# Our Part-Time Testers

DevFeed: [Our Part-Time Testers](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/our-part-time-testers-19841.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://tech.gc.com/outfielders/>)

Author: GameChanger

Published: 2018-06-28T18:55:20Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [GameChanger](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/gamechanger.md>)

Topics: [Testing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/testing.md>), [Usability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/usability.md>), [ui](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ui.md>)

Tags: [bugs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bugs.md>), [releases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/releases.md>), [testing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/testing.md>), [tests](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tests.md>), [ui](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ui.md>), [usability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/usability.md>)

## AI overview

GameChanger's QA team supplemented automated testing with part-time testers who were avid users of its apps and had some QA experience. Compared with randomly assigned outsourced testers, these users understood the products better, worked faster, found release-blocking and complex bugs, and provided real-world feedback.

## Source excerpt

Up until the latter half of last year, we, the QA team at GameChanger, dedicated many hours to manually running regression tests on our apps. We found ourselves caught in a time crunch before weekly releases, falling behind in testing new features, and struggling to maintain a high standard of quality for our products. An obvious solution would have been to create a suite of automated tests so that we could forego manual regression testing. Although we are starting to work on this as part of our complete test strategy, we still have a need for manual testing for many reasons. For instance, automated tests may not pick up on certain types of UI bugs like a flashing screen and they certainly cannot provide usability feedback. So we came up with the idea of hiring manual testers for regression testing... At first, we hired a company that supplied us with on-demand testers who were randomly assigned to us when we needed to run our regression test suites. This meant that tests were always executed by someone who had never seen our apps before. However, without a deep understanding of functionalities within our apps, these testers were unable to effectively test and find bugs. This solution was a swing-and-a-miss. Assembling the Ultimate Team of Part-Time Testers We needed our QA team to focus on creating test plans, testing new features, and strategizing and implementing ways to attain and maintain higher standards of quality. So we set out to hire our own team of part-time testers to run our daily regressions and beta regressions. When we first thought about hiring testers, we were constantly weighing the importance of hiring someone with solid QA experience versus someone who was very familiar with our apps. At the time, we were so impressed with the enthusiasm of GameChanger users applying for the role, we ended up hiring avid GameChanger users with at least some QA experience. Contrary to the outsourced testers, our newly hired testers were real users who were personal