A recent merger and acquisition in the US, saw the bringing together of two of the most respected print publishers with the leader in interactive courseware. The merged publishing conglomerate is our partner. As part of the consolidation plan all their digital products were unified under a single structure and unit.

To facilitate the organization's growth and expanded responsibility, our partner retained a QA team at Magic to perform testing tasks for its products and projects.

The retainer QA team set up at Magic works as an extension of our partner's internal QA department. Through successful implementation of the Virtualization Environment, this team performs QA activities for their entire product range - from platform & Learning Management System (LMS) to interactive digital content as well as new product development, modification to legacy products, and international and localized products.

The scope of testing includes acceptance testing for content, functionality, installers, platform compatibility, accessibility, and eLearning standards testing. The retained QA team started as a two-member team in early 2008 and has now ramped up to a fixed core team of 41 comprising of 5 QA Leads, 35 QA Examiners and a Program Manager

The team collaborates with the partner’s QA manager for acquiring product knowledge, exploring more efficient ways of testing especially in the use of automation tools like QTP and Selenium, and getting trained in the processes followed by them so that the products meet the same quality standards had they been tested by the partner’s internal quality team.

Working within tight timelines, the entire retained team works as a set of smaller teams, where each team deals with a defined set of projects or products. Each of these teams is led by a QA lead who acts as a point of contact and collaborates with a QA lead at the partner location. The team makes test plans, test cases, test schedules and test matrices. They next execute tests and manage defects and report bugs using the partner’s proprietary bug tracking tool. This is followed by a bug analysis cycle that helps review and modifies platform coverage matrices, test cases and checklists.

The success of this project lay in the fact that Magic was able to manage scale without compromising the level of understanding and agility associated with a small, integrated team.
Magic’s professional approach, transparency, focused out-of-the-box solutions, excellent communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing and management, flexibility, quick turnaround time, and 24/7 responsiveness, are other key factors that contributed to this success story.