Numerex

Founded in 1992, Numerex (NASDAQ: NMRX) is revolutionizing the machine-to-machine (M2M) business-to-business market. Specializing in end to end delivery of solutions including cellular and satellite devices, networks and applications, the company strives to make the M2M experience easy, scalable and secure with a vast array of advanced technologies.

In 2011, Darrin Wilkey – the company’s Senior Director of  LBS Product Management – was leading the development of a software application designed to track vehicles and assets. In terms of application complexity, this project ranked near the top, with robust functionality and lots of potential iterations depending on how users logged in. The project also had a multilingual aspect, adding to the difficulty of relying completely on internal testing.

“We searched around for (testing) solutions, and found uTest to be ideal because of their global base of testers,” said Darrin. “The fact that they could aggregate testers by language was extremely helpful. Obviously, this was not something we could have accomplished in-house.”

This brief case study will show how uTest was able to help Numerex with two highly complex testing projects – both for software and hardware – via their global community of professional software testers. Subject matter will include the role of uTest’s project management team; the challenge of performing global testing; testing results and more.

Numerex: Testing Setup and Scope

With a fast-paced development schedule, Darrin and his team were immediately impressed with uTest’s speed and scalability. After a short kickoff call with his dedicated uTest project manager (there’s one assigned to every account) Numerex had their testing plan formalized, a QA team selected and were ready to get started.

“We found that uTest had really great systems to manage the testing process,” said Darrin. “We saw testers signing up for the project almost immediately after we finished the test plans.”

Like many uTest customers, Numerex kicked things off with an exploratory test cycle, where testers were allowed to search the application without a formalized test plan. From there, his team would follow precise directions in what is considered to be a more traditional functional test cycle. In each instance, Darrin was impressed with the quantity and quality of his test cycle results.

“I was somewhat surprised by how thorough the reporting was,” said Darrin. “It was not a gloss-over testing; people were very thorough, even during exploratory testing. I was amazed at how serious the testers took these assignments. There was nothing amateur about it.”