Elgato is a world-leading provider of audio-visual technology offering video, sound, lighting, and capture products along with productivity tools. The team strives to provide the best video recording and live streaming solutions so creators have the tools and products they need to connect with their audiences.
We talked to Elgato team members Lars Inger, Test and Validation Team Lead, and Nicco Hagedorn, Head of Software QA, to explore how their work has evolved since switching from their previous test management system (TMS) to Qase.
Elgato’s move to Qase was prompted by their rapidly expanding product portfolio and increased QA workload. The team needed a more efficient and lightweight approach to QA that provided a more comprehensive view of and control over the verification and validation process for their entire test suite. With Qase, Elgato was able to improve their testing process to support well-defined quality practices, comprehensive onboarding, and a more streamlined workflow.
Qase promotes better documentation and quality practices
Elgato’s QA team’s growth outpaced the development of requirements but using Qase allowed them to use that to their advantage.
Once the team realized they needed a better defined requirements list, they turned to their test cases. “Our Qase test cases are the most up-to-date specification we have for our product,” says Hagedorn, “Qase is now the living documentation of how our products function.”
Hagedorn explains that each development team has a QA engineer who collects user stories and specifications, turns them into test cases, and then checks back with the developers to ensure they’re aligned.
As Elgato continues to grow its product portfolio, QA work grows alongside it — as well as the need for improved documentation and well-defined quality practices. With vital information stored in each test case, the Elgato team is able to leverage automation to manage both the specifications and ongoing maintenance.
“With Qase we’re able to track our product health way better than before, and give valuable feedback to our developers quickly.” - Nicco Hagedorn, Head of Software QA, Elgato
Qase’s guided test cases ensure that crucial information is easily discoverable so the Elgato team has a better understanding of what needs to be addressed and how to address it. They also take advantage of the ability to attach videos to Jira tickets so test cases have a proper defect description along with a video showing how to reproduce it.
“Since introducing Qase, we’ve definitely improved our QA process,” says Inger, “Qase allows us to better document our test cases and confidently delegate test run execution to remote teams. We’re able to track our automated test cases and their test case execution while getting a more comprehensive overview of the environments they run in.”
Qase supports onboarding and team communication
Hagedorn quickly discovered an unexpected but powerful benefit of Qase — the platform helps improve onboarding for new team members and facilitate better communication between the multilingual, globally distributed team.
“Often, you start a new job and you’re so overwhelmed by all the tools that you feel like you need a Doctorate just to navigate them,” says Hagedorn, “Qase is intuitive — it helps you learn and understand faster.”
Hagedorn manages a team that spans the US west coast all the way through Vietnam — making it impossible for the entire team to hop on a call at the same time. While growing the Vietnam-based team, Hagedorn realized that the Qase Test Wizard doubled as an onboarding tool. “The Test Wizard guides you through the entire test cycle step by step. This really helps us scale the team efficiently because onboarding is easier.”
Hagedorn explains that the Test Wizard’s guided test execution helps manual testers learn how to manage large test runs in a more accessible way. “We have a multilingual team, so we have a bit of a language barrier when it comes to spoken English,” says Hagedorn. “Reading and following the visuals of the Test Wizard really helps with communication and comprehension.”
With Qase, the Elgato team can create test plans for various types of tests, assign cases to individual testers, and trust the Test Wizard to take them through all the necessary steps — freeing up cognitive capacity and avoiding human errors in the process.
Employing the Test Wizard as an onboarding tool provides more consistency across the distributed team. There’s no need to adapt the onboarding process to each individual team and QA managers have better visibility into what’s being tested, how often, and by who — regardless of where in the world the testers are.
Qase enables Elgato to increase quality and quantity at the same time
“We’ve grown quite a bit since the introduction of Qase,” says Inger. “We’ve been able to deploy several measures to improve our quality and overall efficiency, and Qase plays an important role in that.”
Since switching to Qase, the Elgato team has increased test cases from 1,500 to 3,500 — a number that is constantly growing as the team introduces more projects.
“I don’t think we could have achieved the same result with our previous TMS,” says Inger, “it didn’t provide us with the lightweight and flexible features we need in our daily work.” Before Qase, Elgato’s testing process required a lot more context switching and jumping between programs. With testers going back and forth between reading test plans and executing tests, the risk for human error was high.
“We could only use the previous TMS as a base for test cases; all test execution had to be manually documented in Jira tickets. Qase allows us to document and create test cases in one workspace. We can execute test cases using the Qase Test Wizard and document the results and defects in our Qase TMS,” says Inger.
Hagedorn notes that the Jira integration allows the development team to work more efficiently as well, “the defects automatically go into Jira, so our development teams don’t have to look at the test results or interact with Qase, the results simply integrate into their development workflow.”
Both Inger and Hagedorn stress that the benefits go beyond simply increasing the number of test cases managed — Qase allows the team to focus on important aspects of quality rather than on repetitive tasks. “Qase helps us free up time to focus on important things,” says Inger.
“In terms of overall quality, I’m confident that Qase helps us better organize our tests, and the quality of our software is improving .” - Lars Inger, Test and Validation Team Lead, Elgato
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