How to Set Up a QA Process for Your Startup from Scratch

Driven by the aim to bring innovative products or services to the market, startups are here to provide fresh solutions to problems that established companies may be slow to address.

Launching a startup involves critical stages that significantly impact the product’s future. However, achieving a successful launch and sustaining the business while maintaining quality standards can present some challenges. According to Jobera, 9 out of 10 startups often fail after their first year of operation due to a variety of internal and external factors, one of which is the poor quality standard set before or after the ‘successful’ launch solely because quality assurance and product quality were neglected during the whole process.

Whether you’re a startup preparing to launch a product, looking to sustain your existing business, or seeking to expand—having a robust QA process in place is essential. In this article, we share useful information on how to secure the future of your baby product. Specifically, how you can set up a QA process for your startup from scratch. Learn how integrating cost-effective QA processes will contribute to the overall success of your business. Foster innovation while maintaining high standards for product performance and user satisfaction.

Let's begin.

Step 1: Determine primary objectives

What does success look like for your product? Are you going to improve product quality, reduce bugs or both? Your objectives should align with your product vision and business goals. Once you determine the primary objectives, it is much easier to define the scope and the testing types, for example, exploratory, functional, and performance testing.

Assemble the QA team

While defining the primary objectives, it’s important to also begin forming your future QA team which will prioritize the stability and reliability of your product, particularly throughout fast-paced iterations. It is pivotal to clearly define roles within the team and who will be performing which type of testing.

Seek candidates with a variety of technical and soft skills and different levels of expertise. Being at the beginning of the journey, it’s important to thoughtfully consider whether to hire full-time employees, part-time contractors or interns. Additionally, you should consider whether it’s better to hire QA engineers inhouse or outsource. This approach will lighten the load on your budget as the time goes by.

Also, when assembling a QA team, it’s essential to clearly define roles and responsibilities to ensure the team operates effectively. Each role within a QA team focuses on different aspects of the testing process. Factors like available resources can influence the number of QA engineers in an organization, however, below are the key roles and their typical responsibilities:

• QA manager: Oversees the entire QA process.
• Test lead: Responsible for planning, executing and reporting on test activities.
• Test engineer: Executes the tests according to the test plan, identify defects and report issues.
• Automation engineer: Designs, develops and maintains automated test scripts.
• Performance engineer: Focuses on performance, scalability and stability of the application.
• Security tester: Ensures the security standards and keeps the application free from vulnerabilities.
• Business analyst: Makes sure the business requirements are fully understood.

Step 2: Choose the right methodology

The methodology will largely dictate your activities in software development. Choosing the right one depends on many factors among which we will mention the most important ones: project complexity, team size, and time constraints. For startups with dynamic projects where requirements evolve, Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum or Kanban, are often the best choice due to their flexibility, iterative approach, and ability to adapt quickly to changing market demands or customer feedback. Agile allows startups to prioritize features, release products faster, and respond to market changes without being locked into a rigid development process.

Step 3: Define the QA process framework

Defining a QA process framework involves setting up a structured approach to ensure software meets quality standards consistently. Here’s an overview of the components necessary to help you build a QA framework. 

• Align the QA process. The overall goals are now determined and prioritized. The main focus of these goals should be product stability and highest customer satisfaction.
• Determine the types of testing.  The type of testing should be based on the nature of your product, available time for testing and resources (functional, non-functional, automated and manual testing).
• Determine the test environments and complete setup. This helps create a streamlined development and test execution.
• Define platforms where the testing will be performed.  Depending on the business goals, it can be web, mobile, or cloud.
• Establish key phases of the QA process. This stage should focus on the analysis, planning, test case design, test execution.
• Choose the right tool for defect tracking and management. Track the life cycle of the defect from creation to closure, ensuring proper documentation and traceability.
• Test reporting and test closure. Ensure the product stability and if the exit criteria have been met.
• Setting standards for quality and metrics. Key metrics should include test coverage, defect density, defect found post-release, test automation coverage etc.
• Implement automation. If your resources allow this, test automation should be integrated as early as possible.
• Document the QA processes. All artifacts should be properly documented and accessible to all team members.
• CI/CD pipeline.  The CI/CD pipeline supports continuous testing and faster releases.
• Feedback and improvement sessions.  Feedback and improvement sessions are crucial to optimize the QA process.

You may be interested in: QA as a Service (QAaaS): What Is It and What Are the Key Benefits?

Step 4: Select the test management tool

Test management tools allow you to have one centralized place for all of your testing artifacts. It’s important to choose the right one as these tools will also allow for a more effective collaboration of the QAs with the other stakeholders. A few of the main aspects you need to take into consideration when selecting the right test management tool for your business are: efficiency and transparency, the ability to provide collaboration across teams, planning and execution of tests, integration with third-party defect tracking and management tools, ability to support automation integration, reporting features, ability to scale as your business grows, and budget-friendliness.

Step 5: Create a detailed test plan

You are now at the point where you need to outline the scope, objectives, resources, schedule, and deliverables. This outline will help you achieve an efficient and transparent testing process that is aligned with your project goals and has no potential risks of delivering an unsuccessful release. To write a good test plan, you should include relevant information about your planned testing such as:

• Features to be tested (in/out of scope)
• Test levels and test types
• Exit criteria
• Test deliverables
• Test environment
• Estimations
• Staffing and training
• Assumptions
• Lists of risks
• Test references

Step 6: Develop and organize comprehensive test cases

Test cases serve as a blueprint where you can find specific, clear, and easy-to-follow steps on how to test a specific scenario. Each step should describe the action taken and the expected behavior. This step usually comes after selecting the test management tool (refer to step 4), but if your organization lacks the necessary resources, using Excel spreadsheets can also be effective for organizing your test cases. This method, however, is not recommended as a long-term solution as it can lead to scalability issues, difficulties in tracking the execution results, and the inability to integrate with other tools, among other challenges. 

Your perfect test case should include the following items:

• Unique identifier (ID)
• Test description
• Preconditions
• Test steps
• Test data
• Actual result
• Expected result

Step 7: Introduce the test automation framework

Selecting the areas to automate, choosing the right tools and frameworks, and ensuring that your framework can be integrated into your CI/CD pipeline for automated test execution during build and release cycles are just a few of the many aspects you need to have in mind when introducing automation. After making sure that your team is familiar with the tools and chosen framework, you can start the process by automating a small, but manageable set of test cases. Using test automation can significantly enhance test coverage and save considerable time in the testing process.

Step 8: Define and track key QA metrics

To measure the effectiveness of your testing and make informed decisions about future improvements, it is inevitable to introduce QA metrics to your QA processes. A few of the key metrics that should be included are:

• Test case execution rate
• Test case status rate
• Defect detection rate
• Defects per test case rate
• Defect resolution rate
• Test automation coverage rate
• Test automation success rate

Step 9: Maintain QA documentation

QA documentation should be regularly updated to provide a historical record of testing activities and to reflect the latest changes in the application whether there are newly implemented features or existing ones that were edited or removed. By scheduling periodic feedback sessions after significant project milestones, you can ensure the current documentation is useful, organized, and accessible and the whole QA process is efficient, reliable, and sustainable.

Conclusion

Building a robust QA process for a startup may seem challenging, but it is essential for the delivery of high-quality, reliable products that meet user expectations and build trust. Quality assurance promotes consistency, reliability, and efficiency in organizational processes. By setting well-defined objectives, assembling a skilled QA team and adopting a structured approach to software testing, startups can streamline their operations and reduce variability. Efficient processes also result in cost savings, improved profitability and better resource utilization. Overlooking proper QA processes can lead to significant negative internal and external impacts on product quality, including deployment challenges, reputation damage, sales impact, and dissatisfied users.

QA processes also evolve with the product. As your startup grows, your QA practices should scale alongside it by integrating automation, automation tracking key metrics, and fostering continuous improvement. By implementing adaptive and evolving QA processes, you will stay at the forefront of quality assurance in software development. 

Looking for a team of dedicated QA experts to help you set up an effective QA process for your startup—or improve your existing one? Get in touch to learn how we can transform your testing process and achieve exceptional software quality.