How Our Testers Become a Part of Your Team

Internal resources are tough to come by for engineering and QA teams. This is a problem when heavy workloads unexpectedly end up on your desk. Need more full-time help? Good luck getting approval — and then hiring and onboarding — when you’re ramping up for a new release.

This is where external testers can make a difference. They enable you to test across time zones, in different languages and device configurations. With a flexible external team, you can scale as needed, at any point in development. This is perfect for when you’re about to update or launch a product.

Applause's uTest community of vetted testers is available on demand, ready to bring QA expertise to you at any stage of the SDLC, including during the design, testing and production stages. Our testers integrate into Agile and CI/CD environments, and can specialize in different types of testing.

By quickly scaling up when needed with Applause’s fully integrated testing community, your engineering and QA teams minimize overhead and costs, and free up developers’ time for other critical projects.

Andy Wolf, CPO of Blueport Commerce, says of his experience, "Applause has provided exactly what we expected in terms of regression coverage and device coverage which is why we went into the contract in the first place. But they have gone above and beyond in terms of enhancing the overall quality of our platform and feeling like part of our team."

So, how exactly do Applause's uTest testers fully integrate into your team? Some of our most trusted community members describe their relationships with companies, in their own words.

Develop together, release better

As part of Applause’s fully managed service, we work with you to prioritize the areas of the QA process that you care most about. For example, if you need help testing APIs in Europe, we select the members of our testing community who match the demographics, experience and skills that fit those needs. This curated Applause team is built out to give you insight into how your product behaves across hundreds of device and OS combinations around the globe.

Your Applause testing team becomes intimately familiar with your product and preferred practices for QA. Over time, they become an integral part of your SDLC. Cliff Kavanagh, an Applause Community leader from Canada, shares his experience developing a long-term relationship with a global manufacturing leader.

“With [the company’s] platform update, Applause was able to handle the majority of testing, and I personally took the user stories they had developed and built a test suite that we used for testing,” Kavanagh said. “This is often referred back to for maintenance releases.”

Added Kavanagh, “I participate in several meetings a week with the team, as well as their U.S. counterparts and the U.S. development teams.”

Based in Mexico, Miriam de la Vega is a Test Team Lead within the uTest Community. She participates in test cases for digital products created by media industry leaders.. Due to her regular engagement, de la Vega is now an expert on those companies’ processes and builds, and helps them release their software with confidence.

“I started working on those [testing] cycles, and step by step I got to know much better the products and the way people worked in the team,” de la Vega said. “It was one of my biggest challenges yet, but also the more enriching for me; I had the luck of working in an incredible team.”

They have gone above and beyond in terms of enhancing the overall quality of our platform and feeling like part of our team.

Andy Wolf, CPO of Blueport Commerce

Communicating with external teams doesn’t have to be hard

Throughout an engagement with Applause, members of your curated testing team become experts with your product and SDLC. With their consistent support, your teams have the capacity to quickly find and correct bugs before they affect your customers’ experience.

“If we have questions, we don’t need to send emails to the Applause support team — we just message [them] on Slack and they respond immediately,” Skyscanner QA engineer Tamas Chernoczy-Nagy said of his experience communicating with Applause QA experts.

Just as they did for Skyscanner, and Shake Shack, QA experts from Applause's uTest testing community will build long-term relationships with you. Having access to flexible skill sets and areas of QA knowledge gives your team the capacity to release faster, as well as increased confidence, in the digital experiences you create. Best of all, with testers integrated seamlessly into your existing teams, you don't skip a beat.