DIGITAL SYSTEMS ASSURANCE
Ticking Minds is a leading independent QA service provider with over a decade's experience in helping large global clients accelerate their digital transformation aspirations with faster go-live, strategy guidance, greater ROI & budget-friendly offshore solutions.
Our independent test validation services include:
- Performance Testing
- Test Automation (Web/Mobile/API)
- Functional Testing (Web/Mobile/API)
- Test Data Management (Synthetic/Extraction)
- Smoke Testing
- Regression Testing
- CRM Package Testing
- Application Security Testing (VAPT)
- Data Visualization Testing
Our Expertise includes:
- QA Consulting for large programs
- Providing strategic guidance early in the project lifecycle
- Holistic delivery of testing service including data management as part of engagements
- Complementing in-house testing resources
- Bringing scarce specialist skills & technology to witness high growth for clients
- Extreme offshore-based delivery model
We are very passionate about quality and firmly believe in working with clients as their extended partners. We help assure your digital transformation initiatives are on right track by assessing them independently and helping them steer in the right direction.
We have not spent much on marketing initiatives, as projects have always been referenced from our professional networks and by clients themselves to their partners.
We are strongly grounded on business ethics, we are transparent and accountable in our working relationship with our clients, stakeholders, and our employees creating a mutually trusted work environment.
We have done multiple challenging software testing engagements across FinTech, Retail, Utility Services, Manufacturing, and CRM space. Our passion and ability to see the customer's pain points, and expectations and derive a solution has led us to a strong position where we are looked upon as a trusted QA advisors by our clients.
Ticking Minds is headquartered in Chennai, India with offices in London, UK
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Portfolio
Leading Global Supply Chain Management Company
The client had their flagship product migrated to the cloud for the first time for a large retailer in US & Canada. Performance SLAs and KPIs were stringent in the contract and hence needed absolute assurance that the application performance post migration was void of all performance issues and meet client expectations.
A complete performance test process was rolled out with buy-in from all relevant stakeholders. Performance requirements were holistically gathered with participation from the business, end client, and implementation team covering SLAs, data volumes, data growth projections, etc.
A comprehensive test strategy was rolled out, performance scripts were developed covering APIs, Mobile, Web UI, and gRPC calls, and performance simulations were done with a real-life workload simulation model.
Performance tests were carried out at individual workflows and component levels early, and performance issues were raised with product teams along with supporting applications, weblogs, and insights from client and server layers. Once these were resolved, complete workload mix tests were carried out, critical performance issues were unearthed, resolved, and supported for go-live implementation.
As part of the entire exercise, data identification at the configuration, master, and transaction levels were completed and synthetic data was generated for large underlying volumes of data. The entire data setup backup was taken and restored post the tests for faster turnaround time and future repeated uses.
Close to 35 key performance issues were identified and derisked before the go-live.
Leading Global Education Platform Provider
The client had multiple platforms that were servicing in helping colleges and universities deliver personalized learning & support to their students. Their platforms have been in use in US and Europe. One of their key challenges was that universities had very stringent gating criteria for Performance SLAs and KPIs. Penalty clauses were stringent in the contract and top management wanted to absolutely be sure those are completely met.
Ticking Minds has been partnering the client over last few 5 years in the performance space and have been supporting them in multiple go-lives across these years for major releases. We had defined a generic client specific performance test process for the client so that it could be easily tailored and used for each of the platforms in fray. Performance requirements were provided by the client’s product team and implementation team covering SLAs, data volumes, data growth projections, etc.
Performance scripts were developed covering APIs, Mobile performing real-life workload simulation in accordance to client expectations. We created a modular test framework using JMeter, so that performance test reusability could be used for common sections of their platform. Modular framework helped us develop performance scripts that could be easily reused and coupled with other performance flows.
Performance tests were carried out covering end to end business flows as well as based on specific arrival rates, while at the same time measuring the client side responses and ably supported by the client team for the server side monitoring. Critical performance issues were unearthed, resolved, and supported for go-live implementation.
Leading Digital Bank in UK
The client - a leading digital bank in UK, rolled out a commercial lending product before COVID. There were multiple loan products, with multiple types of interest rate, tenure, equated monthly interest specific options. The calculations were complex & demanded perfect accuracy, since the calculation vary based on type of loan & options chosen. Enormous amount of Testing was mandatory, given the complexity of banking applications & the extensive amount of data they consume.
Ticking Minds has partnered with this client to carry out
(a) functional testing (b) regression testing (c) performance testing.
In a typical loan application workflow, the amount of form fields that needs to be filled is voluminous. Based on the values each of the fields can take, the amount of test scenarios can be huge for each of the forms; & execution of scenarios for each of the daily builds was impossible. Ticking Minds came up with a linear expansion algorithm to optimise the number of scenarios that needed to be executed - this slashed the effort by close to 40%.
Regression testing can be very tricky & time consuming when an application undergoes a daily build. We analysed the app & came with a view to automate the validation of APIs rather than the UI, as the amount of changes introduced through the APIs was massive on a daily basis. A JMeter based test automation framework was developed & close to 7000 API based scenarios were developed. These tests were integrated with the CI/CD pipeline through Jenkins in such a way that the tests were executed every day after the daily build. This helped to unearth all the regression defects immediately. An unmanned test suite with 7000 scenarios provided a huge cost benefit to the client.
Ticking Minds carried out the performance assessment for the same application mimicking the production workload across UI as well as nightly jobs. Several performance issues were unearthed & fixed before the application was rolled out to production
Leading Microsoft D365 CRM Solutions Provider
The client is a product company that has built a grants management platform making use of Microsoft D365 platform CRM & Customer Service module. They have had multiple custom roll out of their platform for different grant types catering to the needs of different government. They have had challenges in managing multiple releases at the same time for different governments.
Ticking Minds has been partnering with this client over last couple of years in the functional regression & test automation space. Ticking Minds had brought in its QA resources, who understand how CRM system need to be validated & how grants systems work. We had built CRM test strategy based on which the grant system would be tested across multiple releases.
We created reusable test assets from the first implementation that we did – encompassing test scenarios, test cases, traceability matrix & automation scripts. Based on the customization needed for each roll out, the test assets were tailored, tests data loaded into QA environments. The team had built quick subsets for smoke, regression tests to cater to the needs of the various implementation.
A lean automation team was in place to automate the tests originally & an automation regression suite was built delivering 70% cost saving while providing 55-60% test coverage. End-to-End workflow processes were covered with different data sets addressing different test. Client had higher confidence with the multiple go-lives amidst the CRM upgrades by leveraging QA resources and reusable assets for their different client needs.
Reviews
the project
QA Testing for IT Services Company
“They are a one-stop shop for us to solve any issues from a QA perspective.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
The company I work at specializes in cloud solutions, and I’m an executive.
What challenge were you trying to address with TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS?
We needed assistance with QA testing.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Our internal team works with our set of products, so product development happens on our side, and TICKING MINDS takes care of the QA. We give them our IT products, and they test the scenarios based on a matrix document and a requirements list. They find the gaps and bugs, and work with the development team to make sure they solve everything using multiple technologies.
What was the team composition?
We work with around 10 people, this includes QA specialists, analysts, and testers. We also work with individuals at the management level and their customer service office.
How much have you invested in them?
We invest between $10,000–$15,000 per month.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them around 2019, and it is an ongoing collaboration. We plan to work with them for at least the next couple of years.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
I don’t have the raw data available right now, but we usually measure the project's success based on the number of bugs they identify and the quality of their solution once it goes into production.
How did TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS perform from a project management standpoint?
They're top-notch in terms of communications. They're proactive regarding bringing new ideas to the table. We used Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams for project management.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They have good knowledge in the area, are great at what they do, and have excellent quality resources. They are specialists in the technologies we work with, which include Microsoft Dynamics and CRM software. They’re also very good at testing these applications because they have a framework, the skill sets, the staff, and the experience needed. They are a one-stop shop for us to solve any issues from a QA perspective.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Sometimes it’s challenging for us to adjust to their time zone.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I would definitely recommend anyone to work with them.
the project
Test Strategy Dev & Testing Services for Software Company
“Their work was very solid; it covered all the scenarios, and their team was very disciplined in executing tests.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m an executive at a company in the supply chain software space.
What challenge were you trying to address with TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS?
Part of our focus is on delivering our solutions to our customers. However, we lacked the internal capabilities to deliver our solutions to one of our premium customers. We were migrating a very large transportation management solution from our customer’s on-premise servers to our global Azure model, but no one on our team had ever done it before. Moreover, we also lacked expertise regarding test strategy and testing services, so we engaged with TICKING MINDS.
What was the scope of their involvement?
TICKING MINDS provided us with testing services and test strategy development. Initially, they developed a test strategy proposal describing the steps we needed to take, the types of tests we should go through, and the scope of testing according to the functionality we needed to test and its expected performance.
We had two main goals for this testing. Firstly, we needed to ensure that the functionality didn’t break when updating the software from a 2016 version to a 2021 version. Secondly, we needed to ensure that the customer experience was the same as in their data center as it was in our Azure-based data center.
Once we reviewed the test strategy document provided by TICKING MINDS, we agreed to let them with a lot of the services covered in their proposal, especially around the performance testing and regression testing areas. We didn’t require functional testing because we had people in-house who could take care of that side.
In this part of the engagement, TICKING MINDS was responsible for developing all the test cases and plans. Then, they built them into an automated testing suite so that we could run the tests. As for the technology stack, they used Apache JMeter for testing.
What is the team composition?
Vijayanathan (Customer Success Director) was our main point of contact, although they were other people involved in the project.
How did you come to work with TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS?
I found them through word of mouth. Once I saw how big of a project this one would be, I knew that we would need to find an external partner because we wouldn’t be able to do it internally.
After I heard about TICKING MINDS, I reached out to Vijayanathan and had a conversation. Then, he put together a proposal for the strategy development project. We thought their proposal was comprehensive and competitive, so we hired them.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent between $100,000–$200,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in August 2021, the strategy portion of the project ended in November 2021, and the testing portion of the project ended in April 2022.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The test strategy document developed by TICKING MINDS was very comprehensive and addressed all the areas I had experienced over my 25 years of delivering software products. It addressed typical failure points in the testing process — we were very impressed.
After that, TICKING MINDS executed their testing services very well. As a result of their testing, the portion of the platform that they tested was extremely stable from the first day it went live on Azure. I was very pleased to see that we didn’t have any real performance issues, which was one of our primary concerns.
Moreover, our customer’s experience in the transportation planning and management app was very solid; we didn’t have any functionality issues either. The product team was so impressed with TICKING MINDS’ work that they engaged with them directly on some other projects for other customers.
How did TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS perform from a project management standpoint?
TICKING MINDS was very conscious of the scope of work they had defined. They were also very proactive and upfront and demonstrated to be very competent regarding project management. We provided their team with direct access to our Jira account so that they could communicate directly with our product team. Additionally, we used Microsoft Teams to communicate.
What did you find most impressive about them?
TICKING MINDS’ testing was extraordinary. I’ve worked with other testing companies in the past. Still, TICKING MINDS stood above them in terms of the thoroughness of their strategy and the rigor they put into its execution. Their work was very solid; it covered all the scenarios, and their team was very disciplined in executing tests against those scenarios.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, they did an excellent job. I would like to engage with them again for other projects because it was impressive to see what they did in the amount of time they did it.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
The testing process requires a lot of communication. You can’t hand the entire project to a testing company and let them do the work; you need to collaborate closely with them to create a tight relationship. TICKING MINDS is a great company to work with in that regard because they constantly communicate with the product team.
The team from TICKING MINDS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS is proactive in finding solutions, has a high level of knowledge, and provides the client with great resources. The client appreciates their communication and the experience they bring to projects and looks forward to their ongoing collaboration.