Typical Challenge of Scale-up Companies

As tech companies scale, they often encounter unexpected challenges: the more features, the greater the strain on systems. What starts as small issues can quickly escalate into critical bugs and frequent downtimes, affecting both new and existing functionality. Business-critical systems become unstable, leading to operational disruptions.

This typically happens because essential practices like process optimization, documentation, and testing methodologies are neglected in the rush to grow. These oversights eventually create systemic issues that can go unnoticed by internal teams but are clear to external experts.

If your company is experiencing increased system failures, rising support demands, or testing inefficiencies, it may be time to reevaluate your approach.

How can we help?

An outside perspective sees things more clearly. Our team brings an outside perspective to uncover hidden issues. We offer a comprehensive QA audit to fix immediate problems and ensure your digital ecosystem is built for long-term success. Our proactive and multi-layered approach ensures long-term scalability and reliability.

Our methodology covered Preliminary Assessment, Testing Strategy and Coverage Analysis, Test Automation Evaluation, Integrations and Microservice Review, Defect Management Analysis, and Performance and Security Testing.

What we proposed for the beginning:

1. Preliminary Assessment and Information Gathering

• Documentation review: Review the existing documentation to gain a general understanding of the system, solution architecture, technologies used, and development processes.
  • Architecture documentation, microservice interaction diagrams.
  • Business process and requirements descriptions.
  • API and integration documentation.
• Assessment of the current QA processes: Study how the testing process is organized. This includes:
  • Testing strategies.
  • Approaches to regression testing.
  • Test automation processes.
  • Tools and technologies in use.

2. Analysis of the Testing Strategy and Coverage

• Test coverage evaluation: Analyze how different components of the system (modules, microservices, integrations) are covered:
  • Unit test coverage.
  • Integration and system test coverage.
  • API and user interface testing (if applicable).
• Validation of test prioritization: Check whether test prioritization criteria exist and how they function based on code and system changes.
• Critical path analysis: Verify if the system's critical paths are tested, and if there are tests for business-critical scenarios.

3. Evaluation of Test Automation

• Level of automation: Assess how automated the tests are:
  • What types of tests are automated (unit, integration, UI, API)
  • Tools used for automation (Selenium, JUnit, Postman, etc.).
• Assessment of CI/CD processes: Check how effectively CI/CD works. How often automated tests are run, how quickly they provide results, and whether they cover critical changes.
• Automation support: Check how maintainable the automated tests are. Are there issues with flaky tests, and how long does it take to write or fix new tests?

4. Analysis of Integrations and Microservice Interactions

• Contract testing verification: Analyze whether contract testing for microservices is in place. This testing helps ensure that services interact correctly through APIs.
• Integration testing: Assess test coverage for integrations with external systems, payment gateways, services, etc.
• Monitoring and logging: Check how the monitoring of microservice interactions is organized. Are errors logged, are alerts configured, and are logs analyzed for problem detection?

5. Defect Management Process Analysis

• Defect tracking system: Evaluate how defect management is handled:
  • Tools used (Jira, Bugzilla, etc.).
  • The efficiency of bug tracking and the speed of resolution.
• Defect metrics analysis: Analyze defect statistics:
  • The number of bugs at different stages (in UAT, PROD).
  • Bug severity (impact on the business).
  • Time to fix defects.

6. Evaluation of Release Management Processes

• Release frequency: Check how often new system versions are released, how stable the releases are, and if there are incidents in production.
• Release testing strategies: Review how final testing is conducted before release, and whether regression testing procedures exist before each build.

7. QA Team Interaction with Other Teams

• Communication evaluation: Assess how the testing team interacts with developers, analysts, and business stakeholders. Do all teams understand the testing processes and goals?
• Business involvement: Check if the business is engaged in testing (e.g., through UAT).

8. Metrics and Reporting Analysis

• Key metrics analysis: Collect and analyze metrics:
  • Test coverage percentage.
  • Several critical defects are found at different stages.
  • Test execution time, and release cycle duration.
• Evaluation of testing efficiency: Assess how testing impacts product quality, whether it helps reduce production errors, and if it speeds up releases.

9. Performance and Security Testing Assessment

• Load testing check: Evaluate how load testing is conducted, whether microservices have been tested under high loads, and if real usage scenarios are simulated.
• Security testing: Verify if there are processes in place for security testing, including vulnerability scans, SQL injection tests, XSS checks, etc.

10. Report Generation and Recommendations

• Audit report: Prepare a detailed report on the audit findings, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the current testing process.
• Recommendations: Based on the audit, provide for improving QA processes, increasing automation, enhancing microservice interaction, and optimizing test coverage.

What Do You Get as a Result?

• Assessment of the current state
• Practical recommendations for improvement
• A calculation of the economic impact of our recommendations.

If the practical recommendations are implemented, additional results may include:

• Reduction in the number of incidents
• Decreased dissatisfaction from customers and product owners
• Reduction in downtime
• Increased system performance after performance testing
• Reduce time to market

What Does a Potential Audit Project Look Like?

Based on our experience, a QA audit takes up to 3 months and is carried out by a team of professionals, including a Head of QA, QA Automation, and QA Analyst. The dedicated team conducts data collection, analysis, and evaluation, and prepares practical recommendations.

Our audit ensures short-term fixes and long-term improvements for your business, all for an indicative cost of around $30,000.