Flash Mob Testing anyone?

A couple of years ago I started the Software Testing Club.  It is a lovely community at the moment.  It has truly blossomed into something special and unique.  A real community of practice for software testers, me thinks.

The dilemma I faced after a couple years of running it and 3,500 members later was – what next?

It was taking up a fair chunk of my personal time.

I didn’t want to go down the advertising route.

I didn’t want it to turn into yet another online community and have to struggle with spam, yuck, yuck.

I didn’t want to continue it at a cost to me and a benefit everyone apart from myself.

So I changed plans

Though truthfully, I didn’t really have a plan to start with

One thing I did was to stop letting just anyone in.  Now members have to pay OR show a true interest in Flash Mob Testing.

The second thing I did was put some focus onto Flash Mob Testing – which is our version of crowd sourced web testing.  Currently we have tried the concept out on a few clients.  Our aim is to make it as easy as possible to get a website or web app tested.  We know it’s the part of the development process that always gets neglected.

This is how it works:

• Someone has built a website which (oops) they haven’t had tested
• The client fills in a form that answers a few questions about the testing needed
• We quote
• Client says, ooh, yes, yes, yes that sounds fab. Lets do it.
• Local clients are invoiced. Anyone else pays in advance.  We don’t mind offering a money back guarantee.
• We organise a mob of testers.  This is usually at least 5 testers, though depends on the situation and it is possible to hire just 1 or 2 software testers.
• Testers raise bugs
• Client gets list of bugs.
• Client gets ease of mind.
• Client is surprised at the amount and variety of bugs raised.
• Testing ends. We can be hired again at short notice
• As the service develops we would like to work out a way to offer a subscription for those that need regular testing done.
• At the moment it is all a managed service and are quoting on each project individually.  Once we have a few more projects under our belt we will probably publish a ‘guide price’.

Could you do with some testing?  Email – rosie[at]schux.com

There are third and fourth things developing too, though am not ready to talk about any of it (mostly because we are pondering them for the time being).