Learning.com Taps QA and Development Talent as Needed for Reliable Quality Over More Than a Decade
Overview
Learning.com was founded in 1999 to prepare students for success in the digital world. The platform provides digital literacy tools and lessons for the K-12 education market. The curriculum teaches everything from computer fundamentals and online safety to internet usage, keyboarding, and computational thinking. More than 1,300 school districts use Learning.com, serving 1 million students annually.
Challenge
During a period of expansion, Learning.com faced a high volume of development projects. The bulk of these projects were handled by external development partners, which led to some quality issues. Around a dozen defects were released into production over a year (one per month), and the internal QA team needed help handling the increased workload to ensure the quality of the work.
Due to the cyclical nature of the public education sector, it can be difficult for Learning.com to predict an influx of work. As Logan Rhodehamel, VP of Technology, explains, “It’s hard to maintain a consistent level of internal staff to always meet unpredictable demands.” Learning.com required the ability to scale up and down quickly to meet ever-changing resource needs, while ensuring the highest quality work.
The Solution
Learning.com first brought in Softensity’s QA team to improve quality control in 2009. The team tested the outputs of the development work and performed regression tests on releases, along with exploratory and accessibility testing. Manual testing was performed across various platforms and devices.
“The QA team was great,” says Rhodehamel. “They were thorough, there wasn’t a lot of turnover, they were high quality and they communicated well. The quality of the service was very high. And it was just a really nice group of people to work with.”
The easy integration of Softensity’s team and the “reliable quality” drove Learning.com to expand the engagement and bring on Softensity developers to replace the problematic pair of previous outsourcing partners. Learning.com’s engagement with both Softensity’s QA and Development teams spanned more than a decade.
“The quality of the work has been unique for me in my experience,” says Rhodehamel. “I’ve worked with a lot of different vendors over my time in the industry, and Softensity’s quality has never failed to be the top notch.”
The Results
The partnership between Softensity and Learning.com is well into its second decade. Over the years, Learning.com has tapped into Softensity’s QA and Development resources when needs fell beyond their internal team’s capabilities or capacity.
“We lean on Softensity to scale up the staff when it’s needed,” says Rhodehamel. And while he acknowledges some financial savings, cost is not the driving factor of the relationship. According to Rhodehamel, “The reliable quality is why we engaged back with them so many times, and kept things going.”