Ongoing QA Support for the Enterprise Procure-to-Pay Software Provider

The client* operates an integrated B2B network and procurement platform where enterprise organizations can connect with suppliers and manage spending. The cornerstone of the product idea is that enterprise procurement should be just as easy as B2C e-commerce and deliver a shopping experience for all goods and services across the enterprise companies.

The platform integrates with various corporate software solutions (ERP, MRP, management and accounting systems, etc.) and offers a stand-alone version of the vendor catalog. The standard Magento CMS was used as the base. Custom features were gradually added on top of it, making the platform more client-oriented and customized as it scaled.

The QA Madness specialists have been working with the company since 2014 in different team configurations. This is a solid ongoing partnership with teams aligned to face new challenges and market needs.

* We recognize the importance of protecting our clients’ privacy and follow the policies to maintain their confidentiality and security. That is why the company name will not be disclosed.

The client hired QA Madness when their product was under development to test it before release with further active marketing.

Every end client uses a platform that looks identical on the front end but can be completely different inside – with varying configurations and functionality. Such variations are continuously implemented upon clients’ requests, but for a long time, they weren’t adequately described in the documentation.

Thus, the client gets an increasing number of platform variations and configurations, each requiring testing and post-release monitoring, that grow along with the number of end clients. Consequently, the company’s business challenges evolved as the product progressed. The key aspects feature the following:

• Testing for the new product under development. When we started working with the product, its functionality wasn’t ready for use. Software engineers were working on some core functionality when the company began looking for QA specialists to test it before marketing it more actively.
• Enabling platform customization. The need to adjust the P2P solution to individual needs arose with every new client. Initially, there were two QA engineers in the core product team. The ongoing customization required enhancing the product, development, and QA teams accordingly.

Our core responsibility is supporting individual suppliers and companies that use the client’s P2P solution.

1) Testing for the new product under development The work started with standard manual testing: functional testing covering the verification of new features and regression testing. At first, the documentation was absent. The QA engineers only had a checklist to run during each regression session. The checklist was updated with new items after each release.

2) Enabling platform customization After the company signed one big client, the need to assign a dedicated QA specialist to work with it arose. The P2P platform was built on standard Magento CMS. However, Magento’s functionality was modified and extended with each release. Eventually, it was customized to the extent that the backend started to resemble Magento 2, though the platform didn’t migrate to the newer version.

Around 10% of the functionality remained from its original platform. The rest was developed from scratch upon it. Our QA team was at the platform’s origin, testing each feature a development team created.

3) Scaling the product and the QA team accordingly The number of QA specialists working with the product grew, along with the workload that triggered the need for new roles. Currently, ten experts from QA Madness work with the client full-time and are involved in different teams: quality assurance, support, automation, implementation, and product teams.

Each team has a separate board in Jira. The pool of tasks the QA Madness specialists cover includes:

• Functional and regression testing.
• Verification of tasks after fixes.
• Work with clients’ tickets.
• Verification of client requests, assigning tasks, and setting priorities.
• Support tasks (checking issues reported by clients).
• Test automation and test suite maintenance.
• Test case writing and work with documentation.