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The situation: Inverifi's goal was to release software quickly, but manual testing slowed them down. By the time testers found bugs, developers were already busy working on other features.
The result: Rainforest's no-code interface makes test automation easy for anyone on the Inverifi team. Software delivery has accelerated, and switching from manual testing has freed up resources for product development.
Rainforest has allowed us to create better experiences for our users because we can iterate so quickly.
Inverifi is a policy management tool that simplifies compliance, helping teams get aligned around ISO 27001 and other standards.
From the company's inception, the team focused on setting up processes and systems that would allow them to release features and updates with speed and efficiency. As Jake Galvin, Inverifi’s Product Manager, put it:
“One of the things we set out to do at the start was ensure we could develop and release really quickly and be reactive to the market and our customers’ needs.”
But testing became a bottleneck, making it difficult to reach these goals while protecting product quality.
The Inverifi team initially relied on manual testing, which was too slow to be sustainable: once QA finally came back with test results, developers would have already moved on to other tasks. The frequent delays and context switching hurt productivity.
“You had developer tasks that’d go to QA and by the time failures got sent back to a developer, they’d be in the middle of something else. We’d have to wait a couple of days for any reworking of issues.”
They knew they’d have to automate their end-to-end tests as part of their GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline to reach their speed goals. Some of the team had a history working with Selenium for automation, but found those tests too difficult to maintain and too reliant on a small number of overstretched developers.
Plus, using a framework like Selenium that requires coding would be counter to Inverifi’s culture of involving the whole software team – including non-technical members – in the product development lifecycle.
“We have always been passionate about engaging the whole team in not just the development process, but the process of growing the product. Everybody gets early insights into new product features, and everyone gets to throw darts at it, make suggestions, and ask about user experience and our end goals.”
In March of 2022, Inverifi implemented Rainforest QA for no-code test automation. It was quickly clear to Jake and the team Rainforest was easy enough for anyone to start using right away.
“The first time I sat down to create a test, I was doing a login screen test. I jumped in, I was like right, I'll figure it out. And within 10 minutes, I had it built out. So that, for me, was huge: just how easy it was.”
QA Engineer Sam Ryan adds: “We brought on apprentices and they had a really low learning curve. There was no struggle for them using Rainforest – it just made perfect sense for them.”
And in the spirit of Inverifi’s culture, Rainforest’s no-code workflows have made quality assurance a team effort.
“Using Rainforest means we don’t have to rely solely on our developers. When resources require it, I can step in. I've had to jump in and write tests and we've had many releases where I've been analyzing the results and making sure we're not going to break something.”
As of today, Rainforest has helped deliver over 150 releases, allowing Inverifi to push code at least once – and up to five times – per day via its CI/CD pipeline.
“We've set Rainforest up so it's automatically integrated into our pipelines. We can merge in code or a fix to our environment and automatically kick off our Rainforest tests. The ease of being able to connect with the Rainforest API and integrate it has been really helpful.”
Adopting Rainforest has finally allowed Inverifi to reach its goals for delivery speed. For example, smoke test suites that had taken up to 45 minutes to do manually now only take 15 minutes.
Getting automated test results quickly has meant eliminating most of the disruptive context switching developers had experienced as part of the old manual testing process.
“For me, speed has really been key. Bringing in Rainforest allowed us to massively decrease the gap between a developer finishing a task and waiting for test results. It's saved us days around some releases because of that. It's given us back a huge amount of time in terms of developers not having to go back and forth.”
Delivering faster has also meant Jake and his team can now consistently meet their goal of being highly-responsive to their customers’ needs.
“Rainforest has allowed us to create better experiences for our users because we can iterate so quickly. We can engage people and we can change whatever we need to in the product without having to worry about missing deadlines.”
While speed and quality are their highest priorities, Inverifi has also discovered “huge” cost savings with Rainforest compared to manual testing. These savings have opened up opportunities for exciting product and systems investments.
“Since we brought Rainforest in, it’s saved us £1,500+ a month in terms of resources. When you are a lean startup, that is huge. That's allowed us to put the money towards bigger and better things and create a solution we’re incredibly proud of.”
