The large backlog of apps and additional new apps added weekly, overwhelmed the client QA team and slippage of weekly targets
Highly skilled test analysts on the onsite team increased costs for the project
Ramped up a highly skilled offshore test analysts' team in a very short span of time for validation and testing.
Proposed an offshore – onshore hybrid model with offshore resources based in Madagascar for testing the apps and a minimal onsite team operated as Quality Control.
Our Client was able to test hundreds of apps weekly and clear the weekly backlog without spillover to the next week.
The cost reduced by 40% and our client has the flexibility to ramp up and ramp down team size based on workload increase.
Our client is a leading multinational technology company that is primarily focused on online advertising, search engine technology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, e-commerce and consumer electronics.
They have significant technological advantages in the field of artificial intelligence, search and online ads and is one of the world’s most valuable brands. They strive to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful for all.
Our client required tens of thousands of mobile apps to be tested continuously, and usage data was collected and leveraged to optimize the performance and reliability of the app. It was taking them weeks to complete the weekly backlog, and new apps were added weekly increasing the backlog with no end in sight. There was also the need to reduce the existing backlog and get testing on track to complete the weekly backlog that has accumulated.
Their plan to increase test analysts to the onsite team would significantly increase the costs for the project. There were also some constraints with the current process including:
These constraints posed a huge challenge for the program that resulted in:
The project ramp up was a phased approach:
The pilot phase
Analysis and planning was based on initial requirements, design workflows and project delivery mechanism. The delivery team researched optimal technology and tooling based on project objectives. The next logical step was a dry run of the solution on a sample set of apps, to optimize and make changes to the technology/tools. Once the proof of concept was established, the solution was showcased to the client for approval.
One-time effort
This phase was an extension of the pilot phase, with the goal being to scale the proof of concept to ramp up the project delivery capabilities in terms of processes, tools and people, address the thousands of pending apps and reduce it to a manageable level for the core team. There was a spike in resources to achieve the goal in a fixed time period, after which there was a ramp down of the team after achieving a steady state and then activities like process optimization, delivery performance metrics & measurement were implemented.
Ongoing effort
Based on the learning from the pilot and one-time phases, this phase established a long-term delivery strategy to address the current and future increase in testing backlog. The team was ramped down to a “core” group for the long term that optimized the delivery model which resulted in overall cost savings.
A hybrid model optimized delivery set the tone for long term project success
The service delivery solution that was deployed was designed to ensure that all the heavy lifting throughout the project lifecycle was done by the offshore team at the offshore Q Studios, with all the customer-facing activities being addressed by the onsite team.
Some of the project deliverables included:
A large percentage of the project delivery workload was handled by the offshore team and the onsite site team bridged the gap between the Client and offshore teams by being the liaison layer to mitigate any potential risk of miscommunication or delayed responses due time zone difference.
Download the PDF
