Our client, an IT company from Croatia, approached AppGrade looking for a qualified QA specialist to join and strengthen their existing development team. The company was working in an Agile and DevOps environment and needed an experienced professional who could integrate seamlessly into the team and contribute to quality throughout the development lifecycle.

The main challenge was to find a QA expert with the right technical skills and an ability to collaborate closely with developers and other team members. The client needed more than traditional testing support — they needed QA expertise integrated into their everyday development and delivery processes.

Steps Taken

AppGrade provided an experienced QA specialist who became an integrated part of the client's Agile and DevOps team. The specialist contributed to:

  • Functional and software testing throughout the development lifecycle.
  • Close collaboration with developers to identify and resolve issues early.
  • Test automation to improve testing efficiency and support frequent releases.
  • CI/CD integration, enabling automated testing as part of the delivery pipeline.
  • Agile ceremonies and workflows, including planning, refinement, and sprint activities.
  • Continuous quality assurance, ensuring that testing was part of development rather than a final-stage activity.

This approach allowed QA to become an ongoing part of the development process, helping the team identify potential issues earlier and maintain quality while delivering at speed.

QA Outsourcing by AppGrade: Results

By adding a dedicated QA specialist through AppGrade's IT outsourcing model, the client strengthened its internal capabilities without the need to build a separate QA function. The engagement helped the team:

  • Strengthen its QA capabilities.
  • Improve collaboration between QA and development.
  • Integrate testing more effectively into Agile workflows.
  • Support automated and continuous testing through CI/CD.
  • Identify defects and risks earlier in the development cycle.
  • Maintain a more reliable and efficient release process.

Key takeaway: In Agile and DevOps environments, QA is most effective when it is integrated into the entire development lifecycle. The right QA expertise can help teams build quality into the process from the beginning — not simply test for problems at the end.

For AppGrade, this project demonstrates how IT outsourcing and team extension can give companies access to specialized expertise while keeping that expertise fully integrated with their existing teams and processes.