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MARCH 2020 Assuring Consistency in Quality with Customizable Solutions QA Mentor World’s Best QA and Testing Solution Providers, 2020 Ruslan Desyatnikov CEO & Founder “We don’t just Test. We make your products successful.” Editor’s Perspective 5 Intriguing Mantras to Nurture a Robust Bonding with Employees t’s not about the quantity but the quality.” I You might have heard this phrase many times from various renowned manufacturing companies. For people or better known as consumers, quality assurance is a significant aspect and so it should be. His/her whole experience depends upon the product’s quality and, it should be at its best. Many organizations are spending and have spent millions of monetary assets in order to provide a better experience to their consumers, whether its B2B or B2C processes. Whilst organizations have integrated quality assurance processes or systems, many are outsourcing their quality-related processes to trustworthy QA and testing solution providers. One of the most cherished person, who was also a pioneer in the success and introduction of personal computing, Steve Jobs was fond of quality and how it can affect business. He always have focused on creating better quality products in an attempt to entice his consumers as well as earn their satisfaction with the product. He stands as a perfect example on how one or a company must emphasize over better quality and understands its significance created on consumers’ experience. There are numbers of solutions providers in the markets who have a deep sense of comprehension of the necessity of quality-oriented products for the better business. Yet, many organizations are failing to attend a promising and trustworthy QA solution provider to rely on. Quality comes first! Best & QA Testing Solution Providers 2020 World’s EDITOR’S NOTE“ In this edition, “World’s Best QA and Testing Solution Providers, 2020,” CIO Look brings out some of the impeccable solution providers who offers best of the best quality assurances globally. We, CIO Look admire such solutions providers and appreciates their contribution in the evolution of every possible business sector. Let’s have look over the featured cover. In Investopedia, QA is defined as a “process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved, and manufacturing errors are reduced or eliminated”. With the mission to help establish cost-effective quality frameworks with the goal of facilitating the overall success to their consumers, QA Mentor, a software testing company, is a global leader in Software Quality Assurance and Testing. Let’s unveil such alike, inspiring stories and interviews of many such passionate leaders in this special edition and spread a word about their contribution in making this world a better place. Also, while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our in- house editorial team and industry experts respectively. Have a good read! Bhushan Ghate Assuring quality, is similar to sharpening the sword. ” ” Cover Story10 NIX Solutions Ltd An Exceptional Pioneer in the Ukrainian IT Industry 22 Testvox A Highly-skilled Team of Testers 32 Verifysoft Technology GmbH A Prominent Code Coverage Analyzer for Embedded Software 36 QA Consultants Improving Software Quality by Delivering Reliable Software Testing Services 26 Quality House The Future of Software Testing 28 CON TENTS Article Musala Soft JSC 20 18 Delivering Quality Software Testing Solutions 20 22 26 28 32 36 Editor’s Perspective 5 Intriguing Mantras to Nurture a Robust Bonding with Employees CONTENT Senior Editor Alan Swann Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate Executive Editors Sourabh More Alex Spellman DESIGN Visualizer Dave Bates Art & Design Director Iresh Mathapati Associate Designer Kushagra Gupta SALES Senior Sales Manager Kshitij S. Customer Success Manager Jack Ryan Sales Executives John, Kane, Irfan, Jagdish TECHNICAL Technical Head Aditya K. Technical Consultant Victor Collins MARCH, 2020 k.roy@ciolook.com Copyright © 2020 CIOLOOK, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from CIOLOOK. Reprint rights remain solely with CIOLOOK. FOLLOW US ON www.facebook.com/ciolook www.twitter.com/ciolook WE ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON Email info@ciolook.com For Subscription www.ciolook.com CONTACT US ON K. Roy Editor-in-Chief sales@ciolook.com 1 Year 12 Issues $250 6 Months 6 Issues $130 3 Months 3 Issues $70 1 Month 1 Issue $25 CHOOSE OUR SUBSCRIPTION Stay in the known. Subscribe to CIOLOOK Get CIOLOOK Magazine in print, and digital on www.ciolook.com Assuring Consistency in Quality with Customizable Solutions QA Mentor World’s Best QA and Testing Solution Providers, 2020 Ruslan Desyatnikov CEO & Founder QA Mentor Ruslan Desyatnikov CEO & Founder QA Mentor We don't just Test. We make your products successful “ Cover Story W henever a consumer buys a product, his/her whole experience depends upon the product’s quality. Just imagine, if someone buys earphones but the sound quality is poor. What kind of experience would that be for a user? The answer is obvious and the same applies to almost any product, be it a physical object or a software. To prevent users from facing such situations, quality assurance and testing are necessary. Through this process, the QA team verifies the product’s compliance with the functional requirements. In Investopedia, it is defined as a “process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved, and manufacturing errors are reduced or eliminated”. With the mission to help establish cost-effective quality frameworks with the goal of facilitating the overall success to their consumers, QA Mentor, a software testing company, is a global leader in Software Quality Assurance and Testing. QA Mentor was founded back in 2010 with a vision to help different QA departments around the world in different organizations, and to streamline and improve their QA processes. QA Mentor is all about guidance, mentorship, support, training, providing strategic directions to the organizations who want to mature their QA processes and bring the QA function to the next level. This is also a reason the company was named QA Mentor. QA Mentor stepped in the market with the idea to offer very economical quality assurance testing services. It wanted to introduce QA function into organizations because back in the day, QA was not a very well-known function and many companies were delivering products without any sort of QA quality assurance and testing. Development teams or businesspeople were doing QA, there were no independent QA functions. With its ideas and vision, the QA Mentor has been advocating the importance of quality assurance testing and the need to implement quality assurance testing processes within organizations. Helping through Educating QA Mentor supports company leaders, stakeholders, and all kind of industries with its quality assurance domain. According to the company “we are talking to various stakeholders, CEOs, chief executive officers, chief information officers, chief technology officers, product owners, product managers, and anybody who has anything to do with the product, with the application, with the mobile applications, and looking for delivering those products successfully without any problems to their customer base.” It also offers several QA training classes to the customers or even quality assurance professionals, who want to improve their QA departments and audience. QA Mentor also offers over 25 different QA trainings to train and coach quality assurance to professionals in different areas, whether its automation testing, performance testing, security testing, exploratory testing, or agile testing. It delivers all this educational information through multiple means. The company asserts, “we have the E-learning modules which are available for anybody to take and self-study them. We have corporate trainings where we come on board and provide this training through professional instructors, and we do online trainings as well with our lead-based instructors. So, the audience is very wide for us. We deal with startup companies and mature fortune 500 companies. Anybody who wants to mature their products and deliver quality from their release perspective, those are our clients. That’s our audience.” A Proficient Leader Ruslan Desyatnikov, CEO and Founder of QA Mentor started his career 23 years ago as a junior tester. He used to wear multiple different hats as he was going With 32 different services in and around the Software QA domain, QA Mentor is your one-stop shop for all of your QA needs from one company to another. Over the years he has worked in different positions such as manual tester, automation engineer, performance engineer, security engineer, QA manager, and then stepped as head of QA and testing services. He says, “I used to manage the big team of 200 plus people for financial services organizations. So, in terms of my contribution to the overall QA community, I’m writing various different articles about quality assurance and testing. They are published in various different magazines, including Forbes magazine, CIO Review magazine, and many others. I am a frequent blogger on LinkedIn, posting a lot of information, a lot of materials to a lot of followers.” The company is organizing workshops and seminars and building number of e- learning courses with Ruslan’s help. Getting Ahead with Automation QA Mentor utilizes many of the latest technologies to make its solution resourceful. Nowadays, many organizations are moving towards artificial intelligence and machine-learning, and QA Mentor is no exception. The company has over 15 different clients in the artificial intelligence space to whom it gives automation and performance testing support. Through their research and development department, QA Mentor assists its clients with any latest technology in the market. The company has created several proprietary automation frameworks to support applications in Java Selenium, C# Selenium, Python, Open Source frameworks, and Enterprise-level automation tools frameworks. QA Mentor describes these offerings “like a restaurant where if someone wants a different variety of food, it will be there. These services are for different budgets, for different technologies, for different cultures within their organizations. For instance, many companies don’t have very technical QA testers. They have manual testers. We need to accommodate that.” Technical testers are very expensive and for that reason, many organizations cannot afford them. But at the same time, those organizations want to do automation. To help small organizations and non- technical users, QA Mentor builds automation frameworks which allows their clients to operate those frameworks without any technical knowledge and expertise. These frameworks can also execute scripts, modify scripts and support and maintain automation frameworks because they were built with the intention to help non-technical testers. Global Approach QA Mentor wants to establish a footprint in every single country in the world. It is aiming to serve all the local companies so that they will operate with the best practices and QA methodologies. The idea is to establish a footprint around the world, and every year the company is opening three to four new locations and/or new offices around the world. In India, it is expanding to attract more talent. Only last year it opened two locations in India, one in Bangalore and the other in Chennai. QA Mentor is also trying to open new locations in Dubai and Manilla, Philippines. The company further adds “We also continue our acquisition strategy of acquiring smaller companies. Smaller companies that need some help and direction and are open to operating under the umbrella of a bigger brand, that’s where we come in and how we can expand and grow quickly.” QA Mentor also wanted to continue to provide economical testing services in addition to the training center locations for the whole community. Today, there are 300 people working with the company with an aim to become a 1,000-employee company. There’s a long way to go still, but QA Mentor is looking forward to achieving that and their approach will attract more QA engineers to support clients. Understanding the industry an application will be used in is very important to designing, developing, and testing that application successfully Informative way of Marketing In terms of marketing activities, QA Mentor participates in various trade shows. The company shares a lot of knowledge through its in-house articles on quality assurance and testing in different magazines and publications. It has a large and ever- growing number of followers and readers who admire the information the company provides on quality assurance and testing. Some of the marketing activities the company does is sending 100 coupons for its e-learning courses on Facebook or on LinkedIn, sharing those classes free of charge to the first 100 people. The organization visits colleges, especially in India, and provides free seminars that explain and educate college students about quality assurance and testing. This is a way to encourage and directly educate students about the potentials of becoming a quality assurance engineer. Testimonials “We’ve been working in collaboration with QA Mentor for more than 2 years. During this period the QA Mentor’s team showed a high level of professionalism and quality of work. We depend on their contribution and hard work for our QA Department. We rely on QA Mentor for providing qualified and experienced resources at a reasonable rate” —MICHAEL LAVATMAN, CTO, BWELL “QA Mentor has consistently provided superior testing services for us and have been very accommodating when we were on tight schedules to complete our projects on time. Automation scripts that they build for us helped to achieve faster regression cycles and quick health checks of our builds. We look forward to our continued testing efforts with their team” —ED SPIVAK, CTO, CHEFMOD, LLC. mployees, management, and the customers are the Ethree most vital and integral part of every business operation. Often every company focuses heavily on the third aspect i.e. the customers, justifiably correct as well as it is the ultimate source of revenue generation through which a company runs and flourish. But it is also equally important to focus on the first aspect with equal force - that is the employees- which create the value for the organization. Companies hire people, train them and try to retain them as long as possible, but not always an organization and especially managers do the things which increase the employee engagement with the organization. Here we enlisted few time-tested mantras that can help any manager to improve employees’ longevity with the organization. Recognize Your Employees Efforts rd Every employee works for almost 1/3 of the day time in achieving company’s objective. Employees work for hours and get paid as well for their labour. But isn’t it would be great if the top performing employees get immediate recognition from their supervisor. Study shows that, when managers provide appreciation/bonus/incentives to the top performing employees, it does not only create a special bond amongst the employees and the management but also increases the probability of longer association of employees with the company. Doing such things also boost up employees confidence and morale towards work that ultimately benefits the company at large. Spread your Values through Interactive Sessions Many people love gaming. There are people who are almost mad about gaming and can do whatever it takes to excel in this form of fun activity. But it is not easy to excel in gaming, gamers have to first understand all the nitty-gritty associated with their favourite game including rules, different stages, rewards, difficulty levels, bonanza price amongst others. After taking cognizance of such things and practising religiously; a gamer really transform into an expert. On contrary to this, when it comes to employees in any 5 INTRIGUING TO NURTURE A ROBUST BONDING WITH EMPLOYEES 18 | MARCH 2020 | organization, performance and ethical behaviour decides their future in the organization. Unfortunately, when things do not go well, managers left with no option but to take some strict action against the employee which many times create strain in the relationship. To avoid such things, it is must to brief about company’s policies, business objectives and values in advance so that each employee exactly knows what transformation he/she needs to does in order to sync with the company’s culture. Now it is also important to preach such things by taking seminar/induction and other, so that new hires can understands the importance of it. Without face-to-face interaction, transferring the core value is almost impossible. Therefore, it would be great to schedule brief meetings/seminars/informal interactive sessions which can keep the employees in sync with the company’s core culture and assist them to work on their weak areas. Doing such thing always avoid a confronting situation at workplace and ultimately strengthen bond between employees and management. Take Interest in Your Employees What a particular employee likes? Where he/she graduated from? Who are its family members? What fun activity he/she likes in leisure time? What annoys a particular employee at workplace? Answers to such things can only be found in the minds of an employee’s close ones. If as a manager, you take an active and ethical interest in an employee, it does not only open a friendlier pool between you and the employee but also help you understand his/her motivations, likings, dis likings and other vital things that are required to understand your employees better. Ultimately, it assists a manager to carry out business operation by focusing on company’s objectives with ease. This type of bonding also nurtures a working relationship that can open the channels of communication so that when your employees have a good idea, they feel free to reach you out. This way you can be the employees’ boss with keeping employees’ trust and love at the core. Nurture an Environment based on Mutual Respect How you talk to your employees? How you behave with them? How seriously you resolve their grievances? How much space are you providing them to grow into their career? These are some of the hard-hitting questions that every manager has to take seriously. No matter how competent a manager is, if you won’t create an atmosphere of mutual respect, chances of losing your grip on the team remain high. Moreover, if managers find themselves pounding on the desk and engaging in intimidation tactics, good chances are there that they can lose respect among their employees. But if the managers create a positive workplace environment based on shared respect, then it will only lead towards growing your authority that too with affectionate bonding with the employees. Discipline is ‘Must’ Being friendly is a good thing. It resolves many problems. In-fact, sometimes it solves the problem before it arises and thus every manager should have this quality to create a bond. But sometimes your friendly demeanour at workplace gets exploited by some employees. Occasionally, some employees can’t separate the friendly boss from the friend and switch gears frequently between work-fun mode. If you find an employee that is becoming overly familiar, joking, or disrespecting someone, this is right time to show your authority and keep the work-place discipline under control. Doing this can help maintaining discipline without even offending someone. Although, the list is endless but these techniques surely do wonders for managers and organizations if followed consistently and stringently and help them achieve the desired goal of employee retention for long. Editor’s Perspective 19 | MARCH 2020 | M usala Soft JSC is a leading software services provider in Southeast Europe. It was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. The company is an established and growing market force which embraces constant evolution to bring together technology and innovation. Today over 500 Musala Soft professionals work in the ‘hot’ fields of IoT, Big Data, Cloud, AI, Information Management, Automation Testing, Business Analysis, and UI&UX. A Driven Leader The founder and CEO of Musala Soft JSC, Delyan Lilov has turned his passion for competitive programming into a growing international business. Establishing a team of former members from the National Olympiad in Informatics team, like he is by himself, and combining it with visionary business ideas he has kept Musala Soft growing and cemented its reputation as a prestigious, reliable, and long-standing partner both locally and internationally. The Blueprints of Success Since 2005, the company’s strategic focus has been on Test Automation and it takes great pride in being among the first companies to adopt that approach so early. Working with Fortune 500 companies, the company noticed a demand for software testing services and the need for the automation of work processes. There was a need for unconventional and creative approaches; Musala Soft was confident of success because it already had high quality standards and owned the expertise needed. Its software development background and resources, and the fact that it specialized in the full software development lifecycle were huge advantages. Today, the team force of automation test engineers is 70+ experts, all of them ISTQB certified, and experienced in the entire project lifecycle. “We truly believe that the qualitative implementation of automation testing is much more than qualitative test scripts development. As an established practice for 13 years already and tens of projects successfully implemented, we have deep expertise in wide range of tools – proprietary like Rational and HP testing suits, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Software testers and Perfecto Mobile, open source like Selenium, SoapUI, JMeter, Appium and even own developed e.g. ATMOSPHERE (http://atmosphereframework.com). And the extensive list is much longer. It is the selection of proper tooling for each particular case and situation, the versed design and implementation of automation framework and environment, precise scoping and ROI based analysis, which makes the benefit of the automation testing implementation.” The customers of Musala Soft benefit technological but also domain expertise in Telecom and Banking. The company has established long-term partnerships with several of the biggest Telecommunication companies in Europe, and some of the top Banks, which recognized Musala Soft as a center of excellence and has entrusted the software testing and quality assurance of flagship products as well as consultancy and implementation of testing optimization initiatives. Overcoming Challenges The software development and testing industry is under constant and concerted pressure to achieve even higher levels of optimization and efficiency. Musala Soft has QA vision and strategy for early adoption of new technologies, tools and methodologies of software Musala Soft JSC: Delivering Quality Software Testing Solutions 20 | MARCH 2020 | development through test automation from its very inception. This has facilitated unprecedented speed and quality of developments. The software testing field favors competent players who adopt and apply the latest advancements in technology and methodology to provide high-quality, high-efficiency solutions. This is intimately related to IT talent; companies with qualified staff who display curiosity and a knack for unconventional and creative approaches are the ones that succeed. Finding, attracting, retaining and developing the appropriate IT talent is another key challenge. The global shortfall of IT specialists is around 4.5 million and in Europe alone, the figure was around 1 million. One of the key differentiators at Musala Soft is its focus on investing in human capital, both internally with its employees, and externally, by contributing to IT education projects and the development of the IT community in the region. Voyaging through Difficulties 18 years ago, Delyan Lilov saw great opportunities in the software services industry when very few were looking in that direction. “Like any other business, it took a lot of work, a little bit of luck, and a good network of contacts to succeed initially. We had all the pieces of the puzzle; we were young, brave, and the endeavor was challenging!” reveals Delyan. The company has had ups and downs in its 18 years. However, its priority has been to evolve through the experiences to emerge as a sustainable business. Delyan is extremely proud of the way his team has helped the company grow organically and develop into a large and diverse team of qualified professionals. Aiming for Eminence Musala Soft intends on achieving its targets to sustain and flourish in the ever-competitive software market. Delyan concludes, “In its essence, this is the strife for innovation, creativity, the positive attitude and enthusiasm and the united team efforts of everyone because united we are stronger.” We make the optimal combination of technologies, processes, knowledge, tools and people, and transform it into business value. ‘‘ ‘ ‘ Delyan Lilov CEO & Founder Musala Soft JSC 21 | MARCH 2020 | The dream of forming the largest IT company in Ukraine began in a small garage lead by three friends, against all odds. NIX Solutions Ltd was founded in 1994 and today, it has become the biggest company in Kharkiv, the biggest IT hub in Ukraine. Thanks to the unique approach undertaken at NIX Solutions, the company has taken a unique direction to meet the demands of clients through offering specialized managed IT services. The company has grown and reinvented itself time and again to meet special demands of the client and is a home to more than 1500 IT experts today. NIX serves various businesses from a wide variety of domains including Biopharmaceuticals and Healthcare, Fintech and Banking, E-learning and Distance Education. Credit for its unique approach and software engineering excellence, the company serves many Fortune 500 companies as well as some of the fastest developing companies around the world. The company has also earned a prestigious position in the industry due to a recognized membership of outsourcing organizations including GSA and IAOP. The Evolving World of Testing Systems have become more complicated and continue to grow in complexity. Additionally, requirements from the client end are changing quickly. Moreover, testing has been given less importance in the planning phase as compared earlier due to which the budget allocated to it is also reducing. Hence, even the established players on the market are presenting tested versions of products which are sometimes subpar. NIX Solutions promises to change this world of testing with a unique approach to bring innovation in QA and testing practices. The company adheres to the highest professional standards, improves its clients businesses with extraordinary outcomes while simultaneously creating an unrivaled environment for exceptional minds to grow. For example, Ryan Gerardi, the owner of a media production house said, “We have been working with NIX Solutions for nearly 2 years now. NIX Solutions has consistently provided us with professional top-rate service and outstanding design work. Their team of account managers, project managers, and designers are friendly and enjoyable to work with. They are responsive and dependable and also bring forth good ideas and objective input. NIX Solutions is a partner you can count on and be satisfied within the long haul.” An All-Embracing Vision NIX Solutions has not left any stones unturned in its pursuit of meeting various client requirements and providing a concrete return. Its philosophy of serving every client with due diligence and excellence has led to an all-embracing vision at the company for clients. The company leads with its motto “whatever you can imagine, we can deliver”. The founders at NIX Solutions realized that they could do more than others were doing at that time and providing separate technology specialists was only a part of what NIX offered. Companies today are required to infuse large sums of money in creating in- house expertise. NIX Solutions helps clients eradicate wastage of resource by providing an all-in-one solution aligned with their strategy to take their growth to the next level. The company uses its 20 years of experience to deliver an all-encompassing IT solution which includes custom software, enterprise solution, web development, mobile development, quality assurance, QA automation, graphic design, remote administration, online marketing, project management, IT consulting and even Salesforce implementation. NIX Solutions Ltd: An Exceptional Pioneer in the Ukrainian IT Industry 22 | MARCH 2020 | We assist our clients to delineate their goals and priorities, and we use our 25 years of expertise to create the most effective IT solution for them. ‘‘ ‘ ‘ Igor Braginsky President NIX Solution Ltd. 23 | MARCH 2020 | H eadquartered in a massive 30,000 square foot facility in central Toronto, with more than 200 skilled employees QA Consultants is an award winning provider of software testing and quality assurance solutions. The organization has successfully delivered more than 5,000 mission-critical projects in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors over the last two decades. Within those sectors, the company has extensive testing experience and depth in the automotive industry, banking, consumer goods, insurance, media and advertising, public affairs, retail, technology, and travel and tourism industries. In an ongoing effort to maintain its status as a leader in research and innovation, and with the continuing support of the National Research Council of Canada, QA Consultants founded, developed and built a large facility in Toronto devoted solely to testing. The Test Factory™ is a continuous quality test lab incorporating a precise combination of intelligence applied to advanced levels of automation. The Test Factory pairs the skilled labor and expertise of its staff with its proprietary testing methodologies. This unique blend provides QA Consultants’ clients with unparalleled and superior quality service. QA Consultants delivers onshore quality and performance at low offshore prices. The Test Factory™ alone or in partnership with its Managed Consulting Services and On Demand Testing™ delivers highly effective testing and QA solutions to its wide range of clients. A Visionary Torchbearer Alex Rodov is the Managing Partner and Founder of QA Consultants, which he founded back in 1994 in order to provide local access to software testing. Alex was one of the first to treat quality assurance as a field of its own, and his enduring contribution to the field has been to establish software testing as a specific skill set. He established QA Consultants as a dedicated local testing center of excellence featuring on-demand local access to professional testers with a wide range of field expertise. Under his leadership, the company has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a cutting-edge quality assurance company recognized as a market leader and a category killer in the multi-billion-dollar North American software testing industry. Alex has been widely recognized for his visionary leadership, including being selected by Ernst and Young as the Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013. His pioneering innovations have resulted in QA Consultants receiving the 2012 Business Excellence Award from the Toronto Board of Trade and a Deloitte designation as one of the best-managed companies in Canada in 2013. In 2017, for the third year in a row, Clutch Research Inc., an independent research firm in Boston, in a world wide annual survey reaffirmed QA Consultants as the Top Systems Application Testing Firm. When Testing Became a Part of Product Development Life Cycle During the technological response to the Y2K threat in the late 1990s, testing began to emerge as a separate service which led to the birth of QA Consultants. Very quickly this service became an essential component of the product development life cycle. Along with procedural methodology, testing paved the way for the company’s success as the organization moved into a QA Consultants: Improving Software Quality by Delivering Reliable Software Testing Services 26 | MARCH 2020 | We have come a long way in the past 20 years and we are very excited for the future. ‘‘ ‘ ‘ Alex Rodov Managing Partner & Founder QA Consultants 27 | MARCH 2020 | Mitko Mitev CEO Quality House Ltd. 28 | MARCH 2020 | The Future of Software Testing D o you own a software product that demands extensive testing your resources can’t readily provide? Has a last-minute system bug threatening the release of your product on time, unless something gets done right away? Are you a start-up that’s not yet at the stage to develop your own QA department, but still need testing services? Well, Quality House hears your call and comes to the rescue! The company has been providing behind-the- scene assistance and improving software quality since 2004. Quality House provides testing services to IT companies of all sizes, having worked for both telecom giants and budding start-ups. It acts as a natural extension of on-site QA teams or build entirely new ones, and model the work to match customer’s internal processes. An interview conducted between CIO LOOK and Mitko Mitev – CEO carves out the journey through a careful strategy, tight plan, and meticulous manual & automated test scenarios. For more than a decade, Quality House has worked with startups, national market leaders, and global giants on highly specialized software. Below are the highlights of the interview: Give a brief overview of your company, its uniqueness, and its vision. Quality House provides testing services to IT companies of all sizes and types both from Bulgaria and abroad. The company has been providing behind-the-scene assistance and improving software quality since 2004. We have worked for multiple different companies spanning from telecom giants to budding start-ups. The Quality House Team consists of more than 80 ISTQB trained & certified QA specialists that act as a natural extension of on-site QA teams or build entirely new ones, and model our work to match our clients’ internal processes. What we do, is providing the needed QA expertise and capacity to other companies so they can meet their goals both in terms of software quality and deadline. We provide companies with various testing services, such as Test Management, Test Automation, Functional Testing, Web & Mobile Testing, Acceptance Testing, Security Testing, and Load and Performance Testing. Clients can also benefit from our consultancy services. In this case, we perform an objective inspection of the customer’s current software testing processes and recommend tools, technologies, and measurements, appropriate for achieving software testing efficiency. Not to forget, apart from the outsourcing and consultancy services, Quality House is a trusted provider of a rich portfolio of accredited testing courses following international standards and practices. Our courses are accredited by ISTQB, and we pride ourselves on the Quality House Ltd. 29 | MARCH 2020 | know-how and expertise of our lecturers. All of our QA specialists (and not only) can choose and boost their knowledge by attending the following courses: ISTQB Foundation Level, ISTQB Agile Tester Extension, ISTQB AL Test Manager, ISTQB AL Test Analyst, ISTQB AL Tech Test Analyst, ISTQB AL Automation Test Engineer, ISTQB AL Security Tester, ISTQB Mobile Application Testing (MAT) or Certified Professional Requirements Engineering (IREB) – FL. Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over the company and the industry. With more than 25 years of experience in software quality assurance and more than 20 years of experience as Project and Test Manager, Mitko Mitev is one of the leading software test experts in southeast Europe. He dedicated his professional life to the promotion of QA and Test professions, particularly in Southeast Europe. As a part of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) and President of the South East European Testing Board (SEETB) Mitko has been actively participating in their efforts for setting and improving international standards in Software Quality. Mitko is also the Chief Editor of the Quality Matters Magazine, distributed internationally with a focus on the best leading practices and new trends in the area. His commitment to the promotion of Software Quality is also demonstrated by taking the role of Chair of the SEETEST Conferences and participation in other software quality assurance conferences. Describe in detail the work culture and the values that drive your company. We aim to create a work culture that makes employees feel fully motivated. Experience has taught us that this means a mixture of professionalism, being proactive, but also empathy and understanding towards employees’ needs and wants. We encourage friendship in the team, in and out of work – we’ve found it creates a feeling of belonging, being in the right place with the right people, which boosts work morale and motivation in working towards a common goal with their colleagues – successful projects and high quality. Some of our most important company values are Continuous Learning & Constant improving – in such a dynamic industry as IT, not learning new skills and information means falling behind. We constantly improve our work methods and training according to b e s t p ra c t i c e s a n d d eve l o p m e n t s i n t h e fi e l d . Commitment to clients means we always try to find the best and most beneficial solution for our clients. We are not just testers, but also skilled and knowledgeable consultants. And most importantly – Quality. It is our main aim, so we give our best to achieve it. What technologies are you leveraging to make your solutions resourceful and bringing advancement in the industry? We adapt to the client’s established working processes, including the technologies and tools they’re using. Having in mind the specifics of the outsourcing business, all of our QA specialists are used to working in a dynamic environment and quickly adapt to new teams. If there isn’t an existing QA team, we can also provide consultancy services on how to build QA processes and recommend tools and technologies. In some cases, along with this, we build a QA team tailored to our client’s needs. What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? What we would like to see happening is for Quality House to keep growing, offer our services to partners in Europe, and improve our influence in Southeast Europe and East Europe. The IT market is constantly evolving, a n d s o a r e w e . C l i e n t s c o n t i n u o u s l y u p t h e i r expectations, and to answer them our employees, have to exist in a constant learning state. That process never ends here, as almost every day, there is something novel in technology, and if we don’t want to fall behind, we have to learn every day. And to do that, we depend mostly on ourselves, as official education in the field in Bulgaria, sadly, is currently not enough. We add in practice, and real-life work cases to the mix, so that employees have useful skills & knowledge they can utilize the very next day at work. So we like seeing us change, along with the industry. It is inspiring to think of how much IT has changed, for the last 15 years, and how those changes reflected in our company. We would like to see more changes like that, more reasons to become even more specialized. It fuels growth and success. So we plan to grow, not only our market but our service portfolio as well. 30 | MARCH 2020 | Testvox A Highly-skilled Team of Testers Wondering how to improve your test cases and how to identify a suitable one for your requirement? It is really important to test the product throughout the development stage. While, mobile app testing has come to demand deep functional expertise. An App’s efficiency is measured by how fast it can perform a given task. Thus, a question all companies working on mobile apps should be asking: ‘Are they secure? That’s where Testvox steps in. Utilizing industry- leading research, decades of the collective experience, and cutting-edge technology, it works directly with developers to make sure your mobile apps are secure. The company’s wide range of performance testing services will help customers release the best version of the App to end-users. In an interview conducted between Insights Success & Pradeep K – Founder, he states that the company ensures flawless cooperation and establishment of strong business relationships. Testvox has a bunch of technically equipped dedicated teams solely for providing a bug-free, fully equipped hassle-free product for the customers. Below are the highlights of the interview: Give a brief overview of your company, its uniqueness and its vision. Testvox is a software testing service company. Here we provide software testing services like Performance testing, Functionality testing, Compatibility testing, and so on. Our strength is experienced in different domains and the capability to do any work. We have a dedicated testing team containing experts from different domains. Our uniqueness is we build to meet the needs of our customer’s business model. We have the vision to release the products without any bugs. Describe your company’s cutting-edge QA and testing services/solutions, which address all the needs of your customers. Nowadays mobile applications are just trending in the market, and here we provide the latest technologies for testing those applications, and our team is always on the research of the same. Its always a challenge for everyone to test the mobile applications in multiple devices, which is popular in a number of countries, here we use the Appium tool to automate and then check it on multiple platform. We have developed all our automated scripts to migrate it into DevOps. Our service can give benefits to clients by boosting the productivity of the development team because we always seek bugs, and eventually, they can strive to make their application better. Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over the company and the industry. I am Pradeep, founder of Testvox. I had the experience of 3 years in the QA industry, and I have realized the need for QA service in the software industry & then started the company. Currently, I am working as a CTO in our company and also handles the research team in Testvox. What is the difference between QA and software testing? Software testing is product-oriented testing such as testing the bugs on software while QA depends on the overall activities of the products like keeping all the standards such as documentation, development, testing, release plan, meetings, communication. 32 | MARCH 2020 | Discover defects early in the development cycle,Testvox can help. Pradeep K Founder & CEO Testvox 33 | MARCH 2020 | What are the automation challenges that QA(Quality Assurance) team faces while testing? There are some challenges we face while doing automation. They are: Ÿ Timeout issue:- It happens when we run the code after inspecting ex-path. Ÿ Network issue:- It is due to the slowdown of network. What is data-driven testing? It is a case in automation testing such as migrating a whole data automatically from a particular file to the software for the requirement of testing. How does your services differ from the other companies’ offerings? Our company always builds a QA standard in all activities. Every company can follow the QA standard even after the service with Testvox is completed. We also provide free performance testing for promoting startup companies. What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? Our future aspiration is to develop our business and to develop a tool for the easy preparation of test cases by machine learning. Give us a few testimonials of your clients that accurately highlight your company’s position in the market. Roshik Ahammed, Director, Aufit Technologies “We are very pleased with the testing service provided by Testvox. You could manage our Taxi booking app testing project professionally. Your test effort resulted in our product. Your help was really valuable for ensuring a consistent performance to our product.” Raghav Rohila, Founder, Xyloop “We reached out to the TestVox team for getting our product tested extensively. They have been instrumental in learning about our product flows and identifying different use cases in a short span of time. I appreciate the skill level and quick response displayed by them.” 34 | MARCH 2020 | Verifysoft Technology GmbH A Prominent Code Coverage Analyzer for Embedded Software V erifysoft Technology GmbH is vendor of Testwell CTC++, a leading code coverage analyzer for embedded software. Since its founding in 2003, the company has established a presence in over 40 countries and recorded growth of more than 40% last year. The company believes software testing is an essential service and its importance will only increase in the future. Software testing helps companies by improving the efficiency, reliability and lifespan of software. On the other hand, untested software can not only impact the reputation of a company but also put people’s lives at risk. Verifysoft believes in delivering quality software which improves productivity and lowers operational costs. In line with its philosophy of providing the highest levels of customer satisfaction, the company also offers advanced tools through support services. These tools are aimed at undertaking static code analysis. Verifysoft also offers training to software developers and quality managers. An Honest Foundation to Driving Growth One of the core principles at Verifysoft Technology is to be honest and fair with customers and co- workers. The inspirational pillar of strength for the company and the culture it embodies has always been Klaus Lambertz, its Founder and CEO. Klaus graduated with a degree in Economics and then worked for several top companies, where he realized that true satisfaction for him lay in starting and running his own business. He explains, “the driving power is not security or a nice salary, but liberty and the spirit to do something useful”. Having led the company for the last 15 years, Klaus has achieved phenomenal results, which he attributes to his versatile, motivated team. He continues to find the journey both challenging and extremely rewarding every day. Growing Challenges and Changing Dynamics Verifysoft has established itself as a leader in providing software testing solutions which are efficient and reliable. However, the company’s leadership still does not shy away from seeing the bigger picture and taking on new challenges. There are several key trends emerging in the software testing industry. One of these is the rapid increase in the size and complexity of software. Additionally, clients’ increasing demands for feature- rich software is driving intense competition within the industry. Today, companies are pushed into exposing the control functions of their applications through web interfaces. This gives rise to a new set of challenges for software testing providers like Verifysoft. However, the leadership at the company is embracing such challenges and constantly strategizing new ways to deliver software quickly while incorporating the highest standards of web protection. In many industries, governments regulate the quality of software in order to make it safe to use. Software for aircraft control is a prime example of this approach. The recent increased scrutiny of software by lawmakers represents growth opportunities for Verifysoft. 36 | MARCH 2020 | The driving power is not security or a nice salary, but liberty and the spirit to do something useful. “ Klaus Lambertz Founder & CEO Verifysoft Technology GmbH 37 | MARCH 2020 | A Unique Strategy Verifysoft has positioned itself strategically to appeal to clients with a wide range of requirements. Currently, the company covers all aspects of software testing, and its specializations includes Testwell CTC++ for embedded C and C++. The tool is used for Java and C# as well. Over the years, Verifysoft has established itself as an off-road vehicle for software testing solutions. Its CTC++ test system is extremely reliable even in the most adverse and challenging circumstances. It works with all compilers, embedded targets, and cutting edge programming methods to deliver a flawless, smooth experience. The company continues to inspire admiration and support from its partners. The management team at Verifysoft believes they have a good product on their hands, and they give client satisfaction top priority. It is expected that this will establish the foundation of industry-wide leadership in the long run. Lucrative Opportunities When Verifysoft was founded in 2003, the company distributed the solutions of the Finland based company Testwell to companies of all sizes based in Germany, France and other European markets. In 2013 Verifysoft purchased the intellectual property rights for the Testwell tools, which are now distributed all over the world. Verifysoft took the opportunity to work with this great product and brought it to a new level through continuous development by a dedicated 50-member team. The company has also taken the distribution of the products by taking the product to large MNCs and it has also reached small and medium sized firms to spread core appeal of the product. Klaus initially did experience challenges when he was compelled to fund his venture through large capital investments, a move which carried inherent risks. Today, the company is looking at a promisingly lucrative future where software testing can account for as much as 90% of the budget dedicated to developing software. Klaus is a firm believer in the bright prosspects of Verifysoft Technology as it continues to change software testing through innovation and customer satisfaction. 38 | MARCH 2020 |
