Online retailer,I Want One of
Those, has turned tocrowdsourcingto cut the time it needs to test
upgrades to its website.
IWOOT says that the technique has helped it to cut testing time
from days to hours, allowing it to update its site quickly without
risking serious errors that could damage sales.
The company is working with US-Israeli firm,
uTest, which runs a community
of 18,000 testers, who compete online to find bugs in return for
cash prizes and kudos in the testing community.
IWOOT used crowdsourcing to test a major upgrade to its web
payment system designed to meet the
PCIDSS security
compliance requirements for online retailers.
The company worked with UK testing consultants
TCL, and US-Israeli
company uTest, which has pioneered the crowdsourcing approach to
testing.
TCL and uTest recruited a team of 45 testers with expertise in
Internet Explorer and Firefox, to test a new version of the
website, in return for cash payments for each bug they found.
In just over two hours, the testers collaborated online to find
and document serious bugs that could have disrupted sales on the
site, said
Sagar
Vadher head of IT at I Want One of Those.
"We had four people testing internally. They all said the new
site looks great. Then we had 45 people testing externally saying
they had found 30 bugs," he said.
"If there was anything wrong with the checkout and we put it out
live, we could lose a lot of money. It is simple to make sure the
checkout works, but it is a very important thing."
The testing session cost IWOOT around $500, a fraction of the
cost of employing inhouse testers, said Vadher.
TCL gathered four teams of volunteer testers to put the software
through final testing a week later. The teams took part in a
one-hour race at
La Piazza restaurant in Birmingham to find and document bugs,
in return for pizza, beer and a prize for the winning team.
The retailer plans to use crowdsourcing to test the next major
development of its website in August, which is due to go live for
Christmas.
"It is going to have quite an impact on how customers are using
the site. We need to have a very high level of performance testing.
We would not be able to that in a short space of time using
traditional testing, so it is going to be Utest," said Vadher.
How crowdsourcing cuts software testing time ≥≥.