QA Strategy

How to run an effective quality assurance process.

The Rainforest Method: 5 essential QA testing best practices
After 10 years, we have a set of QA testing best practices that work for teams shipping fast and frequently.
The practical guide to QA strategy for startups
Learn the practical frameworks and practices that’ll help you build a strong foundation for your teams's QA strategy.
QA testing tools in 2024: How to know what’s right for you
Learn how to differentiate between various QA testing tools, how to decide which ones you need, and 30+ options to consider.
Think twice before hiring QA for your startup
Learn why startups usually don’t need to (and often shouldn’t) hire a QA person to improve product quality.
Software regression testing: examples, best practices, and more
This guide to software regression testing answers the top FAQs about software regression testing.
Web Application Testing: Getting Started with Functional Testing
In this post, we'll cover the most common types of web application testing, which ones to prioritize, and tools to use.
You Only Need These 5 QA Metrics to Improve Software Testing
Many quality assurance metrics evaluate QA activities rather than results. These are the 5 most helpful QA metrics.
Agile Regression Testing: How to Do It Well
Learn the basics of agile regression testing and five strategies to streamline your software testing process.
How to Write a Test Plan: Free Template & 6 Step Guide
Learn how to write a software test plan. Get started with our practical guide and free template.
The Layers of Testing Architecture
The landscape of software testing is changing. Speed and quality are no longer seen as opposing forces.
The Top 5 Don’ts of Software Testing
Over time, the QA industry has developed many great processes and best practices that drive software and business success. But some practices are outdated, while others have negatively impacted product success. In this post, we share the Top 5 Don’ts of Software Testing.
What To Do When QA Bottlenecks Hinder Deployment Velocity
In this post we explore how to identify and approach breaking the QA bottleneck to ensure that your testing process doesn’t slow down your release cadence.
What Is Black Box Testing?
Black box testing is a form of software testing during which the functionality of an application is tested without looking at the code or internal structure. Any test which examines the interface of the application is considered black box testing.
How to Scale QA without Scaling Your QA Team
Doing QA well is tough, even for innovative teams. Scaling good QA is even tougher. Learn how to scale your QA strategy without scaling your QA team.
Avoid the boom and bust trap of QA
At Rainforest QA we’ve spent years helping hundreds of customers to QA more effectively, and advising hundreds more on their QA strategies. And yet despite so many different customers, we’ve seen one just common failure mode: the boom and bust cycle. The boom and bust of QA is that after the initial excitement wears off, […]
Where Does QA Fit in a Software Development Life Cycle?
The entire software development life cycle opens up many vulnerable areas for problems to occur, which is why it’s important to know where QA fits into the development workflows.
How to Align QA Goals with Business Goals
Learn how your organization can align its existing business goals with its QA strategy & how to create a quality mindset for long-term QA success.
What your Team can Learn From IKEA’s Quality Processes
In this post we explore 3 ways that IKEA ensures product quality, and how software testing teams can apply those practices to their own QA process. Applying IKEA’s methodologies to your development workflow may be more beneficial than you’d expect.
QA Strategy for Digital Marketing Teams
When we think of Quality Assurance we typically think of Product and Engineering, but Digital Marketing teams own quality too. In this post, you will learn how incorporating a QA strategy into your digital marketing strategy leads to success.
What is defect clustering?
In this post we explore how to keep clusters of defects from bringing down your quality, and learn about a real-world fix for defect clustering with Bleacher Report’s Senior Automation Engineer Quentin Thomas. We also cover what is defect clustering and some key indicators you should look out for.
Agile QA at Scale: What Successful Enterprise QA Teams Have in Common
There’s no one-size-fits-all QA strategy that will work for every team. But there are a few key traits that successful QA teams have in common. Find out what your team can learn from how Facebook, Google, and other enterprise teams approach to agile QA.
How to Find Bugs Before Your Customers Do
In our recent webinar, The True Cost of Shipping Software Defects: Find Bugs Before Your Customers Do, Rainforest front-end engineer AJ Funk and product operations associate Cameron Sheya discussed how and why teams should start building a strategy to stop bugs before they hit production.
Using Feature-Driven Testing for More Strategic Test Coverage
Anyone who has built out a suite of QA tests knows that your database of test cases can get bloated fast. By shifting testing focus from total coverage to strategic feature-driven testing, teams can drive more effective, impactful QA processes.
What You Can Learn from How Google Tests Software
We dove into the archives of the Google Testing Blog to discover how other growing teams can learn from how Google approaches software testing.
6 Ways to Streamline Your QA Process
A new year likely means new goals, whether you want to ship features faster, boost quality or scale your team. Learn 5 ways you can streamline your QA with continuous testing.
The Key to eCommerce Testing Success & Better UX
eCommerce websites cannot afford to have bad UX, especially during peaks in site traffic. This post includes best practices of eCommerce QA testing & the top 5 test cases.
How to Predict & Reduce Test Execution Time
Our customers want to deploy fast and not be slowed by uncertain delays. One way to tighten their release cycle is by estimating well when a test run completes. However, estimates are hard because each customer has their own tests and environments, and yet being off by minutes or more could add that much to […]
QA Testers: Version Control Isn’t Just for Dev Teams Anymore
Using version control for development teams is a well-established best practice. However, most QA teams don’t utilize it and can benefit from it too.
How Modular Testing Fits Into Your Continuous Testing Strategy
In this post, we explore modular testing, one facet of continuous testing, and learn how it contributes to a fast, reliable QA strategy.
Benefits of a Distributed Team
Distributed workforces aren’t a new concept, but as technology makes it easier and easier for employees to work from anywhere, it’s becoming a more common organizational model. Here at Rainforest, a significant percentage of our team has always been distributed. While that has its challenges, it’s also provided some critical benefits that we wouldn’t have […]
The Role of QA Testing in Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
You can only move as fast as your QA process allows. That’s why in order to do continuous delivery, you need to adopt an equally continuous QA process.
“The Mythical Man-Month”: 5 Software Testing Lessons from 1975 That Are Still True for Agile QA
From the persistence of bugs to the fallacy of throwing people at problems, here are 5 key software testing lessons from Fred Brooks' classic book, "The Mythical Man-Month."
What Is Usability Testing?
To improve and maintain customer satisfaction and retention, organizations must ensure that their products are not only be useful, but also straightforward and enjoyable to use. Usability testing is a method of testing that evaluates how easy it is for users to interact with the product.
3 Key Areas The Best QA Teams Focus On
In our recent poll on the health of the QA industry, we found that over half of all QA teams surveyed are not very confident in their ability to ensure a high-quality product. Having a high degree of confidence in your QA process is important, as it helps you ensure that every deployment goes smoothly and […]
How to Write Better QA Tests
Today, we're sharing our approach to test writing and how you can use it to get better results from your QA tests.Crafting well-written test cases is critical to getting reliable, fast results from your manual QA tests.
The Definitive Pre-deployment QA Checklist
Here are the seven major types of QA testing that all software teams should have on their checklist by the time their product reaches maturity.
QA=Money+Time. So how much should you spend?
You need QA, but how much should you spend and on what? In the world of software there are two big types of risk: death by 10,000 papercuts and death by catastrophic failure.
Rolling your own cross browser test plan
Cross browser testing is a pain. It’s also, sadly, an essential part of test coverage. Fret not! There are easy ways to reduce the pain. Solving the issue requires access to site stats, and a few handy pieces of Tech.
Unit testing vs. integration testing: why you should do both
Lets go over some of the types testing that can be done, when to use them and their benefits and downsides.