Portfolio
Helping a developer of an advertising technology deliver high-quality software
a1qa joined the project to take over all quality control activities and help the client deliver flawless software.
Overview
The client is the adtech development unit of Europe’s leading free-to-air broadcaster group. They developed a web platform enabling European broadcasters and online publishers to offer advertising solutions, monetizing their content by selling ad space to international advertisers. This software consists of an internal UI for managing campaigns and a back-end with complex business logic making thousands of decisions per second. In addition, the client created a mobile application for Android and iOS platforms.
Initially, the client’s architect, two senior product owners, and a business analyst were responsible for quality control activities. As the project evolved, it became harder for them to combine multiple roles and ensure process efficiency. The client reached out to a1qa to deliver a high-quality product to existing clients and customize it for new ones.
Services offered
Functional testing
Client-side testing
Mobile app testing
API testing
Project scope
a1qa formed a team that was later expanded at the client’s request, aligned with current Agile-driven workflows with two-week sprints, and drove the following improvements:
- Set up effective interaction
Originally, the client’s teams lacked some vital Agile ceremonies, which made it difficult for everyone to keep a project on track and ensure alignment with stakeholder expectations.
a1qa introduced backlog grooming sessions involving all teams to clarify requirements and acceptance criteria before testing. It also helped prioritize which features to address first and identify any dependencies between functionality or any potential risks early on. a1qa also set up team-wide sprint review calls to discuss the quality of completed work and areas for enhancement. Internal demo, retrospective, sprint planning, and daily stand-up meetings helped foster open communication and transparency.
- Introduced status reports
To ensure better decision-making and keep all project stakeholders informed about testing progress, defect statuses, and overall software health, a1qa set up structured and regular status reports on testing progress, issues, risks, next steps, and other important aspects.
- Implemented defect reports
To track the status and progress of defect resolution and maintain a comprehensive record for future development or maintenance phases, a1qa introduced the practice of defect reporting. They contained an ID, summary, description, steps to reproduce, severity, priority, and other important aspects.
- Organized a well-structured and easy-to-navigate project knowledge base
a1qa organized and continuously updated centralized information in Wiki with necessary instructions and actualized information for correct tasks execution. It promotes a shared understanding of all testing workflows, IT product and project specifics, and simplifies onboarding of new a1qa’s engineers.
- Created an expertise matrix
a1qa compiled an expertise matrix that visualizes the skills, knowledge, and expertise levels of team members to facilitate effective resource allocation, collaboration, and project efficiency. It helped identify project modules needing further knowledge development and allowed for planning team member development activities.
a1qa’s team proceeded with software testing activities. Specialists started with ensuring the quality of a mobile app. Impressed by the results, the client then entrusted the team with testing the front-end and back-end of the web platform. Provided QA support included:
To verify that the web platform behaves according to set requirements and meets the intended functional specifications, a1qa’s QA engineers implemented:
- Test model creation to build a holistic approach to QA activities and regularly replenished it with newly created test cases to ensure a wide testing coverage.
- Smoke testing after receiving a new build from software developers to confirm that it’s stable and ready for deeper testing.
- New feature testing to make sure that newly developed functionality correctly operates without unexpected behaviors.
- Exploratory testing to identify edge cases, reveal issues that structured testing might miss, and understand software specifics if requirements were vague or missing.
- Regression testing to guarantee new updates haven’t negatively impacted other features.
- API testing and creation of automated API collection to ensure correct operation of software APIs and run testing faster — for 3 minutes instead of several hours.
- Defect validation to check that all software issues were promptly resolved by developers.
- Client-side testing
a1qa performed client-side verifications to identify heavy-weight elements or excessive resource usage and optimize loading time. a1qa nearly doubled the elements’ loading speed, reducing it from 36 seconds to 19 seconds, and helped identify several bottlenecks for the client to address.
Before testing the mobile app for iOS and Android platforms, QA engineers, in collaboration with the client, identified the most popular devices used by users across multiple regions.
After obtaining a new build from software developers, QA engineers downloaded it to real mobile phones and ran smoke tests and verifications outlined in an acceptance sheet to confirm that the software meets acceptance criteria before release or deployment. They also made sure that detected issues are resolved by developers.
Technologies & tools
- Jira
- Postman
- Wiki
- Grafana
- Graylog
- Zephyr
Results
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Ensured failsafe operation of intricate software solutions with complex business logic.
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Set up QA processes from scratch to provide high testing efficiency.
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Achieved faster testing cycles by automating API collections, reducing testing time from several hours to just 3 minutes.
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Nearly doubled elements’ loading speed during client-side testing, reducing it from 36 seconds to 19 seconds and identifying several bottlenecks for the client to address.
In numbers
6
years of project duration
5
QA experts involved during peak load
6,422
test cases created