QASource Blog

In order to expand a product at a sustained pace, you need strong development and QA foundations that set you up for future success. Like any project, planning goes a long way when you want to make the most of test automation.

Startups are defined by speed and scrappiness. Think breakneck time to market, lean teams pushing the limit on what can be done in a day and releases that prioritize big, innovative leaps over more gradual, iterative perfection.

There is nothing more exciting than your first experience of success. Watching your vision and hard work take shape and become a real product in the hands of real users can be like actualizing a dream. For many startups, those early days are about pulling together as a small, dedicated team with everyone pushing the limits of their skills and experience to produce innovation within the tightest of resource limits. With success comes the promise of growth, and your dreams and goals become larger.

Do not fail because you failed to ask for help. We all know the failure rates among startups are high. Very high. Some estimations put the failure rate at as much as 90%, which could be as many as 120,000 companies a day. What is most concerning about those failures is how frequently they are attributed to inexperience. That might be domain inexperience, capitalization inexperience or product testing inexperience.

Back in the day, outsourcing was implemented purely as a cost-cutting measure. Organizations would assess which services were vital enough to be kept in-house, and farm out the rest to outside vendors. The work got done, but often, it just wasn’t up to par with what an onsite team could have accomplished. Reasons for this varied -- poor onboarding, insufficient communication, lack of familiarity with the product -- the list goes on.

It’s no secret that speed to market is vital to the success of a startup. Not only does it get the product out the door and to customers, but velocity and full pipelines also please venture capitalists and other investors who provide funding for a startup’s runway.

If there’s one thing startups know all too well, it’s that speed to market is crucial to a company’s success. However, customers today are increasingly unwilling to put up with faulty products and buggy apps, so developers cannot afford not to test. So how can an organization choose which to invest in, speed or quality?

All companies, whether they are a startup or an established company, should invest in some form of testing. Since QA engineers are trained in destructive engineering practices, investing in testing allows companies to be aware of the risks up front and get the right coverage. Everyone has their own opinion of what QA for a startup should look like, however, and the amount of differing opinions gives rise to many misconceptions. Here we’re clearing up 6 of the most common misconceptions about startup QA.

One of the main challenges startups face is accomplishing critical functions when there isn't enough money, resources or time to staff properly. While it's inevitable that members of a startup wear some different hats, there comes a point when it's unsustainable to continue doing this at every level if the organization wants to grow. It makes more sense to outsource. But which functions does it make sense to contract out? Let's look at 5 areas.