Test Automation for Mastercard and Nike
CLIENT
Applause
INDUSTRY
QA & Testing Services
ENGAGEMENT MODEL
Team Extension
Applause: Test Automation for Mastercard and Nike
Applause needed distributed QA automation capacity fast enough to keep pace with testing commitments it had already made to its own enterprise clients. Waverley fielded a four-person team of QA automation engineers within one week and embedded them directly into Applause's delivery process, working under Applause's own supervisors rather than as a separate vendor team.
Over a two-year engagement, that team built and ran functional and compatibility testing across iOS and Android using a single shared automation technology, supporting Applause's work for Mastercard, Nike, Trulia, and Carbonite. The result was a faster path to test coverage and more consistent product quality for Applause's own clients, without Applause carrying the cost or delay of hiring and training an in-house team.
"See how we delivered independent test automation services working as a team extension for a number of market-leading companies."
Applause
APPLAUSE APP QUALITY Inc.
Applause, originally incorporated as uTest in 2007, is a digital-quality testing company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in Germany, Poland, and Israel. It provides manual and on-demand automated testing, usability feedback, and user research, drawing on a distributed community of quality experts.
Applause's own customer base has included companies such as Google, Fox Broadcasting, eBay, Concur, and Runkeeper. To deliver testing services at that scale, Applause regularly extends its engineering capacity with outside specialists who can plug directly into its established QA process rather than build a parallel one, which is the role Waverley was brought in to fill.
Project Analysis
Applause had committed to test automation work for a number of its own enterprise clients and needed to stand up a distributed QA team in the shortest time possible to meet those commitments. The team had to work under supervisors assigned by Applause and inside Applause's existing framework, which ruled out a slow onboarding process or a team that operated as a disconnected outside vendor.
The technical challenge sat alongside the staffing one. The client accounts Applause was supporting needed coverage on both iOS and Android, and testing each platform with a separate toolchain would have doubled the engineering effort and the time to results. Applause needed a team that could analyze existing manual test cases, choose a testing technology that worked across both platforms, and start producing functional and compatibility coverage immediately, all while integrating into a process it did not control.
What We Delivered
Worked in Java and PHP, using related frameworks to build and run tests across mobile and web applications
Set up the testing infrastructure the engagement ran on
Contributed directly to Applause's own testing framework rather than building a separate one
Analyzed existing manual test cases and selected the testing technology best suited to automate them
Delivered functional and compatibility testing across the supported applications
Tested iOS and Android simultaneously through a single shared technology, avoiding a doubled toolchain
Process and Technology
Outcomes & Impact
Waverley's QA team gave Applause the testing capacity it needed without Applause having to divert its own engineers from client-facing work. Across the engagement, the team supported test automation on projects for Mastercard, Nike, Trulia, and Carbonite, four accounts where testing speed and coverage translate directly into Applause's own client relationships.
For those clients, the outcome was improved time-to-market and steadier product quality on the releases Waverley's team helped test, the two results Applause is ultimately measured on by its own customers. For Applause, the outcome was a QA bench it could scale up in days rather than months, without carrying the overhead of a permanent in-house automation team.
Conclusion
The Applause engagement is a straightforward example of what a well-integrated team extension can do: it removes the time and hiring risk of building QA capacity from scratch, without asking the client to compromise on how the work gets managed. That same model underpins Waverley's current Quality Engineering & QA practice, where dedicated automation teams plug into a client's existing process instead of replacing it.
If your team needs to scale test automation capacity quickly, without slowing down to build and manage a new function from the ground up, talk to our team about your own QA needs.
Let's Build Something Great.
Tell us about your project — we'll find the right path forward.