Getting the Band Together: Manual and automated testing in harmony

, CEO, Testlio

Yesterday, Testlio officially announced a revolutionary new methodology for software quality: fused testing. This is a major milestone for our company. We are breaking down long-standing tensions between quality, speed, and coverage by seamlessly bringing together manual and automated testing through freelance talent, partnerships, platform capabilities, and strategic services.     

It is a significant launch that has made me reflect on Testlio’s journey, both where we have been and where we are headed. A few months ago, I shared why Testlio’s purpose — powering networked testing to enable human possibilities — is meaningful to me. I cherish our multi-stakeholder, human-centric purpose. I believe it’s motivating and provides focus as we move forward.

Focus is, by nature, adjustable. For much of our eight-year history, Testlio has been intently focused on enhancing development teams’ ability to shift right; bringing the world’s best testers to concentrate on real-world use cases that are often difficult to automate and/or anticipate. While we’ve played well with shift left and provided support for test automation, we’ve never concentrated on addressing the tension between the two schools.

Beyond just the philosophies of shift left and shift right, engineering and product leaders have long been forced to make tradeoffs in software testing investments. Capacity overspend versus resource availability; script execution time versus human thoughtfulness; racked devices versus real-world hardware; abundant signals versus meaningful interpretations.

These tradeoffs and related tensions have been heightened by accelerating demand for digital products and services as well as an active investing environment that is fueling innumerable disruptors across industries. Every startup, enterprise, and digital platform is on notice: customers expect their digital tools to work now and work well — or they’ll look elsewhere. To top it off, there is an ongoing talent shortage that makes building skilled quality teams a challenge, to put it mildly.

Looking at these factors and other trends in DevOps, testing, and software development, as well as the needs of a rapidly growing number of Testlio clients, it became clear that to best fulfill our purpose we needed to expand our focus to empower an even bigger vision for our core approach, networked testing.

Fused testing builds on the core principles of networked testing and is now a critical new methodology within Testlio. It combines the skill of expert manual testers with the efficiency of test automation, empowering teams to seamlessly embrace shift left and shift right philosophies to meet quality, speed, and coverage requirements.

Fused testing, and the updates that we unveiled, represent perhaps the most significant transformation of Testlio to date. This isn’t marketing speak. Rather, it’s a radical approach that challenges the QA status quo. Engineering and product leaders are now empowered to say, “We don’t really need to live with extreme tradeoffs — we can solve the shift left versus shift right debate by having these philosophies work together in concert, optimizing the way we test to achieve our goals.”

To take that “concert” sentiment a step further, like an up-and-coming band, we’re bringing all of the talented players, friends, and gear to the stage by providing:

  • Great talent: You can’t make great music without great musicians. We’ve expanded our freelance network to include world-class quality engineering experts. The QE talent shortage is real, and we provide an answer with developers who can handle multiple languages (Python, Java, Node.js) and frameworks (Appium, Selenium), with more to come. I’m also thrilled that Venu Shinde is now leading the band as our Director, Automated Testing, partnering closely with our CTO Jaanus Ranniit and Chief Client Officer Summer Weisberg.
  • Fellow bands: All bands need friends. We’re working with leaders in the test automation space to power creativity and flexibility when it comes to implementing fused testing. Read more on our partnerships with Applitools, BrowserStack, Headspin, mabl, Sauce Labs, and Suitest. We’re thankful to the artists and experts at these companies and are committed to working with them to equip our joint customers to be successful (while putting on a good multi-act show in the process).
  • Tuned instruments: In addition to integrations with best-in-class automated testing tools, the new 4.0 version of the Testlio Platform includes core automated testing capabilities. We’re offering freebies too, with up to six device slots and 100 hours of automated processing time available each month at no charge for qualified clients.

It’s taken Testlio several years to arrive at this moment. From standalone automated testing services, to a massive platform investment, to an abundance of hard work by the Testlio team, the journey hasn’t been easy. But it’s been worth it. 

While our fingers are calloused, our souls are light. We are encouraged by the initial response to fused testing from our clients, partners, and the broader industry. And to our amazing people, the freelancers, contractors, consultants and employees who work with us, I am especially grateful. Creating or trying something that challenges the status quo is not the easiest path. But it is often the most exciting one.

Want to see how fused testing can help your organization? Watch our roundtable discussion on fused testing with leaders from our Services, Network, and Platform teams. Or reach out to set up a personalized demo — we’re ready to show you what the band can do.