the confidence to know you will meet any planned release date.
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