Occasion Brands uses human testers to center customers in its agile development process

Occasion Brands is a retailer focused on fashion for special occasions, providing dresses for special occasions of all types through three brands: PromGirl, Simply Dresses, and Kleinfeld Bridal Party. Collectively, these retail brands receive millions of visitors online, through their mobile applications, and now, in retail stores as well.

I spoke with Chelsie-Jean Fernandez, Director of Product Management at Occasion Brands about their software development process. We also discussed how test IO helps her team achieve their company's business objectives.

Manual software testing doesn’t always fit into tight sprint schedules. That's because testing often needs to happen after the development portion of the sprint is over. However, the quality of software is greatly improved when tested by fresh eyes (not the developers who created it). These two constraints often lead to QA becoming a bottleneck in the sprint cycle.

“We’re not just building software to build it, we’re building what our users want and what they need, what’s beneficial to them.”

When looking for a way to augment their QA resources, Occasion Brands focused on maintaining software quality and improving customer experience. The deciding factors were

• Real people’s feedback
• Turnaround time within hours
• Different types of testing, including both functional and usability
• Visual documentation of issues, i.e. video screencasts
• Unlimited tests

Interested in learning more about how different companies working with test IO and use crowdtesting? Visit the Customers page for more case studies and stories.