Will you be interested in QA as a service & if so how much will you be ready to pay for it monthly?
Other than the need of such a service and pricing questions above, some more questions if you would like to answer:
-What turnaround time would you expect?
-How frequently would you use this service in a week if you are on a monthly plan?
-You have requirement for web testing or mobile app testing?
-How do you currently do QA
-You have requirement for defined test cases or exploratory testing ?
Thanks in adavnce for any inputs you can give here.
I see an opportunity for something like this similar to ManyPixels.co, draftss or devy.io, except for QA. In fact, I see more opportunity for this than in design or development.
My guess would be something around $100/month for "unlimited" website manual testing and step-by-step bug reports. Certainly, you could attempt to offer mobile testing, automated test development, API testing and so on at different price points but I think that you'd get far on manual website testing.
Let me tell you why it could be successful. Even at VC funded startups with millions of dollars in the Silicon Valley, they are slow to hire their first QA engineer (often waiting years) and the QA team are the first people fired when the startup starts to struggle. $100/month for minimal manual testing in dirt cheap and so much better that no testing/dev testing. If you could market it into this segment (essentially, "I see that you just got funding. Until you get a full time QA team running, pay us $X/month to QA your product until you get your QA team in place."), I could see "unlimited QA" getting into startups that "unlimited design" or "unlimited dev" would have a hard time getting into. And, once they begin to fail and fire their QA team, you can step back in again.
A typical funded Silicon Valley startup looks sort of like 15 devs, 5 QA and 1 designer. Obviously, devs are hired ASAP because the startup needs a product and kept to the bitter end for the same reason. QA and design are sort of a nice-to-have and "maybe we can get by without it". Even if a designer is needed, one designer can support lots of devs whereas QA sort of needs to be a team, not just one person, to cover the product. So, an "unlimited" QA service would generate more work than a design service and be a more constant need.
Manual testing may seem lame but, believe it or not, a whole lot of startups end up doing it anyway and it can be very valuable. Manual testing involves less specialized skills than design or development or automated testing so lower costs for the QA SAAS.
I know a guy who would jump at the opportunity to work full or part time doing manual testing and, considering how many people are willing to drive for Uber or Lyft, I'm sure that there are millions of people in this world who would be happy to be matched up to do manual testing, learn how to write a good bug report and get paid.
The challenge seems to be marketing: reaching those companies at the exact time where they have zero QA and getting them signed up for minimal QA for a flat monthly fee. It's not as flashy and easy to sell as art/design or development but it's got some really nice characteristics.
Looking around the Internet, you have very little competition at the low end ($100+/month). Everybody seems to want to sell fancy, high priced services or QA products (so customers still do their own QA, just more efficiently, how lame is that?). A basic service for a low price seems like a good opportunity.
How can you do QA without an in depth knowledge of the product and domain?
Amazon offers this as a service for their tools at a minimum price of $15,000 per month and unlimited requests. But for small startups, I would say that providing it as some kind of flat rate would make sense. And to answer your questions in order:
Stephen - Yes, so I am thinking of flat rate with limited number of requests for a starter plan or even unlimited requests in one of the plan at less than 1/10th the AWS plan, as small to mid sized companies won't be shipping releases as frequently.
And since you have your own testing team, do you see this type of service adding any complimentary value add to your existing QA team ? Or you think it makes more sense for companies who don't have QA team at all.
And thanks for your inputs. They are super helpful.
I don't need it, but note that there are a bunch of companies that do this already. The biggest issue I've had in the past was the outsourced QA people were not familiar with the product. In my experience, it has always been better to just hire my own QA person.
I just bumped across rainforestqa who does this in a more productized fashion. It will be great if you could tell me other companies you are aware of who provide this service ?
So familiarity of qa people with product is an issue according to you. Noted. Thanks.
Also one more important question :
Do you have the need for :
-cross browser testing
-cross device testing
-cross operating system testing
(or combination of these enviornments )
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
This comment was deleted 7 years ago