Improved Outcomes through Better Quality

 

From a user’s perspective, digital transformation is fundamentally about bringing together the physical and virtual worlds. Whether the user is a consumer or employee, that synthesis only works if it’s a quality experience. For a business, high quality digital transformation results in better customer experience–and thus higher revenues–and better employee experience–and thus improved employee engagement.

Common issues with code, user interface, and data quality

From an IT perspective, we all understand that building quality into code is faster, quicker, and much less expensive than fixing bugs after production release. From a cost standpoint alone, building quality into software can cut costs by over 85%. But despite this understanding, many issues make quality assurance and testing difficult in the real world.

For example:

• Regression testing taking too long
• Difficulty in testing the many different types of mobile devices
• Visual quality of user interfaces being missed by QA automation tools
• DevOps making it difficult to keep up with the various types of QA testing
• Need to clean up and integrate data for better operations or to drive better business
decisions
• Shortage of talent and leadership to handle QA as digital solutions move forward

Critical aspects of Quality Engineering
Although the previous list is by no means comprehensive, it is a representative sample of the issues we hear from our many clients. A closer examination of them is worthwhile.

Automation – Correct QE Automation is critical to cutting testing costs and speeding regression testing. Based on your requirements, Celsior can guide you to the appropriate set of proprietary and open-source tools to meet your automation needs. This, of course, encompasses all aspects including test management, test automation, web services testing, mobile automation, performance testing, and security testing.

Mobile device testing – The wide variety of mobile hardware devices, operating systems, and form factors make mobile device testing one of the most requested areas for testing assistance. This has only been accelerated by the hybrid workplace and the wide-scale use of personal mobile devices. Celsior was an early provider in this area, as one of the first developers of a mobile automation toolset.

Visual quality of user interfaces – Testing automation, for all its many benefits, has sometimes paradoxically impacted the visual quality of user interfaces. Automation has frequently resulted in fewer human eyes on software’s user interface issues. This can result in quality issues like white font on white background, text and images off the edge of certain device form factors, multi-lingual interface issues,
etc. Celsior can assist with tools and processes to catch these issues.

QE in an Agile environment – QE is (or should be) a critical role in any Agile team. One of the principles of Agile is that at the end of a sprint, the deliverable is potentially deployable code—thus QE should be fully integrated into the Scrum team. Similarly, we find too often that Product Owners are not part of the sprint team, thus making it difficult to get timely answers to product questions at the daily Scrum meeting.

Data quality – Quality, of course, should not simply be a matter of bug-free code, but also of the data used for operations or business decisions. From this standpoint, Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) data quality is a critical function. Celsior has a full ETL Automation Solution Architecture incorporating Continuous Integration to help ensure an appropriate level of data quality.

Availability of QE talent and leadership – Staffing and retaining appropriate QE talent and leadership can be difficult. Celsior has a rich supply of on-shore, near-shore, and off-shore QE personnel and can assist with your needs through three alternative models: extended team, testing-as-a-service, and managed services.

Quality Engineering Services from Celsior

Celsior provides QE solutions incorporating elements of strategy, functional testing, automation and technical services. Across the board, the intent of these services is to help ensure your software projects are on time and on-budget with low defects, strong security, and scalable performance. In short, better, cheaper, faster!

 

Why Celsior for QE

Celsior has many years of expertise in QE and has been a pioneer in the industry. For example, we produced the first commercially available mobile testing automation toolset, and we were also one of the first developers of a framework to operationalize and take full advantage of the open-source Selenium tool.

Celsior’s QE expertise is also demonstrated by our ability to solve the tough QE challenges. Yes, other vendors can deal with the run-of-the-mill issues, but Celsior has the expertise to handle the issues that other companies have difficulties with.

Finally, Celsior stands out for the long-term relationships that clients have with our QE experts. Many companies bring out their senior QE people during the sales cycle, but then rapidly replace them with junior personnel after the sale. With Celsior, typically the senior QE people that you see during the sales process are the same people that you’ll be working with over the years.

Case Study

One of the best known FinTech companies in the U.S. needed to accelerate projects to operate their online lending exchange. This exchange empowered consumers to connect with multiple lenders, banks, and credit partners who would then compete for their business.

Celsior was engaged to provide the complete testing solution (manual, automation, database, mobile devices, Agile enablement, etc.) The testing and operational environment was complex with upstream and downstream systems, data consumption from third-party software, and multiple geographic locations. Requirements were frequently changed and regression and functional test cases were sparse.

Celsior deployed a blended 30+ member team of on-shore and off-shore QE personnel and helped move the client from manual to automated QE processes. We also recommended strategies to move the client’s QE direction forward and help drive a four-quarter QE roadmap. The client’s senior director of QE said, “It is a total partnership in what Celsior brings to the table. They are always looking out for my team’s success.”

We performed more than 10,000 automated tests daily. As a result, defects that affect user experience and functionality plummeted. From a business standpoint, online user experience was absolutely key to the client’s success. This greatly improved user experience, thus, had a direct impact on the client’s revenue and profitability.

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