5 ways to sell QA and testing to your boss
Every year, QA Managers have to fight for budget. Read 5 compelling arguments that will save them money and convince them to use cloud testing as a service.
How cloud testing as a service makes the hard sell easier
Every year, QA Managers have to go cap in hand to company Executives to try and win sufficient budget for their testing. Here, I present 5 compelling arguments for you that will sway their opinion and convince them to turn to cloud testing as a service.
It is a sad fact of life that QA is not as sexy as other roles in a software company. This is obvious when you look at the lower salaries paid to test engineers versus product analysts or developers. Because of this QA Managers often face a tough battle trying to get sufficient budget to do their job properly. However, testing is actually one of the most important things in any company and deserves to be funded properly.
In this blog, I will give you 5 compelling arguments to persuade your top team of the importance of testing and QA. At the end, you should be able to convince them that cloud testing as a service can maximize their ROI while minimizing their product risk.
Why QA is the ugly duckling of SW development
For some reason, QA has always had a bad reputation in software companies. Executives view QA as an expensive money sink (albeit one that is a necessary evil). Developers view QA engineers as fussy, stubborn fools hell-bent on causing them problems. The reason for this is simple. When QA is going well and there are no bugs being found, executives start to wonder why they are spending so much money on it. When there are lots of bugs being found, developers sometimes end up feeling victimized. Moreover, executives can accuse QA of blocking a new release by being too persnickety. And this dichotomy will always lie at the heart of testing.
Unfortunately, there is no way around this. So, as a QA Manager, you need to work hard to show the true value that QA and testing bring to your company. Luckily, modern technology gives you an ever-expanding toolkit for testing, from intelligent test recorders to cloud testing as a service and intelligent test agents. These new tools and techniques make it easier for you to show your boss the true value of QA.
1. Testing protects your brand
Bugs are the bane of every user’s life. Whether it’s a mobile game, a social media app, or a business-critical tool, absolutely everyone hates buggy software. Even worse, as soon as you release a piece of software with a bad bug, your reputation will take a hit. Once upon a time, you could hope that releasing a fixed version would quickly solve the problem. But nowadays, users will have already turned to social media and review sites to lambast you. And, sadly, that sort of mud always sticks. So, the more testing you can do, the better the chances of finding every bug. In effect, you are trying to protect your brand by finding every bug before an end user does.
The problem is, modern applications are incredibly complex to test. This complexity skyrockets when you add in things like responsive UIs, cross-browser testing, multiple OSes, and user customization. As a result, modern applications are exponentially harder to test than their predecessors. This means you need to turn to an effective automated testing solution. Here at Functionize, we provide you with autonomous cloud testing as a service using an intelligent test agent. Every test is written in English, and it only needs to be written once to work across any device or browser. Tests run at cloud-scale, and they self-heal when you update your UI. We sum this up in our Manifesto when we state: “Autonomous testing is your brand’s shield and protector”.
2. Cloud-based testing slashes your delivery time
Modern applications are increasingly complex, offering users greater chances to customize their experience. At the same time, users access applications through an ever-greater range of devices. Many applications are entirely web-based, but they need to work equally well on any browser or device. The upshot is, modern applications take a long time to test properly. Not only do you have a lot of test cases, but each case has to be repeated on maybe 20 or 30 device/browser combinations.
Test automation
Test automation has long been the preferred approach to reduce the time needed for testing. But as every QA manager knows, test automation is not a magic bullet. For a start, traditional test scripts take days or even weeks to write, debug and adapt to work cross-browser. Then there’s the perennial issue of test maintenance. All your tests break each time your product is updated. This includes UI changes, tweaks to the layout, or your UX designers refining a user flow. Every time this happens, your test automation engineers are forced to spend days fixing things. Finally, there’s the test infrastructure problem. Running hundreds of automated tests is incredibly hard on your own infrastructure. Test scripts are slow to run, and you often need to reconfigure things during test runs.
Solving the infrastructure problem is pretty easy – you just need to move to a cloud testing as a service model. Functionize takes things several stages further though. Our product cloud testing as a service with an intelligent test agent. We have done away with test scripts completely. Instead, you simply need to submit test plans written in plain English. Even better, all these tests then work on any browser and device. Our use of AI has made test maintenance a thing of the past. Our system learns how your UI is really working, so when you make a change it simply updates all the tests. Last but not least, the Functionize Test Cloud can support thousands of concurrent tests. So, you can complete your testing far quicker.
3. Testing improves your product
Traditionally, people have viewed testing just in terms of finding any bugs in your product. But testing can also show you much more. For instance, a well-designed test plan should check every user journey through your application. If you instrument things well, you can look in detail at how your backend performs, comparing your current build with previous ones. One big benefit of cloud testing as a service is it allows you to store the results of all previous test runs.
Here at Functionize, we have devised an especially-useful metric which we call “visual completion”. This measures how long it takes for any particular page in your application to become functional for the end-user. You can see how this changes between releases. If it increases, it can be an early indication of problems in your backend.
4. Testing drives revenues
Few Executives would call customer service or solutions architects a waste of resources. Proper customer service is key to keeping your users happy, and in turn that will drive revenues. But the same is true of testing. Stable, well-tested, bug-free software will generate more revenue than buggy, unstable, poorly-tested software. Not only that, it will also reduce the burden on customer service!
For any company to flourish, you must keep your customer base happy, especially when you are growing at scale. The best way to do this is to release the highest quality software you can while keeping up with the demands of your customers for new and better features. This makes testing one of the main drivers for revenues. The more testing you can do, the better your software, the easier your sales become, and the fewer customers you lose!
5. Cloud testing as a service saves you money
They say money talks. So, the most compelling argument you can make to your bosses is that cloud testing as a service will save them significant amounts of money. Let’s look at all the reasons why.
Firstly, your test engineers will be more productive. Our measurements show that creating Functionize tests is 11x faster than traditional test scripts. Secondly, you will complete more (automated) tests in less time. This means you will save on costly manual testing time. Thirdly, you can get rid of all your in-house test infrastructure. Not only is this a direct saving, it also frees up valuable DevOps and sysadmin time that would otherwise be lost. Moreover, with cloud testing as a service, you are only ever paying for what you actually use. By contrast, many companies will have in-house test infrastructure standing idle much of the time. If you add in the indirect savings in increased efficiency, reduced bugs, and increased revenues, cloud testing a service begins to look very attractive.
Conclusions
As a QA Manager, you have been used to trying to defend your budget. In this blog ,we have given you the 5 best arguments to pull out next time you need to try to fight your corner in a budget meeting. Some of these arguments are true for any cloud testing as a service provider, but many of them apply particularly to our intelligent test agent. Don’t believe what we say? Contact us for a demo and we will prove it!
