Crowdtesting as part of Testing Center of Excellence (TCOE)

When and where should crowdsourcing be introduced in a typical end-to-end testing engagement? Crowdtesting is often embedded in an end-to-end testing scope and employed during user acceptance testing. It is also used for niche testing needs, such as localization, translation, content testing, and accessibility testing.

Key challenges of adopting crowdtesting

Crowdsourced testing utilizes testers spread across the globe. However, typical problems with these distributed teams include the following:

• Communication challenges
• Increased management overhead
• Difficulty in obtaining stakeholder buy-in
• Problems in synchronizing all the stakeholders on product updates

Additional issues encountered in crowdsourcing include the following:

• The need to ensure the security and confidentiality of the product
• Keeping the crowd motivated and encouraged regardless of monetary returns
• Difficulty in analyzing and interpreting the varied results of a crowd's efforts
• Complexity of using multiplatform, multigeographic, and multilingual environments
• The presence of a perse user demographic with low tolerance and a potentially negative reputation
• Concerns with quality, cost, and speed
• Issues in providing secure, dedicated access to a client network