Customer
ocleen.TV, a Karlsruhe startup providing personalized advertising and ads-sponsored TV services, needed a supplier with experience in offshore software testing.
Challenge
The customer aimed to create the cloud-based backend system for personalized TV advertising. To deliver the solution on time, the project was undertaken by a globally distributed team with software development located in Ukraine, quality assurance in Belarus, and project coordination in Germany.
QA activities encountered several challenges:
• Insufficient testing documentation;
• A large number of components and complex interfaces increased the scope of integration testing;
• No reference to any previously built similar solutions or prototypes.
Solution
A dedicated team of 3 QA engineers tested a cloud-based backend system with an advert server, a profiling server, ad editing software on a set-top box, and an Android app. Types of testing performed include functional and non-functional (usability, performance and stress testing), component, integration and system testing.
SCRUM-based software development process allowed reacting immediately to any changes in the requirements, and enabled regular feedback and reporting to the customer.
To fix all the major regressions within the current sprint, the team used nightly builds. Furthermore automating UI tests with Robotium Android test automation framework saved 50% of testers’ time.
Results
Outsourced quality assurance facilitated product development and made a radical difference to how work was organized in the globally distributed team.
Detailed testing documentation helped to synchronize efforts for the whole project team.
Running manual and automatic tests simultaneously increased the speed of build releases 2X times. The project team delivered alpha version of the system in 3 months instead of 6, and the final solution was implemented in 7 months.
