4 smart ways to manage your projects deliverable with Crowdsourced Testing

We live in a decade where sophisticated technologies, innovative ideas, and interesting solutions rule the IT era. Cloud solutions, IoT, mobile technologies, big data, and other exciting technologies are evolving at lightning speeds. The rapid rate at which products are released continuously increases the need for smart work so that it does not hinder the launch of your product.

The development and testing teams play a vital role in the software development life cycle. While the development teams are under pressure with respect to meeting the requirements, the testing teams are also under pressure and often in tight spots due to various reasons, which include:

A wide range of test cases
Testing on multiple devices
Cost of acquiring the required devices for testing
Time limitations
Cost of recruiting expert testers in varied domains

Organizations are coming up with various options to curb these problems and test the products effectively. One of the solutions in which crowdsourced testing is an interesting form of testing technique is gaining popularity. In this technique, crowd testing platforms connect the testers around the world for testing various products before they get released into the market.

Here’s an example of a scenario to understand how crowd testing can come to the rescue to smartly help you manage your project,

Scenario

Whether you are a part of a startup or a large enterprise, at some point you’ll find yourself associated with the development of a new app or product. It has the best of its features getting developed. The testing team is bracing up to prepare the required testing environments to perform usability testing, application testing, and mobile application testing.

Challenges

Following are some of the challenges that you are experiencing:

Cost – There will be a tight budget and you have to manage the project within the budget.
Time – You must adhere to stringent timelines and stick to the scheduled release date.
IT Infrastructure – The components in the existing IT infrastructure seem insufficient for the teams to develop and test the product features, on multiple devices or browsers.
Resources – In addition to devices, resources to test the product are minimal. With the need to perform multiple test iterations, it is a challenge to handle it with limited, yet experienced resources.

Solution

To manage your project smartly, you probably need to examine the opportunities that crowd testing offers in minimizing those challenges above.

So, here it is-4 ways that can help you manage your project with crowd-sourced testing techniques.

1. Managing with minimal cost – By opting for crowdsourced testing, you can manage your project within the specified budget. Following are some key benefits:

Investing in employing full-time testers is an additional cost and as the number of employees increases, the cost increases. Opting for crowd-sourced testing provides you with a varied group of testers and the cost incurred is minimal, when compared to employing new resources.
Acquiring new devices to test your project increases the cost. Although at times these devices can be a significant investment, when there are budget constraints and time limitations, you would prefer to sideline this activity. Opting for crowd-sourced testing provides you with better testing environments. The crowdsourced testing providers invest in high-performing and easy-to-use testing platforms, so the need for investing huge amounts on devices and new applications is eliminated

2. Provisioning for large scale testing – With crowdsourced testing, your product is exposed to a wide range of testers from all over the world. This exposure paves a way for thorough testing, coupled with various insights, bugs, defects, as also suggestions from a variety of testers (experienced to normal users). It also allows you to get feedback from the actual users before it hits the market. It helps you in enhancing the quality of the product. Access to a global pool of testers is advantageous because it helps you get an insight about the product from different people who look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and give you an honest opinion about it.

3. Opting Diversified testing – Your product is tested by people who use various devices such as mobiles and tablets. Your product or application undergoes mobile testing and tests on various operating systems, browsers, as also devices. For example, crowd testers perform mobile website testing and website responsive tests. This option of having your product tested by thousands of diversified platforms is one of the best ways to help you understand how your product works in different environments.

4. Enabling Flexibility – In crowd-sourced testing, you have a group of testers who are primarily occupied in testing your product, when compared to in-house testers who could be shared resources also have other priorities. Additionally, crowd testers are ready to take up ad-hoc testing assignments, on-demand. As crowd-sourced testing is growing as a serious profession, the testers are ready to jump in and work on your test cases at the earliest. By choosing this methodology, you get the flexibility to assign work, get them done at the earliest, and pay as per the work is done.

Through experience, we all know and accept that projects always run under constraints, be it resources or the timelines. In such situations, every product or project manager’s dream would be wanting to reduce additional project risks while ensuring their product is perfectly tested before launch.

Although in-house testing has its own advantages, crowd-sourced testing is far more cost-effective, optimal in most scenarios and available on demand. Crowd-sourced testing should undoubtedly your best choice. Why wait, experience testing different from the traditional and see the transformation.