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In 2023, we are celebrating 15 years of business. When I founded PLUS QA in 2008, there weren't as many independent Quality Assurance testing companies. The mobile market was at the beginning of its revolution. Thousands of successful startups were not even born yet. For the first years of PLUS QA’s inception, we were able to partner with a few Portland-based digital agencies. It was never easy to convince new agencies to adopt a “QA process.” But the few who trusted us in the beginning are still working with our team 15 years later. Working with digital agencies taught us being flexible, turning around projects quickly, and simplifying testing so it can be easily understood by everyone involved on a digital project is critical to success. Fifteen years later, our company has grown to 100+ employees. We remain a privately owned company with 100% of the team working in the United States. Year after year, we strive for progress, we reinvent ourselves, and we get better at what we do. Here is a recap of the past year and how we envision the future.
A Growing Hybrid Team
Our team has adapted in response to changing landscapes over the years. We’ve continued to grow as a result. For the first time in our company history, we have reached 100 employees. Despite the challenges the COVID-19 Pandemic brought to us, we have been able to evolve. We have come up with new solutions and continue to serve our customers. Today, while the majority of our team works out of Portland, Oregon, we have built teams in the Seattle and Orlando areas. We have continued to expand our presence in those regions and we are planning to continue down that path in the coming years. Despite very little press about us, our clients have helped us spread the word about the quality of work we do. Our goal is to bring value to every project. This year, we decided to continue letting our team work from home or in the office. While we ask each team to work onsite once a week each quarter, we plan to continue to offer flexibility to all our team members. We have put all of the processes and tools in place to build a cohesive team and maintain our high-quality standards. Despite not offering remote work until 2020, our team has adapted to the changes and continues improving.
Our New Website: Original Resources for Testing Included
Near the end of 2022, we launched a new version of our website. The previous version did not go into much depth about our testing capabilities. Now, we have addressed that by adding new sections about our accessibility services and our managed testing services.Additionally, we created a completely new section for testing guides. Visitors can quickly access and download our various accessibility guides and annual e-commerce testing guides as resources. There are also some selected case studies. We rebuilt our blog so visitors can sort through different themes and topics. They can also access information about our company, our dev work, and our accessibility team and tools.And if you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to share it.[caption id="attachment_19900" align="alignnone" width="512"]
Building QA Testing Solutions for the Present and Future
Over the past few years, we created two different tools to facilitate testing and scheduling across hundreds of projects each year. The first one is our Test Platform. TP, as we call it internally, is our central platform. We use it with dozens of clients for various projects: mobile apps,VR/AR apps, and also website and e-commerce testing. Our platform allows us to write and execute test cases. We can log and track bugs with our clients. We are also able to manage our 500+ mobile and desktop devices. Our clients have unlimited, free access to all of the tools on our platform—no matter the size of their team or projects. This year we are launching new features to accelerate testing and make it a successful user experience for all our customers. In addition to that we've worked with our internal A11y team to make sure our platform is 100% accessible.If you are interested in learning more about Test Platform, visit our product page.In parallel, we continue working on our resource management tool. Launched in 2019, we have improved and added dozens of features to this tool. These features allow us to easily book teams on dozens of projects. In addition, we have built features to facilitate time-off requests or schedule updates for all of our employees. This type of software has helped us to scale and align our team members. Sudden schedule changes are no longer as burdensome.
Social Impact of Our Work
Every year, we cycle through Apple iMac and Macbook work stations. Over the past few years, we began donating desktop and laptop computers to a local nonprofit school called KairosPDX. This nonprofit closes the gap and offers opportunities for children from underprivileged communities. When it comes to mobile devices, this year we are planning to donate used cell phones to a veteran nonprofit organization. We look forward to those devices getting a second life after being used solely for testing apps. We are also allocating a budget for each team to spend on local volunteering projects.
Expanding Our Accessibility Testing Team
While accessibility has been a hot topic in recent years, our first accessibility team was created back in 2015. Since 2019, we have entered into a partnership with OCB and onboarded testers with disabilities. In 2023 we are continuing to forge that relationship and we hope to continue growing and diversifying our team.On our 15th anniversary, we want to thank all of our clients, partners, and especially our past and present employees who have made PLUS QA a successful organization over the years. We are looking forward to expanding our team and our services in the near future.
Working as a Partner
Around 2015, Audrey joined the company before becoming a partner a few years later. Looking back, I am grateful she joined the company and now plays such an important role by overseeing the finances and human resources department and also some of the day-to-day operations.The work done over the past couple of years has paved the way for the next few years. Innovation in test automation and artificial intelligence will have a real impact on our job in the coming years. But while our industry is changing rapidly, the culture and the quality of our work, as well as processes built over the years, will keep us on track to change and adapt as needed.
Emmanuel (Manu) Bonnet - Partner/Founder