IT Quality Control

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Vladimir Gubarev. I am the Head of IT department in LGFG Fashion House. Our company is the world-wide renowned bespoke suit, shirt and shoe brand catering timeless and classic British tailoring to private clients in more than 20 countries of the world and for Hollywood movies. LGFG Fashion House takes great pride in our world-class product.

Our manufacturing starting with the world’s first CAD tailoring software and leading through the most advanced and sophisticated tailoring technology and production chain in the world, combined with our unlimited direct sourcing from the world’s top mills makes LGFG Fashion House an industry giant.

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Quality Control?

According to the dynamic growth of our business, we are constantly updating our internal IT systems to meet new business needs. We hired ITQC to provide testing services for our CRM system and implement improvements and workflow processes developed in it.

What were your goals for this project?

The software is an essential tool for the functioning of our business. But as soon as software development and testing are not our core business we decide to transfer it to an outsourced company ITQC – software quality assurance specialists. The aim of the transfer was to reduce costs while improving the quality of the software. We have achieved these goals.

How did you select IT Quality Control?

We chose this company based on the recommendation of our partner.

Describe the project in detail.

We invite QA engineers of ITQC to the project at the stage when the CRM system was already implemented, but still was in the active development. In our system we have standard CRM functionality for registration of customers and sales activities and also implementation of different internal workflows.

Involved ITQC specialists started with the creation of checklists, test cases and documenting of all necessary information. At the same time they perform manual testing of the functionality and layout of our CRM system.

What was the team composition?

During testing the ITQC team changed. The management of the quality assurance team was entirely within the ITQC's area of responsibility.

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

We managed to improve the quality of our system by testing all developed improvements. At the same time with the testing the system was also documented and as a result we received a high-quality product with documentation that allows us to maintain it.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

All operational work was tracked in Jira, communications were carried out via Skype. ITQC QA engineers quickly get into the development process and became full-fledged members of our team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive was the approach of the QA team of engineers, who not only performed testing, but also analyzed defects in order to prevent problems in the future. They were focusing on results, despite working outside of working hours. The speed of replacing specialists when it is necessary.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At the beginning of the project it took some time to understand our specifics and identify the necessary team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of the software company. We develop, integrate and support IT solutions allowing small and medium-sized businesses to optimize their business processes, making them more efficient. We work within the US market with companies from any industry that want to automate their business processes and make their workflow more effective.

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Quality Control?

We have been cooperating with ITQC since 2017. In this project, we have developed a web application for a large American company - operator Unified Communications, who provides a universal solution for all network needs. During the whole project ITQC ensured the quality of the product that we were developing.

What were your goals for this project?

The transfer of the quality assurance to ITQC gave us the possibility to flexible manage the workload of specialists, rapidly increase the number of specialists involved in testing, reduce costs by not maintaining our own team of testers, the ability to focus on development, while transferring all quality assurance issues to an outside company.

How did you select IT Quality Control?

We chose this company because we had previous successful experience of cooperating on other projects.

Describe the project in detail.

We developed the web application that automate the process of connecting new customers, calculating quotes and necessary equipment, discounts and the whole work of field agents. The application was in development for eight months. ITQC specialists started from the preparation of checklists and test cases, provided functional testing of the system and at the same time created and updated the test documentation. During the development of test cases we also received an additional benefit – we have updated our existing documentation.

What was the team composition?

The test manager and two test engineers were involved in the testing process. The manager participated at the beginning of the project for building the testing process. Test engineers performed the testing process on the rest of the project.

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

As a result of the involvement of ITQC specialists, the quality of the project has improved. During the project checklists and test cases were prepared, the existing documentation was updated, several hundred defects of the web application were found and successfully fixed.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Developers from our side directly communicated with testers through messengers. Daily meetings allow us to control and plan the work, provide a single understanding of the context by all participants of the project. Developers, test engineers and managers worked in a unified information space - in Jira.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were impressed by the quality and transparency of their engineers.

Are there any areas for improvement?

It took some time for specialists to immerse themselves in industry specifics. However, this happened fast enough.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO at Progressive Media Development. Progressive Media is a resident of the “Special Economic Zone” of the science city Dubna. The company has specialized in digital projects of increased complexity since 2007, for the last 10 years it has been focused on Enterprise-level projects for Russian and international holdings.

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Quality Control?

ITQC provides us with testing services. Functional manual, automated, mobile testing and cross-browser testing. They are responsible for quality assurance on our large projects.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of cooperation with ITQC was to improve the quality of the product to ensure its stable operation.

How did you select IT Quality Control?

After working with ITQC for a month of the pilot period, we became ensured in qualification of the ITQC employees and signed a contract for testing job.

Describe the project in detail.

Since 2018, ITQC has been continuously testing our large e-Commerce projects. They apply functional manual testing and cross-browser testing for web projects, mobile testing for mobile applications and automated testing where it is necessary.

ITQC are responsible for quality assurance on our projects and they choose approaches and tools for this independently (sometimes they create test plans and test scripts if it is necessary for project and sometimes they use checklists only if where are no need for complex test documentation on the project).

What was the team composition?

ITQC forms a QA team including a test lead. They flexibly manage the workload by adding specialists to the work when the workload increases and removing them from the project when the workload decreases. Quality assurance on the project is entirely responsibility of ITQC company.

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

Our clients are satisfied with the quality of our work. This is the best indicator.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is carried out using specialized tools such as Trello, Jira, Bitbucket and Skype chats. Managers, developers, QA engineers are in the same chats, use one kanban board, which allows us to organize a common information space and provide our team with clear and necessary communications.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were looking for professionals in QA area who will take responsibilities for product quality, which will allow us to focus on our core business. We found such partner.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There are always possibilities for improvement. We are constantly working on improvements with ITQC together.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Ivan Shornikov. I am the CEO and Founder of Raxel Telematics. At Raxel, we develop technology that speeds up smart mobility product development.

We've worked with both insurance and transportation business, including companies like AXA, NTUC Income, ADIRA, Alfa Insurance, etc. We use smartphone sensors to collect telematics data, then use it for gamification, affinity programs and driver education.

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Quality Control?

We’ve started cooperation with ITQC to provide technical support and testing of all our products including mobile applications of insurance telematics, telematics devices, and testing our DataHub.

The goal of the cooperation has been to focus on the development of the company's products by outsourcing their quality assurance to a specialized company.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of the project is to ensure consistent product quality and to provide technical support for existing and new customers.

How did you select this vendor?

We have worked with the employees of this company before and chose ITQC for predictable and high-quality results of their previous work.

Describe the project in detail.

Our cooperation with ITQC began in the fall of 2017 with testing of our mobile applications and arranging technical support for current clients of the company. After that, we gradually transferred the competence for telematics devices testing and, finally we have transfered the competence for testing our DataHub to ITQC.

What was the team composition?

The ITQC team changes according to our needs. Our IoT devices testing was carried out by test engineers, mobile applications were tested by specialists in mobile testing, technical support specialists were involved in technical support functions.

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

All our products are currently undergoing testing by ITQC specialists.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Despite the remote collaboration format, we manage to communicate effectively because the team use specialized tools such as Jira, Slack, chat bots. Our developers are constantly in touch with testing specialists and exchange information, which allows all project participants «to be on the same page».

What did you find most impressive about this company?

ITQC specialists are highly professional, have strong focus to achieve clients’ goals and have good knowledge in product specific issues.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are constantly improving our QA cooperation by transferring deeper knowledge of our products to ITQC specialists.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Alexey Kochik. I am the Chief information officer of Russian Standard Insurance company. My responsibilities include IT maintenance and support for the current operations of the company, as well as the development and implementation of IT strategy.

Our company is the insurance company of the Russian Standard Group. JSC Russian Standard Insurance was incorporated in 2003. The company was the first to introduce voluntary life insurance to the borrowers who get consumer loans.

Nowadays JSC Russian Standard Insurance offers a wide range of high-quality insurance products providing reliable financial protection to its clients in times of need.

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Quality Control?

We contracted ITQC to ensure the quality of our IT systems upgrades by testing. Besides ITQC provides technical support of some systems, in particular, the corporate portal, e-documentation system, and e-sales system.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of our collaboration was to enhance the quality of IT systems, facilitate the speed of upgrades, and outsource the non-core activities.

How did you select this vendor?

We worked with the employees of this company before and chose ITQC for predictable and high-quality results of their previous work

Describe the project in detail.

We started working with ITQC in 2017. We began with the testing services and technical support of our company's web systems and gradually built from there.

Nowadays, ITQC provides us supports and testing for such front-office systems as sales of travel insurance, health insurance, property insurance as well as sales of other products.

Besides ITQC is responsible for the support of our e-documentation system and corporate portal.

What was the team composition?

ITQC team varies in time. Usually, there are 1-2 SDET experts. Sometimes, an analyst gets involved. We greatly value the possibility to scale up our outsourcing and ITQC offers us this opportunity.

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

Our corporate portal was updated for the first time since 2003. The update covered not only the corporate portal components but the whole infrastructure including the operating system.

The issues with e-documentation get resolved despite the closed code of the system developer. We launched digital sales of 5 new products. Nowadays ITQC is working on automated testing and monitoring of our integration services.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Despite working remotely, the efficiency of communications is very high. Initially, we used email for task setting. However, due to the issues typical for email (it is impossible to trace requirements, follow-up on the task status), we started using Jira as a task tracker.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

ITQC is very client-oriented. We can rely on their employees, who help even after working hours and work on the tasks until completion.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There are always avenues for improvement. It would be great to have more analyst’s working hours devoted to the project, clarify the task setting, facilitate the client feedback. There is room for improvement and we work on it together with ITQC.