Crowdsourced Testing

As a co-founder of Astaqc Consulting which is a team of specialized test professionals, I know how hard it is for people to find the right community and resources to grow. While our motive is to provide the best of services to our clients, we also know the importance of finding the best resources and nurturing them. As a part of this, we are trying to bridge the gap between the people struggling to learn and find the right opportunities and the people looking for the right candidates. I am inviting all the fresh and experienced testing professionals to join this slack community which is already growing and has a lot of internships and freelance opportunity apart from job openings.

What is Crowdsourced Testing?

Crowdsourced Testing

Crowdsourced testing is a form of non-traditional testing. Commonly known as Crowd Testing or Crowd Sourcing. This becomes a significant trend in software testing that allows the unique involvement of individuals to perform this test. We use ‘talent’ as a means of ‘service’ during the crowdsource testing.

Using many individuals from different localities to carry out the test instead of hiring professionals or consultants to do the job is known as crowdsourcing. Since this is a more realistic approach to be close to the user and more realistic user testing.

The ‘crowd’ does not only refer to specific individuals. But it refers to a diverse group of individuals from across the world. Select them to perform the following tasks. According to experience, background, and also qualifications, it should be easy selecting the right group of individuals. On which they will be able to test others.

Crowdsourcing is a collective effort between a group of people working from across the globe. Desired results are the product of everyone coming together with their ideas. When they solve the issue and successfully find the bug, they will get paid. Crowdsourced workers have no limitations regarding their location of work. Testers can work from anywhere and create their hours as they please as long as they have results.

Over recent years, it has gained significant recognition as it is not only a means of feedback and insight. But a means of bringing many benefits for the testers as well. Many have even considered opting this profession as their second job because of the flexibility. They receive in time location and pay.

That is not all since access to social media, and the internet has vastly increased.

Individuals bring with them insight and technical knowledge, which they further use to achieve the required goals hence improving the quality of work.

Teams using crowdsourcing as a measure often mistake the true meaning of it. A lot of times, people see crowdsource testers as people paid for testing the product and logging bugs. However, that is not the only case. We can divide crowdsourced testing into three phases sourcing, building, and partnering. Sourcing refers to the selection of applicants from within the organization based on their level of skills according to the given task.

Then, we have a building that is gathering a group of testers that can provide constructive and critical feedback on any stage of product development. Finally, we have partnering, which is the link between different organizations to receive a diverse pool of presentable knowledge.

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Like any other test, crowdsourced testing has its set of pros and cons.

The method in use is cost-effective, paying testers according to their work performance generating the desired output. It is a cheap method because individuals volunteer themselves, which ultimately saves time and money spent on hiring professionals.

It is the easy availability of resources that a diverse crowd brings diverse knowledge and resources, which can help solve problems faster and more efficiently as well as fast execution of work.

Therefore, leads to faster and better results. However, there is more involving a variety of people from a variety of areas in the process. Their diverse thoughts help in testing, but that is not all like pros, there come cons. One of the limitations that we may come across is the confidentiality of data. Since a large number of people would be using it and can post about it before release.

Usually, this is not a problem, but for some critical projects, identification can be. For any project, work communication is key, especially for an online job. Sometimes that can lack due to time zones. Another limitation would be the track of testing effort, which refers to the companies keeping track of all their testers and the work that they are putting in.

Sometimes due to location and time zone, some people aren’t able to put in that much time and effort compared to others. Lastly, the bugs we get from the crowdsourcing team, it is crucial to treat them with equal attention and not leave them. This may take a toll negatively on the efficiency and effectiveness of results.

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We use Crowdsourced testing in places under spread out geographic conditions.

As crowds from various locations have diverse weather conditions. They can be used to determine the performances in bad weather conditions like the impact of snow and mountains on the performance of mobile phones. It can also help determine how a mobile phone behaves in different conditions. It focuses on those areas that work with functionality, which can link many people together amongst each other. Because sometimes applications require testing on specific devices with specific combinations, which can be costly.

Manageable testing will avoid the extra cost.

According to that, we could say crowdsourced testing is a diverse and wide-field highly opted in recent years. It is a cost-effective, reliable, efficient, fast way to determine the quality of products at any stage, identify bugs, and solve the problem.

It has a unique style, participants are volunteers selected accordingly to the required criteria and task. A real crowd is getting into real-world situations. This is the best way to develop software.

In many cases, it acts as a means to make sure that all areas of testing are covered. It does not have any rules. The crowd is allowed to test the software as they please and find comfort for themselves. Thus, it works alongside a testing team of an organization, not as their replacement, but as an addition to test the software.

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