The client was a new player on the Bulgarian IT scene, having just opened their office in Sofia, seeking to grow from a digital marketing and SEO company to a full-service digital and commerce agency. The team they wanted to build was a development (and a QA) team, since they were lacking one. Thus, Testimony were asked to consult and own the whole process.
It was clear that the agency aimed to cut off expenses by gaining advantage of the lower wages in Eastern Europe. As it usually goes in these cases, budget for QA was even further cut, as the focus was put onto developers. Testimony were required to put a plan together. The first project had already been won and started, so the plan had to work out fast.
Testimony was asked to hire and train new people and, as agreed between the two parties, the QA team would consist only of a Team Lead and junior QAs with no experience. Testimony provided the TL that undertook the challenge. Two testers were hired, another two followed in a year, each of them only having graduated a testing course.
First, with the help of developers and stakeholders, a development process to suit everyone was built.
Then, a test case management tool was chosen and creating manual tests gradually started. As people gained some knowledge, test coverage also grew and load and automated tests were added to the testing efforts. The automation framework architecture was robustly built and, in the end, each QA started adding tests on their own, thus expanding the coverage even further.
The result was a test team of professionals, built to handle every task the agency needed, at a reasonable cost.