Supporting Reddit’s dynamic social media quality standards

The challenge

Quality assurance complexities in dynamic social media

Reddit, one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States, was focused on thoroughly assessing and validating the functionality, performance, and reliability of its solutions through manual testing. This included identifying and documenting defects, ensuring that all features met specified requirements, and validating the software’s usability from an end-user perspective. The ultimate goal was to ensure the software’s readiness for deployment and to enhance its overall quality and user satisfaction. 

On the way to achieving this goal, the Reddit team encountered several challenges that required Solvd’s deep technical expertise in QA processes. To keep functionality consistent through system updates, they needed to test both core functionalities and community chats, which meant managing the high complexity of the project. The next challenge was caused by dynamic user behavior. With constantly changing patterns and trends, anticipating all possible user interactions and scenarios was complicated, which often led to overlooking critical test cases. Also, testing the application’s performance, responsiveness and compatibility across a wide range of devices, operating systems, and browsers increased the project complexity. Ultimately, creating and maintaining comprehensive and detailed test plans required continuous effort and strategy.  

The approach

Strategic multi-layered testing methodology

Reddit was enabled to perform regression testing on both core functionalities and community chats to ensure that all previous functionalities were working as expected after each update. They also allocated time for exploratory testing to discover unforeseen issues and edge cases. This complemented scripted testing and helped uncover issues that were not covered by predefined test cases. 

To deal with the dynamic user behavior, the team implemented data-driven testing techniques. Within them, analytics data guided the creation of test scenarios. This ensured that testing efforts aligned with actual user behavior and usage patterns. With Solvd’s support, Reddit also adopted an agile testing approach to accommodate dynamic user behavior, allowing for quick adjustments and additions to test cases based on changing user trends. 

To address the diverse device and platform compatibility challenge, they used device emulators and cloud-based testing platforms that can simulate various device configurations efficiently. This approach allowed testing across a diverse range of environments without the need for physical devices. 

The final step was creating and maintaining comprehensive and detailed test plans. To keep these plans up to date as the application evolves, Reddit implemented version-controlled test plans. This allowed for easy updates and collaboration among team members, ensuring that the plans were always current and relevant. 

The outcome

Quality enhancement and cost reduction

Manual testing helped Reddit identify and rectify defects, glitches, and usability issues early in the development process. As a result, the software’s quality was enhanced, reducing the likelihood of critical errors in the final product and accelerating time-to-market. Moreover, Reddit reduced the need for costly post-release fixes and updates. This not only saved money but also minimized the potential for reputation damage due to widespread software problems. Minimized potential for reputational damage, reduced post-release costs, improved resource allocation and subsequently increased the profitability.

Solvd’s team truly stood out with unwavering commitment to quality assurance. They went above and beyond in manual testing, delivering essential test artifacts and taking charge of our weekly regression testing. Also they helped to prepare the detailed descriptions of test cases to be automated and coordinated efforts with automation team. A warm and constructive communication style made our collaboration a pleasure. Their meticulous attention to detail significantly enhanced our software’s quality. Timely updates and comprehensive reports kept the flow of information seamless.

Timur Nurlygaianov QA Lead, Reddit

Technologies and partners

Tools used

Grafana

Mode

Browser Stack