We’re really excited to introduce a new product for test IO customers, bug fix confirmation. It leverages professional software testers — the ones who find the bugs in your websites and mobile apps — to verify bug fixes on real devices, faster and without pulling away the attention of your internal resources.

For software teams who already work with test IO for on-demand crowdsourced QA testing, the software development process often looks something like this:

Build ➜ Test ➜ Fix ➜ Release

Between fix and release phases, reviewing bug fixes can become a bottleneck for QA teams. Use test IO’s bug fix confirmation to initiate a targeted verification, instead of spending the time of busy developers, product managers, and QA analysts making sure bugs have been patched successfully. Our professional software testers quickly can confirm whether the issues have been fixed on real-world devices and in real-world conditions.

At test IO, we’ve also dealt with the frustrating scenario where a developer needed to wait for QA feedback on bug fixes before those improvements could be deployed. It put pressure on product managers and QA for what can be a time-consuming task, while also delaying deployment of new features and changes.

Even worse, sometimes insufficient verification of a bug fix meant certain issues went undiscovered — until they were later reported by customers.

How does bug fix confirmation work?

You don’t need to write down the steps to produce the issue, since they’ve already been documented in the original bug report.

Click the “Confirm” button in the bug report, select the test environment or upload a new build that contains the bug fix, and submit the request.

Your bug fix confirmation request goes out to a professional tester, who checks for the bug by repeating the steps that led to the bug. This will be documented with a screencast, on a real device by a real person — so you know for sure if the bug is gone.

You’ll get an email when the results are ready. The bug fix can pass, which means the bug is gone; it can fail, which means the bug still exists; or occasionally the bug review can’t be completed due to particular issues, which the tester will document.

The best part is, verifying that the bug fix works can happen at any time — no need to wait for a new test cycle. We’ve intentionally designed this feature so that software engineers can get real-world feedback quickly.

Bug fix confirmation in Jira

If you’re using test IO’s plugin for Jira, initiate a review of a patched issue from within the issue view. When the confirmation is finished, the Jira issue updates automatically with a comment containing all the details. In the future, the issue status will be updated as well.

Available today for all test IO packages

Starting today, current test IO customers can try out bug fix confirmation for 30 days (until December 1st, 2018) and use bug fix confirmation to expedite the bug review process. If you have questions on how best to improve the bug fix feedback loop in your development processes, your customer success manager is ready to help you get started.

After that trial period, for both new and current customers, bug fix confirmation is available as an add-on (on a per product basis) for all test IO packages. Get in touch with your account manager to add bug fix confirmation to your subscription.

Not yet a test IO customer but want to get your hands on bug fix confirmation? We’re happy to show you how test IO can bring on-demand, human-powered QA testing into your software product team: Book a demo