Discussion on Building Quality, Sprint by Sprint: Evolution of QA at ClickUp by Raghul Murugesan | Testμ 2024

Which is more viable: using in-house teams for all kinds of testing, like performance, accessibility, etc., or using a specialized outside team for these activities?

How can startups balance speed and quality in their development cycles?

New companies run into a bunch of problems, like not having enough money or time, trying to do things fast but still keep them good, and figuring out how to do everything right from the start. There’s usually a rush to get things out there quickly, which makes it hard to keep up the quality. Setting up clear testing plans right away can help deal with these issues.

Starting to use shift-left testing brings its own set of problems, like needing the QA team to get involved earlier, needing more technical skills, and possibly testing too much at the beginning of development. It might slow things down at first, but it ends up saving time by catching problems later on.

ClickUp had to figure out how to get QA involved in every part of making the product in a fast-moving environment. They got past this by being proactive, getting QA into product teams, and making sure developers and QAs worked well together right from the start.

ClickUp differentiates itself by offering a more customizable and user-friendly interface compared to Jira. While Jira is widely known for dev-oriented features, ClickUp focuses on flexibility for cross-functional teams, including better support for QA and collaboration.

In each sprint, ClickUp’s QA process involves continuous learning from previous releases. They adapt by refining test coverage, identifying recurring issues, and updating test cases. This ensures that quality consistently improves sprint over sprint.

One of ClickUp’s biggest challenges was keeping the quality high as they grew bigger without making the process slower. They tackled this by using automation and always testing as they went, which helped them keep up with the fast pace of development while still making sure their product was reliable.

Absolutely, you can use shift-left for testing APIs. By checking APIs early on in the development process, you can spot issues before they get too complicated or mess with the front-end of the app, making the overall product better.

Some downsides include having to put in more effort to develop tests early, which means the QA team might have to work harder at the start. There’s also the chance of missing problems that only show up later in the process. Finding the right balance between testing early and validating later helps avoid this.

ClickUp focused on KPIs such as defect leakage, test coverage, test cycle time, and defect resolution time. These metrics helped the team fine-tune their performance and ensure that QA added value without becoming a bottleneck.

The key is to start using automation early, get QA involved with the product teams, and always be learning. ClickUp focused on working well together between developers and QAs, and letting QAs help with the product’s development instead of just finding bugs.

Yes, as QA pools shrink, those in QA roles will likely take on more valuable, strategic tasks, focusing on automation, risk analysis, and improving product quality holistically, rather than repetitive manual testing.

Startups can grow smartly by staying flexible and focusing on being able to grow with them. For QA, this means setting up processes that can adapt and scale up, like automation and always-on testing, from the start.

Automation is super important. It’s all about automating the boring stuff so you can spend your time on the more interesting parts like testing new things and edge cases. Using CI/CD pipelines makes sure you’re testing a lot more often without making your product worse.

Startups have to juggle being fast without cutting corners and often don’t have a lot of resources. They need to be quick and nimble, while big companies have more solid ways of doing things but might struggle with being innovative and fast.

ClickUp is all about working together across different teams, while Jira is more about what developers need. ClickUp is more flexible, customizable, and has features that make it great for teams that aren’t just developers, like marketing and design.

ClickUp is often seen as easier to use and more customizable for teams. It has a lot of integrations and makes it simple to manage tasks across different departments, which some people find easier to use than Jira’s more strict setup.

It really depends on how big your company is and what you have to work with. In-house teams offer better integration and faster response times but may lack specialized expertise (e.g., accessibility). Outsourcing specialized testing can be cost-effective and bring expert knowledge, but it requires careful management to avoid misalignment.

Startups should get into automation early to keep up the pace and quality. Using shift-left testing and always-on integration helps find problems early, while making small changes often means you don’t have to sacrifice quality for speed.