The Xtreme Labs Guide to Quality Assurance

February 24, 2013 Rodney Wong

Have you ever downloaded an app that is buggy and crash-prone?

If I download an app that doesn’t work properly on first use, I uninstall it immediately. I don’t speak for every user, but I imagine this is the case for quite a few. After all, why waste time using something that doesn’t work off the bat?

I work in the Quality Assurance (QA) Department at Xtreme Labs. Our goal is to keep our clients and their users happy by ensuring that every product we touch functions perfectly.

At Xtreme Labs, we take QA extremely seriously. (Quality pays off: our app for Viggle was just nominated for an award, and the Shutterstock app we built won a Webby Award.)

Here are some of the things we do to ensure that everything we work on is of the highest quality:

Iterative Process

Developers submit their builds weekly to QA; this helps us detect bugs immediately, before they become ingrained in the code. We provide feedback in our online tracking system, allowing our clients and ourselves to prioritize features and issues.

The engineers use our feedback during the following week of development, after which they submit the next build to us.

This short development cycle and feedback loop means we’re able to move extremely quickly to resolve minor issues before they become major problems.

Familiarity with Developers

We work with our developers to improve user flow, story construction, and many other elements of our products. While we like to move fast, we also strongly believe that our work does the best talking for us. As such, we don’t release anything that is short of our own yardstick.

As we go through our colleagues’ builds with a fine-toothed comb, we know how to give them feedback in the way best suited to their own method of working. We’re extremely comfortable in communicating with them and being honest, and collaborating with them to find solutions.

Hundreds of Devices

Android screen size specifications and hardware often vary, and Windows 8 devices come in many various form factors. You could blow thousands on every piece of hardware you want to test, or you can use our inventory of smartphones and tablets across all platforms.

With over five years of experience testing over 300 products, we’ve amassed quite the collection of devices. Through our relationships with OS providers and OEMs, we have access to software and hardware releases before they’re launched publicly. This allows us to test for compatibility with new devices, platforms, and operating systems, ensuring our clients’ products are up-to-date at all times.

Final Thoughts

Many large companies work with us specifically to perform quality assurance on the products they build in-house, and we give them the same treatment that we give everything we develop ourselves. If you’re looking for an experienced partner to ensure your product is all systems go, contact us and we’ll give your product the Xtreme Labs treatment.

Connect with Rodney on LinkedIn.

About the Author

Biography

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