The growing significance of Crowdsourced is becoming more reliable to get constructive feedback and insights to develop an utterly bug-free product before launch. The amount of flexibility that these tests provide is helpful in numerous applications, permutating various scenarios as a part of quality improvement. To contribute to making digital products bug-free, Ran Rachlin co-founded Ubertesters. He leads the company as the CEO implying his extensive global experience in various industries to offer unmatched crowd testing services.
Ubertesters is a crowd-based, complete mobile apps/web testing solution provider. The company offers a crowd of global, professional testers for hire with devices that can test any digital product and provide feedback to clients.
The Lead-Up
Ran trained himself to become an effective leader from a very young age having a global view. When he took his first job in sales in a Hi-Tech Israeli Company that sold products globally, his goal was to gain cross-cultural experience. Later, he moved to the USA to complete his MBA and make a living in the center of where things happen. He advanced in his roles, climbing up the ladder, holding several high-profile management positions, conducting business across six continents in different industries. Ran decided to leave the safety of corporate life in 2013 to co-found Ubertesters – a startup in the field of software testing.
One of Ran’s main challenges is how to keep the team inspired and motivated. He firmly believes that success should come from teamwork, allowing team members to speak their minds to provide or suggest how to improve things. He understands that when an employee feels valued, the motivation level is significantly increased. He also tries to provide clear goals to avoid micromanagement by completely trusting his team and asking them to be responsible and accountable for their actions. He says, “When they make a mistake or fail, I don’t punish them. I use this as a trigger to learn a valuable lesson and what to do next time to avoid this mistake. I believe that these guidelines allow me to keep my team motivated and inspired.”
The Testing Excellence
Ran mentions that he was excited when companies such as ‘Uber,’ ‘AirBNB,’ ‘Lime,’ and Zipcar came to the world. “The “sharing economy” (or gig economy) term blew my mind. It allows companies to use available resources to benefit clients while allowing the resources to earn money. I helped implement this within the software testing segment.”
One of the significant changes Ubertesters does is providing the opportunity for young, inexperienced QA people who completed their QA education to gain experience in the QA and testing world. It works with many QA schools worldwide and allows recent graduates to get their first testing experience by working for us as freelance testers. It enables them to earn money during their free time. More importantly, it allows them to gain the needed testing experience and put this job experience in their resume while looking for their first job opportunity in the IT world.
A Reliable Partner
Ubertesters offers a complete software testing solution for digital products to help organizations beta test their digital products before launching. It provides two complementary services:
1) A crowd testing service of global, professional freelance testers for hire with devices (part of the “sharing economy” model) for the most flexible and cost-effective global testing under real-life conditions.
2) Offshore outsourcing services of remote QA experts on a full-time basis based in the company’s East European facilities.
Ran notes that Ubertesters has a clear vision “to provide cost-effective, innovative, and quality testing services that exceed the expectations of its esteemed customers.” Its mission statement can be summarized as “help digital organizations launch better, well-tested, bug-free products by enhancing natural best testing practices while providing exceptional customer services.”
Ubertester aims to help digital consumers (the end-user) get a tremendous bug-free product from its business customers for a better, faster, simpler, and no-frustration digital experience.
A Fast Paced Platform
Ran understands that technology and human touch are the main values Ubertester provides. It had to develop its proprietary QA management platform to allow easy bug reporting. The platform enables the testers to easily submit bugs and issues (including video recordings and screenshots) while providing the client with an easy-to-use and precise tool to review the bugs/crashes. Technology allowed us to simplify the bug reproduction process for the client. Thus, allowing the client a much faster ‘time-to-market.’
What the Future Holds
Ran states that Ubertesters aspires to become the #1 global player in the field of crowdsourced testing within the next three years period. It will achieve this by growing through creativity, invention, and innovation.
According to Ran, the following significant change in the professional app testing industry is Mobile Test Automation. The trend of mobile app development continues to grow as mobile devices are increasingly more intelligent and capable.
Mobile test automation must be a part of the software development life cycle to fully support ‘time-to-market’ and the fact that mobile apps are becoming more complicated. However, the current utilization of mobile test automation is very low, partly due to the lack of methods and tools and the multitude of devices, and the fragmentation of operating systems. He strongly believes that automated testing for the mobile app will continue to increase. This trend is driven by the need to shorten time-to-market and more advanced methods and tools for mobile test automation.
Ubertesters is working hard to be part of the future alternatives for mobile test automation. Its development roadmap includes a solution to allow its clients to use the Ubertesters platform to perform mobile test automation.
Personally, Ran sees himself developing Ubertester, ensuring it continues to grow in the next few years. He hopes to build a new company to find a product that will help humanity by improving the quality of life and life longevity.
Empathetic Approach
“Take Care of Your Team” is the most valuable advice Ran implies in his work. He says, “Trust your team and let them shine but also be prepared to accept responsibility when things don’t go as planned. Help your employees advance their careers and always respect them. As a leader, maintain the ‘personal touch and often speak to your team. Lastly, stay humble. Humility is not a weakness; it’s a strength.”