QA Strategy

How to run an effective quality assurance process.

The practical guide to QA strategy for startups
Learn the practical frameworks and practices that’ll help you lay a strong foundation for your org's QA strategy.
QA Testing Tools in 2023: 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 Guide: Definitions, Tools and FAQs
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 and a 6 Step Guide
Learn how to write a software test plan. Get started with our practical guide and free template.
Asking Developers to Do QA Is Broken. Here’s Why We Built a Product to Let Anyone Own QA.
Conventional approaches to QA are broken. Here's a better way.
The Layers of Testing Architecture
The landscape of software testing is changing. Speed and quality are no longer seen as opposing forces.
What Is Agile QA Testing?
Agile testing is a software practice designed to apply the principles of agile software development to the QA testing process. Learn more.
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 But some practices are outdated, while others have negatively impacted product success.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.
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 a QA Strategy 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.
3 Ways to Improve your QA Strategy
Companies don’t survive in the software industry without innovation, speed, and agility, and teams too-often forget about software quality when they’re working hard to speed up the delivery of innovative software. In this post, you will learn 3 steps to power up your QA strategy.
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.
4 Common Pitfalls When Scaling Agile QA
Rainforest’s CIO, Derek Choy, and Sr. Professional Services Consultant, Jeff Pineda, recently discussed common pitfalls growing teams experience as they scale their agile QA processes. In this post we share the 4 most common pitfalls and how they can be avoided.
Defect Clustering - What is it?
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.
How to Build a QA Strategy Like Spotify
Spotify is a great example of how to scale development and QA practices successfully. Since their launch in 2008, Spotify has grown from 150 employees to 2000+. Learn how they built a QA team and strategy that scales as the company continues to grow.
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.
Qualities to Look for in a First QA Hire
As teams look to build lean, highly-effective development teams, they often ask who they should bring onto the team as their first QA hire. This role is critical, and will help determine how quality scales as the product and team grow. Discover the qualities you should look for in your first QA hire.
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.
3 Key Takeaways from QA without a QA Team Webinar
For some organizations (including Rainforest), opting out of building a QA team is an option that’s been growing in popularity. But how do you do QA and keep quality high, if there’s no QA team?
Six Essential QA Metrics to Measure Product Quality
An effective QA strategy is a measured one. Finding the right QA metrics to measure product quality and team efficiency provide critical insights into your software testing process. Learn our top 6 QA metrics to track for product quality.
Who Should Your First QA Hire Be?
Every company reaches a point where quality becomes a focal point -- and for some organizations, that means it’s time to make their first dedicated QA hire. But when budgets are tight and every hire counts, finding someone who can level up your testing strategy and accelerate your quality goals is key.
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.
9 Essential Blogs Every QA Team Should Read in 2018
Are you making testing resolutions for 2018? Check out 9 of our favorite QA blogs and resources for staying up to date with the latest QA and software testing news.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Revamping Your QA Strategy
Is 2018 going to be the year you take control of your QA strategy? In this post you’ll learn some of the do’s and don’ts of revamping your QA strategies from QA experts.
Key Metrics to Help You Track Your QA Success
The long-term success of any QA strategy depends on measuring change and communicating that change to the team at large, so it’s important to measure the right QA metrics.
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.
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.
“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."
Scaling QA Test Coverage for Consumer Applications
In this post, we’ll dive into how teams can scale QA coverage for consumer apps to keep their testing processes fast and effective.
What Is Regression Testing?
Regression testing is a type of functional testing that checks for issues that are introduced by new additions or updates to the codebase.
What Is Functional Testing?
Functional testing focuses on testing the interface of the application to ensure that all user requirements for a properly working application are met.
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.
When hiring Testers, choose wisely
I'll try to avoid a "10 ways to make a great hire!" post. Instead, what follows are elements that help you make great testing hires. Mix and match as you please.
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.
You should be doing Unit, Integration & QA Testing
Lets go over some of the types testing that can be done, when to use them and their benefits and downsides.