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Your 1st Choice for Smart Testing Solutions

5.0
1 review

Founded in 1997, Professional Quality Assurance Ltd. (PQA) is Canada’s leading independent solutions provider of quality assurance and software testing services through a team of over 100 professionals. Headquartered in Fredericton, NB, PQA has additional delivery offices located in Halifax, NS, Moncton, NB, Calgary, AB and Vancouver, BC.

PQA offers a “Test Smarter” testing process that includes methodologies, frameworks and tools to ensure that testing projects are conducted in a well-managed and consistent manner across the entire software development life-cycle. We apply and tailor our methodologies and approaches to match your development and testing life-cycle, keeping your objectives and goals in mind. PQA can add value at any point in your testing process to help ensure successful project delivery.

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$5,000+
 
$50 - $99 / hr
 
50 - 249
 Founded
1997
Show all +
Fredericton, Canada
headquarters
other locations
  • 1210-675 West Hastings St.
    Vancouver V6B 1N2
    Canada
    (604) 558-0772
  • Calgary, AB T1X 0L3
    Canada

Reviews

5.0
1 review
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Integrated QA Team For Digital Agency

"They integrate well with our team and they're thorough."

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5.0

Quality: 
4.0
Schedule: 
4.0
Cost: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
The Project
 
$50,000 to $199,999
Project summary: 

PQA Testing provides supplementary quality assurance resources to a digital marketing agencies. The team supports large projects on an as-needed basis.

The Reviewer
 
51-200 Employees
 
Boston, Massachusetts
VP of Delivery and Quality Assurance, Digital Agency
 
Verified
The Review
Feedback summary: 

Thorough end-to-end testing has significantly improved project quality and process efficiency. PQA Testing perfectly complements the in-house team, forming friendly relationships, adjusting to suit project needs, and meticulously documenting working hours and cost. 

A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a full-service digital agency, primarily working with large clients in various industries like finance, pharmaceuticals, consumer packaged goods, and so on. The majority of our work consists of website rebranding and mobile and web application development. We also work in digital media. We are a full-service agency, going from strategy to QA [quality assurance] and development.

What is your position?

I am the vice president of delivery and QA [quality assurance].

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with PQA Testing?

The reason we hired them was primarily to do with the capabilities of our delivery team to handle quality assurance. We did not have a formal process and were doing more ad-hoc, sporadic testing. We started to get larger projects in which that particular approach wasn't going to work. Finding an internal QA person that has the kind of capabilities offered by an agency like PQA is very hard. We did hire someone in-house, but PQA Testing continues to handle our overflow.

SOLUTION

Could you elaborate on the scope of their involvement?

The typical team size is dependent on the project. They offer teams of between one and three testers for any given project on our side. They generate test plans and handle full functionality testing, issue tracking, logging, and progression testing.

We haven't formally asked for any testing automation yet. It's definitely on our radar but, for right now, they've been helping us with manual testing of our written code.

They're seamless and integrate very well with our team. They generally dedicate a design person to us and are involved in all of our Scrums. They're extremely valuable from a production standpoint.

How did you come to work with PQA Testing?

I had worked with PQA at a previous company and was aware of their skill set and capabilities.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We've spent a few hundred thousand dollars during the course of three to four years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working together for around three years and have two ongoing projects at the moment.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They integrate into our team very well and perform the formalized QA testing that we need as an agency. We were looking for someone to help us out, and they've been able to provide that. My team loves working with the testers that have been assigned to us and always request the people with whom they've worked in the past.

The overall quality and reliability of our solutions has definitely improved. We've recently launched an e-commerce web app for a client. We only assigned 80 to 100 hours of QA testing for it, but the levels of ticketing and the issues they've been able to find and test through have been extensive. They achieved end-to-end testing on the application.

How did PQA Testing perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Atlassian JIRA, which is our tool of choice. PQA has several testers on our account. They post testing summaries and log how many hours were burned for a given bug resolution.

They share their work hours on a weekly basis in the form of a time report broken down for each team member. The producers on our side use this to obtain a burned hours/burned cost perspective. They're very thorough in regard to the information they provide us.

What distinguishes PQA Testing from other providers?

The individual testers and their delivery and project managers are excellent. Also, the higher-level people with whom we deal are very responsive, reasonable, and informative. They work within our budget, letting us know what they're able to do and make adjustments and customizations to meet our needs, which has ultimately been the reason we've used them as an outsourced department. The people there are very thorough from the ones doing the testing to the ones writing the work orders.

Is there anything PQA Testing could have improved or done differently?

Everything has worked fine so far. They integrate well with our team and they're thorough. I don't have any ideas for improvement.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Scheduling
    ON TIME / DEADLINES
  • 5.0 Cost
    Value / within estimates
    They're very reasonable. When we've given them an abundance of work, they've negotiated a lower rate.
  • 4.0 Quality
    Service & deliverables
  • 5.0 NPS
    Willing to refer
    I recommend them to friends and coworkers who have used them directly. We've recommended them to a client recently.