Hire QA engineers

Yalantis experts divide the software testing process into the following stages, which all contribute to developing a high-quality solution for your business:

1. Early QA involvement for catching issues early and reducing costs: Diving into the project requirements before a single line of code is written. This helps catch issues early and save costs on development and bug fixes later in the process.
2. Flexible test planning to adapt to the project’s evolving needs: Planning tests for each development cycle (sprint) separately, not all at once. This keeps things agile and adapts to changing product requirements as the client gets feedback and refine their vision. This way, our experts focus on the most critical features and risks each sprint.
3. Efficient test design for thorough testing without slowing down development: Using a mix of detailed test cases (title, preconditions, steps to be taken, and expected results) for complex scenarios and test checklists for basic user flows. This helps maintain development speed by reducing the time spent on test documentation while still ensuring thorough coverage.
4. Setup of test environment to minimize delays: Ensuring the software testing environment is ready to go when new features are complete. For example, this includes preparing a test device with a certain version of an operating system, reducing operational delays that could occur if testers had to set up environments for each test run.
5. Complex test execution for a balanced approach. Using both manual and automated testing (we cover what those are later in text) to cover all aspects of the product, from front-end functionality to back-end performance and security.
6. Test stats tracking to get clear metrics: Using testing tools like TestRail to track all test stats. This provides concrete KPIs the client can be after, like test coverage, pass/fail rates, and the number of bugs caught before release. Without these metrics, clients struggle to track the solution’s progress effectively and might miss critical insights about its quality and readiness.

Finally, Yalantis’ QA experts use tools like Jira and TestRail to track bugs and provide detailed reports on software testing progress and results. This clear and timely reporting keeps you informed about progress, risks, and overall product quality. It also helps you measure the impact on customer satisfaction by giving us a clear view of what’s been tested and improved in each release.

27 types of testing Yalantis’ QA experts perform and their business value

Yalantis’ experts cover a comprehensive suite of QA services to ensure your product’s quality and success. They apply:

1. basic testing to ensure that the core functionality of your solution works as expected
2. extended testing to ensure that a solution is robust, reliable, and secure in a variety of real-world scenarios

Let’s take a closer look at both these testing approaches.

Basic testing types

Yalantis QA experts perform these main basic testing types:

1. Static testing (requirements testing): Reviewing requirements and design documents to catch issues before development begins, saving time and money; checking that solution requirements are complete and consistent.
2. Functional testing: Verifies that each function of the software works according to the specification.
3. Smoke testing (build verification testing): Quick stability checks after changes or updates to the software, such as bug fixes, feature changes, or server migrations.
4. Basic usability testing: Evaluates how user-friendly and intuitive the software is from an end-user perspective.
5. Compatibility testing: Ensures the software works correctly across different devices, operating systems, and browsers.
6. User interface (UI) testing: Checks the graphical user interface to ensure it meets specifications and design standards.
7. Installation testing: Verifies that the software installs correctly, with all features properly set up and functioning as expected across different environments.
8. Confirmation testing: Re-testing a specific test case that previously failed to confirm that the issue has been fixed.
9. Maintenance testing: Ongoing testing to ensure the software remains stable and functional over time.
10. Regression testing: Ensures that previously developed and tested software still performs correctly after changes. Unlike smoke testing, which is a quick check of critical functionalities, regression testing is more comprehensive, covering a wider range of features to ensure new changes haven’t negatively impacted existing functionality.

Extended testing types

As for extended testing, these are its main types Yalantis QA experts perform:

1. Unit testing: Checks individual parts of the code to ensure they work as expected in isolation.
2. Integration testing: Verifies that different modules or components of the software system work together correctly. This ensures that various parts of the application, such as different microservices, databases, APIs, or user interface elements, interact properly when combined.
3. Automated API testing: Using automated scripts to verify that the software’s underlying communication channels are functioning correctly.
4. UI automation testing: Simulates user interactions to ensure the interface is easy to use and error-free.
5. Extended usability testing: Evaluates the system’s ease of use from an external user’s perspective.
6. Compliance testing: Ensures the software adheres to relevant standards, regulations, and laws.
7. Accuracy testing: Verifies the system provides correct results with required precision.
8. Localization (L10N) testing: Checks how well the application is adapted for a specific target language and culture.
9. Internationalization (I18N) testing: Ensures proper display of language-specific characters and formats across different locales.
10. Reliability testing: Determines if the software performs required functions under specified conditions over time.
11. Scalability testing: Confirms that the software can handle increased traffic and user loads without breaking down.
12. Performance testing: Ensures the system functions efficiently within given constraints.
13. Load testing: Checks how the software performs under heavy traffic or usage.
14. Stress testing: Assesses system behavior beyond anticipated workloads or with limited resources.
15. Volume testing: Tests software performance with large amounts of data.
16. Endurance testing: Testing how the software performs over long periods of use.
17. Spike testing: Seeing how the software reacts to sudden spikes in user traffic.

How these testing types translate into tangible business value

Risk mitigation and cost savings. Static testing and functional testing catch issues early, reducing expensive post-release fixes. Regression and smoke testing prevent unexpected issues from new changes, saving time and resources on bug fixes, customer support, and potential loss of revenue due to software failures.

Enhanced user satisfaction and retention. Usability and UI testing ensure a positive user experience by identifying and resolving navigation issues, confusing interfaces, or inconsistent design elements. Compatibility testing broadens your market reach by ensuring your product works across various platforms.

Improved product quality and reliability. Unit, integration, and API testing ensure each part of your software works correctly, both individually and together. Reliability and endurance testing confirm your product can perform consistently over time, building trust with users.

Compliance and global market readiness. Compliance testing helps avoid legal issues and opens up regulated markets. Localization and internationalization testing prepare your product for global markets by ensuring proper language translation, cultural appropriateness, and correct handling of region-specific data formats.

Performance and scalability assurance. Performance, load, stress, and scalability testing ensure your product can handle growth and peak usage times. This prevents costly outages and maintains user satisfaction during high-traffic periods.

Operational efficiency. Automated testing (UI, API) allows for faster development cycles and quicker time-to-market. Maintenance and confirmation testing keep your product stable over time, reducing support costs such as customer service staff, bug fixing resources, and potential compensation for service disruptions.

Data integrity and accuracy. Accuracy and volume testing ensure your product handles data correctly. In turn, accurate data prevents costly errors in financial transactions, inventory management, or user analytics that could lead to poor strategic choices.

Adaptability to market changes. Spike testing helps prepare for sudden increases in demand, allowing you to capitalize on unexpected opportunities. By simulating sudden traffic surges, you can ensure your system remains stable during viral marketing campaigns, product launches, or unexpected market shifts.

By going for comprehensive QA testing, you’re not just improving your software — you’re protecting your brand reputation, enhancing user satisfaction, reducing operational costs, and positioning your product for sustainable growth in a competitive market.

Test automation: Smart efficiency, not just for the sake of it

Yalantis’ QA engineers recognize the importance of efficiency in the testing process. This is where test automation comes into play, offering a powerful solution for repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks. It’s not about replacing human testers. Rather, it’s about making their lives easier and letting them focus on the complex stuff that requires human judgment and creativity.

We recommend automated test quality control (ATQC) to clients only when it’s necessary for their project. When you hire software QA testers with us, we customize our approach to meet each client’s needs, ensuring efficient use of resources and budget.

Test automation approach at Yalantis

Our experts implement automation for main user flows in long-term projects, particularly those frequently undergoing changes or feature additions. This approach offers several benefits:

1. Time efficiency: Automated tests replace repetitive manual checks, allowing QA specialists to focus on complex, custom scenarios.
2. Consistency: Automated tests perform identical checks each time, reducing human error.
3. Targeted automation: We carefully select which tests to automate based on frequency, complexity, and project needs.

When is test automation a good idea?

Automation is most beneficial for frequently run tests, time-consuming tests, and those scheduled for off-hours execution. The automation approach is also tailored to the specific type of testing:

• Regression tests: Automate key user scenarios to ensure new changes don’t break existing functionality.
• Smoke tests: Get quick feedback on a product’s stability after updates with automated smoke tests.
• Data-driven tests: Automate tests that need to be run with various inputs or large amounts of data.
  Performance/load tests: These tests must be automated to simulate real-world user loads and stress conditions.

Not all tests should be automated, though. Yalantis QA experts avoid automating:

• User experience and usability tests that need human feedback
• Tests that can’t be fully automated, such as:
   – Tests requiring physical device interactions (e.g., testing phone call interruptions)
   – Tests involving captcha or two-factor authentication
   – Tests for subjective visual elements like color gradients or animation smoothness
• One-time tests or those needing immediate execution

These types of tests are more effective when done manually because:

1. they require human judgment and perception, which automated testing tools can’t replicate accurately
2. they often involve unpredictable scenarios or subjective assessments that are difficult to program
3. manual testing allows for real-time observations and immediate adjustments based on user behavior or unexpected issues
4. human testers can provide valuable qualitative feedback and insights that automated tests might miss

Types of automated tests we use

1. Backend tests:
    – Used for API, integration, and database testing
    – Detect bugs early in development
2. Graphical user interface (GUI) and end-to-end (E2E) tests:
    – For web and mobile platforms
    – Simulate real user interactions
    – Test complete business scenarios
    – GUI tests are good for catching visual bugs and ensuring the UI is working as expected
    – E2E tests are better for verifying the overall functionality and flow of the system

Manual QA specialists create test cases, then ATQC specialists automate selected tests. We integrate these automated tests into our continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes. This integration allows for regular, automatic execution of tests whenever code changes are pushed to our shared repository. By doing so, we can quickly catch bugs, reduce manual work, and accelerate our product release cycles.

While powerful, test automation isn’t always cost-effective, especially for smaller projects. We carefully assess each project’s needs, automating only where it provides clear benefits. By strategically incorporating test automation, we improve our QA process, ensuring both thoroughness and efficiency in software testing.

A balanced testing approach

The most successful QA strategies use a mix of manual and automated testing:

• Manual testing is essential for exploring new features, evaluating user experience, and finding those tricky edge cases that automated tests might miss.
• Automated testing takes over the repetitive tasks, freeing up human testers to do what they do best – think critically, solve problems, and advocate for the best possible user experience.