June 13, 2019 Microsoft is Pushing Crowdsourcing Boundaries to Power QA and Testing

It’s in the way that you use it, and no, I’m not referring to the catchy Clapton track that centered the Color of Money. I’m talking about Crowdsourcing, Open innovation, The Gig Economy, and why the application of “it” for the enterprise is more important and more innovative each year.

A bold example of applying the Gig Economy at scale for the enterprise is happening with our friends at Microsoft. And the coolest part is how their team, our Microsoft customer, is pushing our team at Wipro and Topcoder, to apply our skilled community and platform in brand new ways. It’s customer-led innovation and it pushes us to be better, more efficient, and ultimately, more valuable to our customers.

How Microsoft, Wipro, and Topcoder are Re-Inventing QA and Testing with Crowdsourcing

Our Microsoft counterparts, Caleb Tseng and Alex Duong, are leaders on the Microsoft Teams product. Teams, Microsoft’s popular work collaboration tools suite that canvasses chat, video, file sharing, collaborative docs and more is one of the fastest growing products at Microsoft. But the product leaders at Microsoft aren’t resting on their laurels, in fact, they’re hitting the gas.

This product team at Microsoft has adopted a modern delivery philosophy, including 7-day sprints and best practices utilizing a CICD (continuous integration, continuous delivery) cadence. In lay terms, they are pushing a lot of code, features, and UX improvements, all the time.

While modern delivery methods have evolved, driving efficiencies and velocity gains, QA and testing practices have tended to lag behind. The team from Microsoft saw this as a unique opportunity to work with their partners at Wipro and Topcoder to change this.

Through experimentation, honest and ongoing dialogue, and a willingness from the Microsoft group to try a new approach, Wipro and Topcoder helped the Teams squad innovate on their QA practice, and crowdsourcing was at the heart of the solution.

In the video below, you’ll hear from all sides and find out how Microsoft used crowdsourcing through Wipro and Topcoder to execute 24-hour testing cycles every single week. It didn’t just happen overnight and there was sincere work, innovation, and collaboration that helped our team, deliver for Microsoft Teams. Watch the video to understand:

• Unique coverage and velocity opportunities (and challenges) that crowdsourced testing presented
• How crowdsourcing QA drove cleaner and more efficient processes at Microsoft
• How Microsoft pushed Wipro and Topcoder helping to drive QA innovations on top of the Topcoder crowdsourcing platform

Wipro and Topcoder delivered the ability to execute 24-hour testing cycles every single week, increasing Microsoft’s testing velocity and matching their product team’s dev release cadence. Via on-demand testing on Topcoder, ramp-up & ramp-down was made simple and a world-wide community of testers continuously provided feedback and documented defects, while helping Microsoft achieve wider test coverage across more devices and operating systems.

Our team at Wipro and Topcoder would like to thank the squad from Microsoft Teams. It’s unique partnerships like this that drive innovations and create more value through experimentation, learnings, and continuous improvement. To Caleb, Alex, and team, thanks, keep pushing us!