Last year I’ve written a post about the use of crowds while testing application: crowdtesting. And now I’m invited to present about this at the Swiss Testing Day on March, 17 of this year. I would like to share some more thoughts with you about this subject

Alan Whitney Brown (American comedian) once said: “There are a billion people in China. It’s not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a billion people. That means even if you’re a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.” That means that when we have enough people, we have a thousand special people. These people can also look at a application from a different side and have an opinion about it. They can test the application! Wouldn’t this make an applications better?

I was looking for a demonstration video of a crowdtest en found this one of the Millennium Bridge in London. This bridge was designed for pedestrians.

In this test it’s shown that the bridge can support all these pedestrians in one time.

Crowdtesting is dependent on the quality of the crowd

Crowdtesting depends on a crowd that is composed out of a large group of divers people. This is maybe the most important part of crowdtesting; to create a crowd! A crowd should consist out of test experts, users, specialty testers, novices and everybody else that wants to test. A small group of 10 people with the same background gives crowdtesting no added value. But they should not only be of various test knowledge, but preferably also from different backgrounds and even different languages. The more different views there are on an application, the more different vies that can help get a better product.

The goal of testing: getting a better product!

That’s the goal of testing, if I’m correct. To get a better product! At least a better insight into the risks of the product. So if your product depends on the diversity of the crowd it is important to know what the people in the crowd can or cannot do. But also why they would be interested in testing software and what their knowledge or background is. This information is needed and needs to be available. This information should be added to something like a crowd Atlas.

The most difficult task of crowdtesting is determining a good enough crowd

But how can you determine what the most beneficial structure of the crowd it when it is needed? That is the most difficult task of crowdtesting, determining a good enough crowd. The use of the crowd itself is decided by the client that owns the work that needs to be tested. And beside these needed people there are people that can join voluntarily and most of these people will do this in addition to their daily work.

Crowdtesting is complementary to ‘normal’ testing

As I said in earlier posts is that crowdtesting aims on the acceptance of software. The crowd tests the software and can use the application further or even make others enthusiastic about it. But crowdtesting complements ‘normal’ or traditional testing. Normal test runs are still needed in previous test levels. Crowdtesting can use the creativity and diversity of various testers around the world and not just a small user group to accept the software.

Crowdtesting can do system tests for usability and performance testing

Most of the time this is true. Executing system tests or development tests is much more difficult to be done by a crowd. However it is always possible to work with a crowd for development or system tests. But keep in mind that you kind of release a product that can still be full of bugs. When a product is still full of bugs acceptation by the crowd will be less and these users may spread the word that the application is bad because it’s full of bugs. That no good marketing! However you can test the usability and other things, like the performance, load and stress ratio’s and security testing.

Crowdtesting can be used for testing software. Not only for mobile applications, but for all kinds of applications. This crowd consist of a diverse and talented group of people. People that are looking to accept software for you. With crowdtesting you can tap into the skills and knowledge of almost 7 billion people. How special is that?

1. William Echlin Says:
   January 10th, 2010 at 11:25

   This ties in very well with my thoughts that “if you don’t know what you want then you won’t find what you need”. You have to have some boundaries and focus to your testing (or the different areas of your testing) otherwise there is the potential to go off in completely the wrong direction.

   That crowd test of the Millennium Bridge in London is a case in point. It was a focused test in as much as it load/stress tested the bridge. It didn’t pick up the issue with the violent vibrations in certain wind conditions that caused the bridge to be close shortly after it was opened. Crowd testing totally missed this serious defect with the bridge.

   Which brings me back to the point with software testing that if you don’t know what you want then you won’t find what you need. It’s impossible to select the right software tests if you don’t know what the goal is for your software testing.

   Great example with the Millennium Bridge in London.

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4. Software Testing Services Says:
   July 30th, 2010 at 12:22

   Software testing is bit complex thing to do though it is a mandatory part in the development cycle. You have explained thoroughly the need and importance of it and you have give such a nice example of the millennium bridge to justify it.