CrowdAr

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CTO of ArtPlacer. We provide marketing services for art professionals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We needed someone to help us with our QA processes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CrowdAr provides us with a junior QA engineer and a senior QA engineer to help us implement new QA processes for our development efforts. Their team creates use cases for our products on Google Sheets. Whenever we deploy a new product, they define the use cases, prepare the sheets, create test models, run those tests, and provide us with the results.

After that, we assess the results that CrowdAr provides and address the issues that they find. Then, we bring their team again so that they can re-run the tests to ensure that the issues have been addressed and we can move forward with the project at hand. CrowdAr’s onboarding process was informal because we didn’t have previous documentation. Therefore, they’ve developed the test models from scratch.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with the two QA engineers that CrowdAr provides us with, although I’ve also communicated with both co-founders.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay CrowdAr a monthly fee for their services, but I don’t know how much we’ve spent so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around January 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The errors we used to experience in production environments have significantly decreased since we started working with CrowdAr.

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

CrowdAr is great. They pay close attention to our requests, get involved in the project, and always try to help us. Additionally, they commit to reaching our goals within specific timelines, and they usually meet our deadlines. Whenever they don’t meet a deadline, they’re very keen to explain the reasons and try to compensate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

CrowdAr is very attentive and involved in our project, and they have a human approach.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be good if CrowdAr provided better documentation.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t have any particular advice. Just work with them — I can highly recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there

I am the CFO and co-founder of Fichap, an HR startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We hired them for QA services to reduce errors on our product and improve its security.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had a couple of meetings with their leader and team, discussing the functionalities of our system. They’ve already started with the QA testing process using their own system.

What was the team composition?

We are working directly with their project leader.

How did you come to work with CrowdAr?

They were recommended to us.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent about $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2021, and our collaboration is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

With their help, we’ve been able to reduce the level of bugs found in our system by about 50%.

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve made a detailed plan for our project, and it includes the number of hours to be invested. We communicate directly with their project leader via phone calls and send updates through Discord.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re really impressed with the level of their customer service. They also communicate well and showcase an immense understanding of our needs — in fact, they always come up with great suggestions to make our collaboration more efficient.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At first, we didn’t receive any reports of the results of the testing processes, so the workflow was a bit informal. However, we’ve managed to talk about this and solve it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to work with them if you want to scale your business; they have a very strong, skilled, and hard-working team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CTO of nubceo, a startup building a fintech producto for easy and comprehensive management of a company's cashflow, aimed to small, medium and big companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CrowdAr?

We needed assistance in the entire QA process for our software product. Starting with manual testing of the solution, and then organizing our internal processes and work methodology.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We knew people in CrowdAr and had very good references of them.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They started by getting to know the product and how it aimed to solve our clients problems. Then they designed the test cases and the areas on which to focus, based on our requirements. After a period of testing our product they helped us build our own QA team. As a final stage of the service, they worked with us in defining the best methodologies to work with a QA team integrated into the development process.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Usually just one, a senior QA and team leader. But on the first stage of the project there were an additional manual tested assigned.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We found many areas of improvement in the first phase. Later on we noticed an increase in product quality. Finally, with the changes in methodology we saw a better cohesion in the entire team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We worked very closely in the first phase, and CrowdAr was like a member of our own team. In the later stages the service mutated to a consultancy mode, with frequent but brief interactions.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The knowledge of the processes for QA in software development and the critical eye were the main aspects.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Even if the service was great overall, there were some times where the manual testing services could have been better. Probably due to seniority of the members assigned. Nothing critical however.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of CityCurator. We provide data services to companies who are looking to expand into foreign markets, particularly in Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We needed someone to provide us with software testing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We developed a data platform that enables companies to access information on various markets around the world. CrowdAr provided us with a really detailed review of the app and manual and proprietary testing from a user and security perspective.

After that, they delivered a report that highlighted the critical components that we needed to change and improve on.

What is the team composition?

We worked with about 6–7 people from their team.

How did you come to work with CrowdAr?

We had prior knowledge about CrowdAr and had already established a relationship prior to this project. We chose them because of their high-quality and cost-efficient service.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around £5,000 (roughly $6,700 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–April 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

CrowdAr helped us identify some of the critical issues on the security of the app. We're also able to implement user feedback into the development of our next project, which was great because we got to validate the security features.

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

They were really good in terms of managing the project and the inception of the software was handled very well. The expectations between our parties were clear, which was important for this type of development project.

We mainly communicated via video conference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were very impressed with their agility to respond in the way that we wanted. They also had an excellent process involving our system and manual testers, which helped this project a lot.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could maybe improve the gap in what’s expected of the resources and their responsibilities, but I can’t really fault them for that because they were really throughout the duration of the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you’re aware of the work that you have to put in to get the testing done right.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a digital technical manager at Consorcio, a group that’s composed of a bank, an insurance firm, and an inversions company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We hired them to coach our agile teams around DevOps and QA practices.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CrowdAr has helped us improve our internal development practices. They provide services to improve our Kubernetes cluster and AWS resources while also enhancing the performance and stability of our infrastructure.

Moreover, they work with us on our products and initiatives. The team hasn’t developed any specific software, but they provide skills and tools for our QA practices, such as API and UI testing. Meanwhile, we use a tool called Lippia, which is provided by CrowdAr. It incorporates other open-source tools. They’ve trained our team to use this platform. 

Apart from Lippia, they also provide us with more diagnostic tools to identify our mistakes in terms of configuration and deployment problems. Our overall goal is to provide better information to our internal team so that they can solve problems better. 

Further, we’re moving away from an infrastructure provider and switching to CrowdAr. This way, we can make more efficient use of our AWS infrastructure. 

What is the team composition?

We work with a DevOps technical lead, a QA lead, and a QA analyst. The QA lead organizes all of our workshops and coaches our teams to incorporate tools and practices into our development setup. Meanwhile, the QA analyst handles more technical work. 

How did you come to work with CrowdAr?

I received a message from CrowdAr on LinkedIn, and that was where our engagement started. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We have no metrics yet in terms of QA services, but we’re starting to implement some such metrics. Meanwhile, CrowdAr has a high-level vision of our infrastructure and how it should be used to benefit our developers and support people. We’ve met our objectives, and the CrowdAr team has proven to be more QA-oriented. Overall, we’ve successfully integrated their best practices into our development cycles. 

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

CrowdAr is great at project management. We have several checkpoint meetings throughout the week with one of their leads, where they provide us with all of the information about the status of each of our projects. Through such checkpoints, we can provide our feedback and mitigate risks at the proper time. Overall, we’ve had a good experience in terms of project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

CrowdAr has a lot of flexibility, and they’re agile in terms of adjusting their offers to our needs. When we ask them for more services, they take the opportunity to grow the relationship. Simply put, they’re a professional team with good communication. They provide solutions to our actual problems. If they don’t have the right resources for something, they provide us with guidance. Overall, they’re a good partner in the true sense of that word. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there

I am the technical lead at a local bank.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We needed someone to assess the quality of our new banking app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CrowdAr provides app testing and QA services. Their testing processes are automated.

What was the team composition?

We primarily work with a project manager. There's also a teammate in charge of QA automation and two people working on QA. We've interacted with the CEO as well.

How did you come to work with CrowdAr?

They were already one of our strategic partners for anything related to QA.

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2019, and it's an ongoing collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The quality of their work is just excellent — I'm thrilled with the CrowdAr team. I always recommend them to anyone looking for a company with QA expertise.

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

The assigned project manager works very closely with us. Their CEO also constantly reaches out to us to make sure everything is going well. As for project management tools, we use mostly Jira and Teams to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The automation of their testing processes is fast and excellent. They're experts who produce great work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I honestly don't know what they could do better. CrowdAr should keep doing what they've been doing and continue working closely with us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Treat them as part of your team. Delegate your QA process to them and leave it in their hands.  

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work in the Back office solution center as a head of testing. Kapsch is a provider for a moblile and connected world solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CrowdAr?

Automation and manual testing.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have selected Crowdar out of 3 providers. An important point in this decision was Crowdar's previous involvement in several Kapsch projects.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Automation Kapsch team has the objetive of automating the regression test cases of the product. Crowdar helps us to achieve this goal. In other projects, they support us with manual tests to ensure that the product works properly.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

4 automation testers and 3 manual testers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The manual testers collaborate in the delivery projects with the aim to achieve the planned goals. We are making progress in automating test cases and in this way reducing the manual testing effort

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have very challenging goals to meet. Crowdar supports us to achieve this goal. We work with agile methodology (scrum), we are all participating in the same sprint ceremonies

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They offer a very good testing service at a competitive price. They have years of experience working in the testing area.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I wish they would offer resources with leadership skills with automation knowledge

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Nubi, a financial tech company. We have developed a white-label online wallet. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CrowdAr?

We needed someone to test our application as well as to automate the testing process, so we hired CrowdAr.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CrowdAr provides app testing services while at the same time automating those tests. Besides streamlining our QA, they also advised us on how to improve our processes. They trained my team on how to manage the pipelines and automate tests within it.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with six people.

How did you come to work with CrowdAr?

I had seen their work prior to hiring them. They had expertise in the area of service that we needed, so I decided to hire them.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent $500,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2019, and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

CrowsAr has been successful in automating our application testing process. We haven’t had any problems with their work so far. They’re sharp professionals.

How did CrowdAr perform from a project management standpoint?

We work in an agile methodology. We focus quarter by quarter, so we don’t really have a deadline, but CrowdAr has been good about delivering their services in a timely manner. They use Jira and Confluence to track the projects, and we communicate via Slack and Micorsoft Teams.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re committed, flexible, and responsible. They're able to accommodate all of the new requirements that we give every month.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything has been okay so far. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I highly recommend that you work with CrowdAr because they’re committed to the project. They understand the business challenge very well, and it will be a true comfort to have them on your team.