QASource Blog

Effective QA is not made or broken by any one thing. Rather, it’s a combination of all the right stuff: knowledge transfer, skilled engineers, great team culture, and the appropriate testing methodologies. When all of the checkboxes are marked, the result is a successful project and a stronger product that’s ready for market.

Networking conferences and meetups for coders are a dime a dozen. But where can a software testing professional find a place to meet, network and learn from fellow QA engineers? If you’re anywhere near Silicon Valley, you’ll find it at the East Bay Agilistry and QA Meetup Group.

Think fast! How much are repetitive manual tests costing you by the hour? By the day, week and year? Probably a lot. Certain manual testing techniques have their place in the software development lifecycle. But overall, automation is winning the day. A well-designed automation framework can boost your team’s productivity, help you release at lightning speed and, best of all, cut a big chunk off of your testing budget.

Automation testing is ubiquitous in today’s market thanks to improved tools and methodologies. But it takes expertise to implement, execute and maintain automation over time. Many companies continue to shy away from automating because their team lacks experience or the necessary training is too costly. Hiring a QA partner to implement is the perfect solution: you’ll get the thorough test coverage you need while keeping resources lean and improving team productivity.

Each month, our Advanced Technology group evaluates the latest QA testing tools and we help pass on their findings to you. This month, we give you a few helpful tips on creating test data along with overviews of Protractor and JNA. These updates will help boost your team's efficiency and overall productivity while keeping you in the loop with the latest industry tech standards.

Over the years we have been asked, and have answered, nearly every possible question about QA. The one recurring question that no one can answer clearly is, “What is the right mix of QA engineers to development engineers?” We admit it: we don’t have a firm answer, either. The ideal ratio of QA to dev depends on several key factors, each of which may change on a project-to-project basis. For this reason, we recommend starting with a small team and scaling up or down as needed.