Situation
Journyx, the leader in web-based time and expense tracking solutions, was looking to reduce their customer turnover and introduce stability into their software quality.
Problem
After experiencing high customer turnover from a bad release, Journyx decided that it needed to spend more time and attention on software testing. The company first tried an in house QA department, but quickly discovered that they needed a more advanced team. An offshore team appeared to be the appropriate solution to their need.
Unfortunately, Journyx's first attempt at offshoring did not go as planned. The Indian team they had chosen required more direct management than expected, and the company could not keep up with Journyx's development cycle. The Product Manager, Meredith Zachritz, found that she spent more time managing the team than managing her product.
"The testers were okay in terms of experience, but the resource they assigned to manage them wasn't actively managing them, learning our processes very well, communicating with them effectively, or communicating to me what they were doing. So it was up to me to dig through everything. Almost half of my job was acting as a QA Manager."
Decision
Journyx needed outsourcing, but they needed someone to handle the offshore management as well as the high degree of variability in their release cycle.
The company chose TESTCo because of it's local QA Managers and scalable test teams.
"The very best thing about TESTCo was their experienced, active, hands-on QA management," says Zachritz.
Solution
TESTCo worked with Journyx to broaden the test plan from manual test scripts. TESTCo's management process, tools and documentation quickly provided Journyx with what they needed to get visibility they wanted into their offshore testing and overall software quality.
Every day Meredith received a summary report that documented the key metrics that she used to manage test coverage, defect counts and overall release quality.
TESTCo also provided a flexible offshore testing team that could flex to meet Journyx's changing needs. Meredith points out, "When we go into full testing right now, we pull in an extra tester. We already have an experienced lead that instructs the new tester and the QA Manager knows exactly what's going on as well. And then when we're finished we can scale it back to one or two testers for the development period. You couldn't bring on temps without spending time training them."
Benefits
The benefits of working with TESTCo were immediate. Meredith could spend less time managing a team and more time managing her core products. Her time dealing with QA went down 50% and their customer turnover diminished to almost nothing.
Journyx's software quality went up dramatically as well. TESTCo was able to reduce critical and severe defects by 85%.
Meredith notes the improved quality, "We just released 7.1 and we've been deployed for three weeks. We've had no Severity 1 bugs reported at all and we've had only three bugs total. That's a big change from the past. Typically, within three weeks of a new major release, we would have more like 20 severe defects and had to release patches and issue new builds. TESTCo has made a big difference."
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About Journyx
As the creator of the Web-based time tracking industry, Journyx carves out its own path, while guiding customers to their goals and destinations. Journyx helps customers reach the highest levels of profitability by automating labor-intensive, paper-based processes with a superior, Web-based solution. Founded in 1996, Journyx is the first and only company to establish Per Person/Per Project Profitability (P5), a proprietary process that enables customers to gather and analyze information to discover profit opportunities. Journyx has thousands of customers worldwide, including American Airlines, Bayer, BlueCross BlueShield, AC Nielsen, L'Oreal, Symantec, The Discovery Channel, Schlumberger, Capstone Turbine and many others. Journyx solutions are available both on an application service provider (ASP) and a standard license basis. For more information, go to http://pr.journyx.com or contact Journyx at (512) 834-8888 or info@journyx.com.
