Published on May 11th, 2016 | by Diogo Costa

Rainforest is the Answer to Good Quality Assurance

The global market for mobile app development is currently on fire, and should remain like that for a long time. Increasingly, solutions have emerged and the competition for user attention is very fierce, with apps that perform complex tasks and facilitate the user’s life drawing much attention.

Those apps are constantly growing in complexity, gaining different features and integrating various platforms on the Internet. But how to know if an app is ready for the market? How to make actual tests and receive feedback on the experience and usability people have when using a given app?

When you download a new app, it is hard to imagine the army of people working “behind the scenes” to ensure the success and good usability of that app. After creators and developers do their work, the quality assurance team gets the spotlight.

But what does this team do? It performs tests on the app to evaluate the experience that the product offers the end user and is responsible for mapping errors and validate fixes, improvements and changes to the software, ensuring the final result is a work with quality. However, not every company can have a team like this, and that is exactly what Fred Stevens-Smith realized some years ago.

Back in 2012, Stevens-Smith founded Rainforest, but noticed the company’s main product, that had to do with Amazon Web Services, was not being successful. So, he decided to go ahead and ask his clients if there was something they were willing to pay $1,000 to get fixed. The answer? Quality assurance.

Most companies simply do not have the budget to have their own quality assurance team, so Rainforest is the perfect solution. They hire, as needed, people from their 58,000 testers spread around the world, and thoroughly test everything the client requires, on the platforms they require – for example, clients can choose the devices, operating systems and even browsers to perform the tests on.

By shifting the focus of Rainforest, Stevens-Smith went from near-failure to an amazing success, recently announcing a $12 million series A investment.

Tags: development, quality, quality assurance, rainforest