In collaboration with our partner 

Company Overview

The Client, a global leader in weather information and digital media, has 1.5 billon users and more than 45 billion data requests daily. The company provides hourly and minute-by-minute forecasts with customized hyper-local content on a range of devices: smart phones, tablets, desktops, connected TVs, connected cars and smart watches.

The Client has saved tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars in property damage. People everywhere depend on it for pinpoint accuracy as well as speed.

Weather Apps Can’t Take a Raincheck

To serve its immense global market and maintain its reputation for exceptional accuracy, the Client embarked on a digital transformation that would provide fast, accurate, user-friendly, defect-free software. Additionally, the Client implemented a business initiative to unify the look and feel of its mobile and web applications across platforms.

The company faced some challenges:

  • The legacy system would have to be updated to deliver the seamless, integrated web and mobile experience users required.
  • A new mobile application had to be developed to meet the unification goal.
  • The Client’s testing capabilities lacked automation and an end-to-end testing environment.
  • Their QA needed a more active, robust role in test planning and execution, as well as stronger alignment with the Product and Development teams.

Qualitest earned the Client’s trust by successfully completing a Performance Benchmark project against competing mobile weather apps. The company chose Qualitest as their strategic IT partner, with an exclusive testing relationship.

“Qualitest earned the Client’s trust by successfully completing a Performance Benchmark project against competing mobile weather apps. The company chose Qualitest as their strategic IT partner, with an exclusive testing relationship.”

Planning for Success: Agile Adoption & QA-Product Collaboration

The key to our approach was to structure the QA team and practices in a way that would provide independent, professional, cost effective and business-focused QA to ACCW, and at the same time fit the agile structure and practices seamlessly.

The team architecture included In-Sprint QA professionals that made sure QA in the SCRUM was done right, with the end-user point of view in mind, as well as a Cross-SCRUM team that ensured flawless synchronization of the QA activities across the teams, and served as the custodian of the overall quality aspects of the applications.

Working together, the respective established teams created overarching strategic objectives.

  1. Improve software quality across all platforms (functional and performance).
  2. Improve IT processes (Agile/Scrum).
  3. Reduce release time to market with the help of end-to-end automation.

To achieve the objectives, Qualitest outlined a comprehensive plan for specific areas on which to focus.

  • Mobile apps testing
  • Client’s enterprise services app and flagship mobile apps (iOS and Android).
  • Web testing.
  • Enterprise services and legacy web.
  • AI Bot testing.
  • APIs, web services, databases, data intelligence testing.

“Mobile test automation services, including a mobile cloud solution proof of concept and implementation with our trusted partner Experitest, were established.”

For the new mobile application, Qualitest directly consulted with the Product team to recommend forward-thinking, sustainable global solutions. To facilitate the Client’s desired Agile transformation, Qualitest brought in Scrum Masters and Program Managers.

Mobile test automation services, including a mobile cloud solution proof of concept and implementation with our trusted partner Experitest, were established. Test management tool implementation with the Adaptivist JIRA plug-in was integrated with the Client’s existing JIRA implementation. QA played a key role by testing early and often, allowing the team to start the shift left.

  • Qualitest evaluated testing tools that would properly meet the company’s needs while remaining simple enough that efficiency would not be hindered.
  • Created a flexible chameleon framework that could be used across the Client’s multiple line of products (web, mobile apps, mobile web) and technologies.
  • DevOps, Automation, and QA teams collaborated to achieve CI/CD automated testing through Jenkins.

“Ground-up development of mobile applications for Android and iOS has been completed and released to production.”

Less Cost. Quicker Releases. 10x Fewer Crashes.

The project is a long-term commitment that will eventually span several years. Ground-up development of mobile applications for Android and iOS has been completed and released to production. Qualitest drove Agile best practices through the QA team and the Scrum Master.

The partnership has already yielded significant savings and improvements:

  • Within 6 months after Qualitest took over testing, Google Play Store ratings went from 4.295 to 4.459 on an app with over 2 M ratings.
  • Reduced crash rate in Android mobile apps by 90% through QA.
  • Accelerated time to release by 3X through automation.
  • Achieved 66% cost reduction in tool expenses by replacing Perfecto Mobile with Experitest as mobile cloud solution.
  • Increased productivity and accelerated release cadence by integrating QA directly into the development scrum.
  • Increased analytics accuracy and data fidelity through inclusion of API and data testing.

Overall, QA has built alignments with the Product team, Development team and the Executive teams’ goals to ensure that the quality expectations of each entity are consistently met. Qualitest also adjusted the scope of deliverables and staffing allocations to meet the cutbacks the Client needed during the initial phases of Covid-19.

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