In today’s iGaming development space, teams are always racing against time. There’s always a new goal to meet, often without enough people or resources. But quality can’t take a back seat, even with the constant rush.
Launch with confidence: the TESTA advantage
Even when everything goes perfectly, it has been shown that around 20% to 50% of players churn early on. So launching a well-tested, bug-free game isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential. A rough start can set a provider back.
That’s where TESTA comes in, offering a game-changing solution with its crowdsourced agile quality assurance and testing. TESTA taps into a worldwide community of testers—real people on real devices—to make sure that iGaming and sports betting experiences are flawless and ready for heavy traffic from day one.
In this article we give some context with a discussion of agile vs waterfall testing, and then introduce TESTA’s crowdsourced approach—including the TESTA Qrowd Platform—where developers can manage QA and testing in any market.
Agile testing vs waterfall testing
Agile testing is fundamentally dynamic and iterative. It helps providers stay aligned with market trends through constant feedback and adjustments.
Agile testing with TESTA’s crowdsourced solutions for iGaming helps developers deploy market-ready products. It seamlessly integrates crowdtesting into sprints, providing timely and professional feedback from real people with real devices in real time.
Compared to traditional waterfall testing, TESTA-aided agile testing offers several advantages:
Continuous testing vs testing at the end
Agile testing detects issues earlier in the development cycle, enabling easier and more cost-effective fixes. Waterfall testing, in contrast, starts testing after development is complete.
Collaborative vs sequential tests
Agile testing promotes collaboration between developers and testers, ensuring product quality. Waterfall testing follows a sequential approach, potentially leading to communication gaps and slower feedback loops.
Adaptive vs fixed requirements
Agile testing allows for flexible adjustments to changing requirements, ensuring the final product meets user expectations. Waterfall testing operates on fixed requirements established at the project’s beginning.
Focus on functionality vs focus on coverage
Agile testing prioritizes critical features and user interactions to optimize the user experience. Waterfall testing often focuses on comprehensive test coverage, potentially delaying time-to-market.
Crowdsourcing vs internal testing
TESTA’s agile testing utilizes crowdsourcing to gather feedback from a global pool of testers, enabling comprehensive testing across platforms and devices. In contrast, traditional waterfall testing relies on internal testing teams. Crowdsourced agile testing offers advantages in terms of speed, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
Speed:
- Conducting tests concurrently with development allows for faster testing cycles, by effectively coordinating between developers and testers. This approach accelerates product readiness.
- Leveraging testers from different time zones enables around-the-clock testing efforts, shortening the overall testing time compared to an in-house team.
Flexibility:
- Crowdsourced testing supports ‘testing as you go,’ enabling scalable testing scopes and the ability to adapt to changing requirements. This approach facilitates testing under real-world scenarios across devices, operating systems, and networks.
- Crowd testers bring diverse perspectives and usage patterns, enhancing the identification of real user experience (UX) issues. This helps ensure a comprehensive and better user experience upon product launch.
Cost:
- Addressing issues early in the development lifecycle significantly reduces costs associated with late-stage fixes. Crowdsourced testing allows for early detection and resolution of issues, utilizing testers’ experiences to identify potential problems.
- TESTA’s crowdtesting model is more affordable than maintaining an extensive in-house testing team. This cost-efficiency reduces recruitment, infrastructure, and management needs, optimizing testing budgets.
By integrating these principles, TESTA’s approach to agile testing through crowdsourcing enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process, delivering a higher quality product in a cost-effective manner.
Early, continuous, industry-specific testing
TESTA adopts an early and continuous testing approach tailored specifically for the iGaming industry. By engaging testers who are not only familiar with iGaming platforms but also active players, we ensure that every test reflects real-world usage and gamer expectations.
From the outset of development, we prioritize real-time feedback, allowing our team to address issues as they arise and implement improvements continuously. This iterative process, supported by detailed bug reports, screenshots, and video recordings, ensures that our products evolve alongside user expectations and industry shifts.
Moreover, we integrate industry-specific market intelligence into our testing strategies. By keeping a pulse on emerging trends, player preferences, and competitor offerings, we empower our clients with the knowledge to stay ahead, ensuring their products are not just market-ready, but market-leading.
The TESTA Qrowd Platform: A 3-layered approach to agile testing
TESTA’s agile testing methodology is realized through the TESTA Qrowd Platform. This solution not only provides developers with direct access to their testing scenarios but also enables efficient communication between testers and Service Delivery Managers. It operates as a three-layered framework that centralizes data and streamlines the process for effective crowdsourced agile testing.
- At the Developer Layer, a TESTA Service Delivery Manager assists developers in defining clear testing requirements and ensures that goals are established early. This alignment guarantees that testing timelines synchronize with development sprints. From there, developers take on more control, listing their own test requirements, monitoring results as they happen, and specifying testing windows.
- In the Service Delivery Manager (SDM) Layer, TESTA professionals fine-tune client needs into actionable test plans and oversee the analysis of outcomes. Their leadership ensures the testing journey is effectively managed from beginning to end, optimizing the quality and relevance of tests.
- The Tester Layer provides a gateway for our extensive network of experienced iGaming testers worldwide. These testers execute the planned scenarios, delivering comprehensive reports and video recordings of any issues discovered, thus ensuring continuous product enhancement.
By adopting the TESTA Qrowd Platform, developers gain a structured yet flexible testing environment designed to meet the dynamic needs of iGaming development, ensuring products are market-ready and of the highest quality.
Case study: crowdsourced agile testing saves mobile slot game launch
Client challenge
An iGaming operator launched a highly anticipated mobile slot game right before a major gaming expo with limited time for testing. Their in-house QA team was stretched thin and was struggling to meet deadlines for the pre-expo launch.
TESTA solution
The operator partnered with TESTA and selected a group of testers that mirrored their intended player base. The testers went into the game and played them to assess performance, usability, and overall enjoyment.
The testing identified critical bugs that internal testing might have missed due to time constraints, including:
- Platform-specific crashes: The game crashed on specific mobile devices and operating systems present in the target market.
- In-game currency inconsistencies: Discrepancies in how the virtual currency was handled led to confusion and frustration and would have impacted the in-game economy if gone unfixed.
- Progression bottlenecks: Players encountered unexpected roadblocks preventing them from progressing through the game, hindering engagement and retention.
- Slow loading times: Testers reported delays in loading screens and transitions that impacted the overall game experience.
- Asynchronous multiplayer issues: For the multiplayer features, crowdtesting created strain on the system which uncovered synchronization problems, lag, and other multiplayer-specific bugs.
Crowdtesting result
- Developers appreciated the timely feedback, which enabled the operator to fix critical issues before the expo, ensuring a successful launch.
- They also adjusted the game’s mechanics and difficulty based on tester insights, improving player engagement. This concurrent agile testing model expedited the process without sacrificing quality.
- The mobile slot game’s successful expo debut, with positive reviews, was largely due to TESTA’s agile testing providing developers with timely player insights.
Conclusion
TESTA’s agile testing service offers a transformative solution for iGaming developers striving to balance speed and quality in iGaming’s fast-paced industry. Compared to traditional waterfall testing, TESTA’s agile approach facilitates faster issue identification and resolution, significantly speeding up the pace of development. By prioritizing continuous feedback and collaboration, TESTA enables developers to address issues throughout the development cycle, ensuring market-ready products.
For iGaming developers that seek to excel in today’s competitive landscape, working with TESTA’s crowdsourced agile testing can be the difference between a successful launch or yet another game forgotten the day after. With agility and iterative testing, developers can deliver exceptional gaming experiences that captivate users and thrive in the industry.
Embrace TESTA’s agile testing paradigm today and revolutionize your iGaming development process for success tomorrow.
- Contact us: Experience first-hand how TESTA’s crowdtesting can benefit your iGaming operations.
- Find us on LinkedIn: Share the insights you’ve gained from TESTA’s analysis across the industry.
- Read more articles: Stay informed about the latest trends and benchmarks in iGaming.
About the author
Rebecca CHEN
TESTA Marketing coordinator