How to Build a Perfect Workflow With Remote QA Teams – Step 1

by TestFort News Editor on 06/6/2019

You have got an idea of a useful, high-tech application. You have gathered a dream team of like-minded people – technical specialists, and those who can help you arrange the development process – first-class managers. And now it is time to support your project with the first-class quality assurance. Since remote QA teams own a large base of physical devices and many qualified testers, this could be an excellent opportunity for a successful collaboration.

However, once you have selected a remote QA team and signed a contract, you need to organize the workflow in such a manner to make it clear and effective. This will help you to be sure that all testing processes pass without problems and unforeseen obstacles. But, how to overcome common mistakes related to collaboration with a remote QA team and have a guarantee that the testing phase will run smoothly? We try our best to answer the question further in this series of articles.

Establish Fruitful Communication

The first important step when you strive to develop the perfect workflow is to establish a clear, simple and transparent dialogue with your remote QA team. It will determine how quickly and accurately received data from testers will be transferred to developers and vice versa. Depending on your project complexity, you have to decide:

in what form the communication will take place (face-to-face, video, audio, instant messaging/email);
how frequently this should happen;
who will be involved in the process.

Let’s look closer at these points.

Types of Communication

Face-to-face interaction can bring maximum benefits when you are working alongside the remote QA team and you are able to attend meetings personally. This will allow you to be more involved in the process and offer more control. Moreover, it contributes to the development of a transparent and trusting relationship between you and your remote QA team. You can resolve QA problems faster by deciding how to resolve them efficiently together.

Video, audio, and text formats are recommended when you are in a different time zone with your remote QA team or when multiple call sessions during a workday are required. In addition, a text format is necessary if the entire communication process needs to be documented. This helps to avoid misunderstandings within development & testing processes (including changes in testing requirements, budget, and deadlines points).

We recommend mixing these approaches to make the workflow more transparent and well-documented. You can organize weekly meeting sessions for bug reports and task scheduling, and daily calls/text messages for instant problem-solving.

Also, usually there’s a person who is responsible for communication. An experienced project manager with well-developed soft skills can organize the workflow in order to bring maximum benefits to all teams that are involved in the process.

Who Should be Involved in Communication

From your side

Establishing a communication channel, try to point out who can be responsible for the dialogue with your remote QA team at the earliest stages of testing. The most reasonable way is to assign a local project manager who will save your time and efforts for solving global business challenges in the long run.

Besides excellent communication skills project managers should possess a technical background. This will help them to respond to testing issues quickly, prioritizing bugs carefully with more understanding.

This person must be someone you can trust. The project manager will represent goals of your company, which will be reflected in your software as a result. Thus, this person should be absolutely aware of the purpose for which you develop and test your software. However, if you do not have an opportunity for the project manager to join your team, hire an experienced QA engineer with well-developed communication skills.

From the side of remote QA team

Even if you have set up an ideal dialogue on your behalf, there still may be misunderstandings in communication when your remote QA team doesn’t follow established rules. If you see that your QA team is not working as efficiently as it can, pay attention to the following points:

The project manager (from the side of the remote QA team) is not a good communicator (does not know your industry, field of activity, etc). If you notice that this has happened, try to understand causes and change the situation as quickly as possible. Probably, replacing a current PM of your QA team can make communication more fruitful and effective.
A remote QA team should provide timely and meaningful feedback. If they are not, something inside the remote QA team may not work properly (not enough testing devices, misunderstandings within the team, etc).
Communication should be clear and transparent. When you feel miscommunication between you and a remote QA team, this may mean that something is going on behind your back (maybe there was a problem during the testing process that the team doesn’t want to tell you). Thus, pay attention to how open are the members of your remote QA team.
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) must be diligently composed and strictly enforced. This means that the remote QA team must provide you with a document in which all the points concerning communication process should be described.

Communication plays an immense role when it comes to the quality of testing services. Try to be attentive when you define fundamental points in it and do not waste too much time when you notice that something is wrong.

Once you have established a fruitful dialogue with your remote QA team, it’s time to choose a reliable management approach and make the process suitable for your specific testing needs. Read about this in our next article.

We Work With

Having one outside team deal with every aspect of quality assurance on your software project saves you time and money on creating an in-house QA department. We have dedicated testing engineers with years of experience, and here is what they can help you with.

Software is everywhere around us, and it’s essential for your testing team to be familiar with all the various types and platforms software can come with. In 21+ years, our QA team has tested every type of software there is, and here are some of their specialties.

There are dozens of different types of testing, but it takes a team of experts to know which ones are relevant to your software project and how to include them in the testing strategy the right way. These are just some of the testing types our QA engineers excel in.

The success of a software project depends, among other things, on whether it’s the right fit for the industry it’s in. And that is true not just for the development stage, but also for QA. Different industry have different software requirements, and our team knows all about them.

Full-Cycle Services

By Platform

By Type

Industries