Crowd testing ( Eng. Crowdtesting , crowd - “crowd” and testing - “testing”) - attracting a wide range of people to the tasks of ensuring product quality to use their creative abilities, knowledge and experience of the type of subcontracting on a voluntary basis using information and communication technologies (as usually specialized crowd platforms).
The term “crowdtesting” came from the term “crowdsourcing”, which was proposed in 2006 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson to describe the outsourcing part of the work of a group of volunteers.
What is crowd testing
Crowd testing is the use of online community members in projects to assess the quality of customer experience when interacting with a digital channel (mobile application, website, any other digital service), attracted through specialized technology platforms to assess the quality of customer experience when interacting with a digital product or channel. This approach is the development and next level of beta maturity.
Crowd testing can be carried out at different stages of software development, starting from the evaluation of ideas (even before the appearance of a prototype solution) until the final check of a functioning beta version or a solution already released in a productive one. The complexity of the tasks of quality testing, evaluating usability , testing ideas / prototypes, comparing with competitors, end to end testing that can be solved using this approach, is almost unlimited.
If in traditional outsourcing, testers are employees of a contracting company, then in crowd testing, independent representatives of the online community carry out testing. Crowd testing can be used to test any type of software, but it is most effective when testing solutions oriented to the end user (user-centric) and intended for mass use, the main difference of which is primarily that they must be correctly executed on any user device, anytime, anywhere.
Crowd testing proves its effectiveness in various industries - the financial sector, telecommunications, retail, the oil sector, manufacturing, etc. - for any company with user-centric solutions designed for mass use, because the high quality of client experience is the main competitive advantage. Crowd testing is used by industry leaders with a high level of maturity who systematically approach the issue of customer experience quality and are engaged in its constant monitoring and improvement, as this is critically important for the market. Many European companies use crowdfunding testing as Quality Gate - a center for checking the readiness of website releases, a mobile launch application as the most cost-effective way to solve this problem.
Key Benefits of Crowd Testing
1) Testing by the target group. Access to a virtually unlimited online audience, unattainable with classic quality assurance approaches, whether in-house or outsource / outstaff testing. Due to crowd testing, the client has the opportunity to attract any circle of experts and ordinary users to test their digital product or channel.
2) Multi-platform . The online community already has various combinations of devices, operating systems, and browsers. This allows you to verify that the digital product is functioning correctly on different platforms that differ in the operating systems used, screen sizes, installed browsers, different user applications, etc.
3) Testing in real (natural) conditions. The ability to verify the quality and performance of the product in real life, rather than laboratory conditions. After conducting laboratory testing in ideal conditions of stable office wifi, when the application (and the tester) is not interrupted by incoming calls, SMS or notifications from social networks, the battery is fully charged, you can not be 100% sure that in real life, under external interruptions , coating problems, etc., everything will go just as smoothly.
4) Testing speed and scalability. The use of crowd testing allows you to make the testing process more flexible, providing the ability to work with large differences in loading on projects. On crowdfunding platforms, thousands of users living in different time zones are registered, that is, available at any time. Since the testing process is fast and flexible, it can be integrated into existing production cycles, including agile development.
See also
- Crowdfunding
- Crowdsourcing