In the early days of software development, organisations would have their in-house software developer teams and other staff test products prior to launch. While there are some advantages to testing in this way, the growth of the cloud and the sharing economy has taken software testing, like many other industries, to the next level.

Now, crowd testing has grown into an accepted and widely used software testing model in mainstream tech development. Used by large and small companies alike, crowd testing is an affordable, wide-reaching option for anyone developing software products. While an in-house testing system does have advantages, crowd testing has many more.

Advantages of crowd testing software

1. Crowd testing offers huge volume

Crowd testing opens your software up to a global pool of software testers. With more testers comes more devices. With more testers and more devices comes an increased number of bugs, issues, or defects, identified in less time than it would take a single in-house tester. Through the sheer volume and speed crowd testing offers, you can improve the quality of your software and go to market faster. A large global pool of testers is also advantageous when load testing is required, to check your website or apps performance.

2. Crowd testing gives you flexibility

The nature of information technology (IT) projects is that they often require short notice, ad-hoc testing. Crowd testing offers a fast, quickly actioned option. It’s on-demand so the crowd is always ready to spring into action, testing your product as soon as it’s needed. The more valid defects they find and the faster they report them, the more they get paid, so everyone wins.

3. Crowd testing offers you diversity

Whether your product is a mobile or tablet application, or software for use on the cloud. Or if it’s intended for a specific device or numerous devices and operating systems. Crowd testing has you covered. It gives you access to a proliferation of testers with all manner of devices and browsers. Crowd testing also covers different markets in different locations. It covers a variety of languages and scenarios. Finally, it offers you the chance to have your software product tested by a diverse set of users and technologies.

4. Better testing platforms

Crowd testing providers, such as crowdsprint, have invested in high-performing and easy-to-use testing platforms. Access to these platforms allows your products to be effectively and quickly distributed to testers. This means any bugs or defects can be found as efficiently as possible. Defects and bugs are also rated from high to low severity, meaning your developers can work on fixing those defects that will have the most impact on your digital product first.

5. Low cost of crowd testing

Crowd testing is far cheaper than traditional methods of testing. This is because of the flexibility, diversity, and size of the crowd. Say you’re having your product tested internally. The same internal team has to build the product. If you employed crowd testing, that same internal team could be constantly building and improving on the product. They could be doing this at the same time the crowd testing defect reports come in. This makes the entire process smoother, and helps you to bring your product to market much more quickly.

6. Availability of crowd testers who make your product their priority

How often do you hear workers complain that they’re not busy enough? In today’s world, most organisations have busy teams. On top of workload, each staff member has their own set of priorities and their own professional goals. Often they’re too time stretched to meet even their own ambitions. While software developers or management may want internal teams to test a product, it can often prove a distraction. It takes away from the work each of those people excels at and should be doing. Why not have your product crowd tested by people whose priority it is to report on valid defects efficiently and effectively? In the process, you can let the rest of your staff get back to work, including your developers who can spend their time fixing bugs.

7. Experience of crowd testers

Many people on crowd testing databases, , already have IT experience. Many of them are studying or working in the software and technology fields. Some are even working towards becoming software developers who want to equip themselves with as much experience as possible.

Conversely, many people on crowdsprint’s database have little-to-no experience. And that’s ok. Because some software calls for people with zero information technology experience to test it. This gives the software developer fantastic insight into how an end-user, who doesn’t understand the innerworkings of software, might interact with it.

Either way, you’re covered.

8. More insight than internal testing can offer

Think about it. People within your organisation can often be too close to a product to be able to assess it properly. Whether they’re the developers themselves or a management team behind a product’s concept, they’re going to miss crucial issues. They might simply miss defects, or they may experience operational blindness due to personal bias. AKA – their ego might be too closely tied to the concept.

By outsourcing your testing to the crowd, you’re enlisting a huge number of fresh eyes to review and report on your product. With fresh eyes comes fresh insight, and that alone is invaluable. Crowd testers, along with defect reporting, make thorough usability suggestions that simply could be missed by your internal team who have looked at the same product for months on end.

​Should you incorporate crowd testing into your software testing process?