The Challenge

Cost of poor quality is a simple concept – mistakes become more expensive as deployment of a project approaches. One of the world’s largest online retailers reached out to Magenic in order to ensure a successful launch and eliminate risks associated with cost of poor quality. With an aggressive timeline and rigid deadline around the corner, the client realized that it lacked the capacity to field a testing practice proportionate to its development efforts. The client’s low tester-to-developer ratio was presenting a major risk that could jeopardize the success of the entire project.

When their first attempt to launch the new ecommerce storefront had to be rolled back due to excessive bugs, they engaged Magenic in order to improve the quality assurance process and ensure no further deployment delays.

The Solution

Magenic took a holistic approach to accelerating the client’s quality assurance and testing processes. Our approach was to emphasize that quality assurance goes beyond testers; it needs to be at the forefront of the minds of developers, business analysts, and project managers as well. Magenic emphasized developer communication, as the client’s development team had previously been rushing through bug fixes but inadvertently breaking other developers’ code while doing so.

The entire storefront team was united as Magenic implemented processes to increase the effectiveness of the software lifecycle, to improve communication and awareness, and to measure the quality of the product over time.

In addition to our own MARQ automation framework (risk-based testing), Magenic implemented client-specific test strategies and created a new regression test suite for the project. Our team implemented software development life cycle (SDLC) efficiency testing and identified automation-capable areas while providing targeted, individualized reporting. Magenic also provided the resources necessary to raise the client team’s tester-to-developer ratio to the necessary levels to ensure success.

The Result

The client praised Magenic’s quality assurance and testing team for bringing fresh energy to a project, revitalizing an exhausted team, raising morale, and increasing SDLC efficiencies and personal ownership. The client was particularly impressed by the prioritization received from Magenic’s team; our testers and project managers both placed the client’s needs over their own personal lives in order to meet the aggressive timeline and rigid deadline.

By refocusing the efforts of all parties involved on the newly-implemented quality assurance and testing processes, Magenic was able to reduce the re-open rate for bugs within the online storefront from 40% to less than 10%.

Magenic built the relationship between the client and their client, eliminating doubt and replacing it with trust and certainty. The client has been so pleased with Magenic’s quality assurance processes and methodologies that it plans on implementing them in other work streams and on all future projects.