Hire Test Automation Engineers for Regression Testing

Benefits of hiring regression testers from Belitsoft

Regression Testing Time Reduction

Manual regression testing takes a long time. Each company defines for itself what long means. If there are thousands of manual checks to perform before releases, a regression cycle may take days and involve more than one engineer. After automation, the time required to pass the same regression cycle, depending on the scope, may be cut down to hours.

In Belitsoft's experience, regression testing time may be reduced by up to 70% compared with manual testing. One of the mechanisms behind the acceleration is the automated suite, which runs multiple tests concurrently. Such tests, even if there are many hundreds of them, may run on demand, at specified timeslots like overnight, multiple times a day, on triggers like an opened pull request or every time developers submit new code into the codebase, or within minutes before every release to production.

According to Belitsoft, automated regression testing increases release frequency by 50% or more. At the same time, reliable regression testing makes the release process substantially more predictable.

Improve the deployment cadence with Belitsoft and know with confidence that each build was thoroughly validated.

Regression Testing Coverage Increase

At some point, many software product companies realize that they have no automated tests in place and have never had any automated tests on their applications and websites. Test coverage in such projects is non-existent or less than 10%.

Given competing priorities, it's challenging for an internal team to achieve the required level of automated testing within short timeframes. That's why companies hire remote test automation engineers or regression testers.

If a company starts from zero, regression testers build the automated suite.

If a company already has a list of manual test cases, the task is to convert the appropriate part of the list into automated tests without going over the agreed test budget.

Tests can be added to the suite continuously at an agreed rate. As for coverage within a deadline, the target may be set as a percentage by a date: for example, 90% of the product's test cases automated by the release scheduled for 1 September.

Once the initial suite is done, the task shifts to keeping up with development: tests are written as new features are developed and ready for testing, or test cases are created during the sprint after the corresponding feature is developed.

At the same time, the task includes maintaining automated regression coverage for a growing number of web, mobile, API, and integration workflows, and test cases per release milestone.

Before a full contract, a company may want proof to understand how many active tests and test runs can be achieved and how many bugs can be caught before customer impact with regression testing developers within a pilot project over a certain short period. Where tests are run per release, the reporting counts not just the number of unique test cases but also the test cycles within which they run.

Depending on the scope, Belitsoft test automation engineers can create hundreds of tests covering most workflows within several weeks. When the contract has a fixed number of tests, we can achieve that number ahead of schedule.

Production Bugs Reduction

After automation, bugs are caught during pre-release regression testing, preventing rollbacks to a previous version after deployment.

The key metrics regression test automation engineers look at have different names meaning similar things: production defects, field-reported defect rate, post-launch defects, post-deployment critical bugs, or bug escape rate.

In Belitsoft's experience, after test automation, the reduction in those defects may exceed 90%, and for critical software bugs it is even higher.

Clients immediately see the difference when end users of their applications begin to report fewer issues or even no critical bugs, especially when it comes to billing and payment processing or integrations in networks of websites like ecommerce stores or in businesses with a large number of legacy applications.

No bugs will impact customers that use your applications. Test with Belitsoft test automation engineers and get successful releases with zero regressions found by your users.

QA Staff and Cost Reduction

Manual regression testing slows down feature delivery. Very often, full-time engineers are forced to update test scripts, hunt issues down, watch the test suite, chase unstable tests, and write test code instead of developing new features.

Test automation engineer outsourcing via software testing companies like Belitsoft frees up internal teams, repurposing them for higher-value delivery work and reallocating hours to feature development. For a company that would otherwise need several in-house automation engineers, that is a six-figure annual saving.

The number of employees involved in the QA process goes down, in some cases allowing several full-time positions to be replaced.

Dependency on the manual regression team is substantially reduced or eliminated. In Belitsoft's experience, that means hundreds of hours of manual regression work saved and QA-related costs reduced by up to 40%.

Even product managers stop spending their time every sprint on manual checks.

All this happens while testing capacity increases several times.

Test automation engineer outsourcing is like having your own team of experienced QA test automation engineers on staff, at a fraction of that cost and without hiring them as permanent employees.

Belitsoft offers test automation engineers not just at very attractive rates but also with a guarantee that you achieve good results for your money if you're in the USA or UK.

What Cooperation with Belitsoft Test Automation Engineers Looks Like

Selecting Testers

A client interviews potential testers as candidates, then selects them. You can even shortlist us along with two other regression testing companies and give them test projects. Then you can see if the quality of our work blows the other two out of the water.

Belitsoft prepares the NDA and all the documents. The testing can be started in a few days.

Proof-of-Concept

It's important to see on a demo project whether the test automation engineers can do what is being asked of them. That's why Belitsoft offers a small proof-of-concept (POC) regression testing project. It shows whether our test automation engineers are as good as described.

The POC is a small test task that can be done within a couple of weeks to make you familiar with us and our working style.

Some clients give Belitsoft a set of specific tasks to automate. If there are a lot of tests to select from, first we agree with the client on which ones to automate first, then include them in the release process. To succeed during the pilot phase, Belitsoft, for example, may have to hit an agreed number of tests by a certain date.

A successful POC provides confidence and trust in our process. That is why very pleased companies often sign a longer contract with us.

Initiate a trial service period with Belitsoft test automation engineers!

Contract

Belitsoft offers customizable testing services. It easily aligns its services with your testing project scope and budget.

A contract may include a fixed number of tests agreed upon within a timeline. In Belitsoft's experience, a negotiated plan or test budget may include, for example, 200 automated tests.

A contract may also set a coverage target. For example, automate all critical user flows within the first quarter. Or feature coverage must exceed 80% and should be delivered within the agreed-upon time.

A company may also work with Belitsoft using a time-and-materials model, for example, for QA app testing. The company pays for test automation engineers' time. So goals and work descriptions are managed on the fly. The billing rate and cost structure are simple and do not require long-term commitments.

Alternatively, a company may have Belitsoft test automation engineers on retainer or on an open-ended contract.

Align Belitsoft automation testing services with your regression testing project scope and budget.

Onboarding

A project starts with an initial assessment and test strategy development. Then comes a detailed plan. It outlines which types of tests are to be performed, the testing timeline overall, and the tools to be used.

To help test automation engineers understand a company's software, clients share the available information. Engineers need relevant documentation on systems and platforms, as well as the software development process, so they know how the system works and how it is developed. If the software is too complex, the client can also provide a quick walkthrough.

Engineers also need limited but sufficient business information, so they know which scenarios are the most important. The client's product development team may explain its needs in a format like Gherkin, describing different scenarios.

To improve the project's time and cost metrics, the most experienced clients provide a detailed backlog listing what test automation engineers should be working on.

The client may also grant access to its issue management system like Jira and to its test management account like TestRail. So Belitsoft engineers work with those scenarios, test cases, and the backlog in the client's own tools.

New resources don't need weeks to join the testing project. For a new project, it takes less than one day for Belitsoft testers to get onboard, and the team joins a company in a couple of days. Testers are put through a company's training and onboarding process, and hit the ground running: they're productive within a week or less. Belitsoft QA engineers pick up the process very quickly thanks to their ability to gain the business context from the existing application with a few questions.

During the Project

The client responds to queries from our test automation engineers about expected behavior and fixes the bugs our tests catch. When the application changes, the client may provide a screen recording of the changes. Test automation engineers update the tests by the requested date.

In Belitsoft's experience, the automation testing projects that go well have a well-defined scope. Articulate your scope, and Belitsoft test automation engineers will do the rest.

FAQ

How to Choose the Right Test Automation Company

The one thing that makes a company choose a testing vendor is the ability to keep and use the test code that was written, even if the contract is terminated later.

A testing vendor's commitment to non-proprietary open-source testing tools allows the client to retain the tests.

On top of that, the testing vendor must maintain the tests and not just write and run them. That is why a good testing vendor makes a big effort to make the tests maintainable: if tests are very hard to maintain, they will not yield any return on investment.

Also, before the project starts, a good testing vendor asks good questions upfront to identify the parts of each scenario that will be difficult to automate.

They are not afraid of challenging the assumptions a client may have to guarantee alignment.