How Unqork Built an Innovative Testing Framework That Moves at the Speed of No-Code

Unqork’s Kory King and Karen Laiacona describe how Unqork has developed an approach to Quality Assurance (QA) as innovative as no-code itself.

 

Unqork empowers organizations to build and deploy robust enterprise-scale applications in a fraction of the time that it would take with traditional development methodologies. But building things fast is meaningless if the things you build don’t work properly. 

That’s where Unqork’s QA team comes in. 

It’s our job to prevent defects and promote scalability for our platform. To achieve that, we’ve had to develop an approach to Quality Assurance as innovative as no-code itself. 

No-Code Standards of Excellence

No-code replaces an editable codebase with an intuitive visual interface. In order to simplify and streamline the creation process on the front-end, we have to pack a lot of functionality and power “underneath the hood.” Unqork isn’t just an enterprise development tool, it’s a complete cloud-based platform that comes with all the tools needed to develop enterprise-ready software. 

With Unqork, creators are able to build, run, and manage applications without the complexity of managing all of the parts themselves. Creators are able to design user-facing elements, build application logic, and integrate with third-party and legacy systems—all in a single, unified platform. 

But no matter what features are added to the mix, one thing is always certain: The platform has to work. All the time, every time. Not only do our customers depend on the stability and consistency of our platform—all their users do as well.

In the first months of the COVID-19 outbreak, for example, the cities of New York and Washington, DC turned to Unqork to help them rapidly develop a suite of digital hubs that would allow citizens to remotely connect with vital resources. 

In just 72 hours, we helped New York build its COVID-19 Engagement Portal, which allows residents to self-report COVID-19 data (in 11 languages) that the city can use to map the impact of the virus and connect impacted residents with services. To put that 72-hour turnaround in context, the average time to build enterprise software is 4-to-12 months. 

This acceleration is a big part of the value that Unqork brings. Even outside the context of a global pandemic, a hastened SDLC empowers businesses to secure a competitive advantage by rapidly addressing less-dramatic events like regulatory changes, shift in customer behaviors, or new offerings in the marketplace.

“In order to achieve Unqork’s level of standards, we can’t limit QA to a single step in the journey, it has to be an integral part of every step in the journey.”

This speed, flexibility, and dependability of Unqork’s platform is why we are such a great fit for customers in fast-moving industries like banking and insurance. There’s no margin of error for these businesses—any downtime or digital hiccups can have an impact measured in $millions. 

That’s why we are constantly—continuously—testing our platform.

QA Is in Our DNA

In order to achieve Unqork’s level of standards, we can’t limit QA to a single step in the journey, it has to be an integral part of every step in the journey.  

It’s a big job, but our efforts come down to one goal: Preventing defects. 

Traditional QA methodologies aren’t sufficient for a platform where change happens so rapidly and where demand for quality is so high. That’s why, for example, we’ve developed six standard programmatic gateways for preventing defects. Any time one of our engineers wants to make a change to the platform, it has to be run through over 1,600 tests as part of our regression testing gateway alone.

Throughout the QA process, we utilize a diverse, multifaceted toolset that is a combination of automation and manual testing, open-source as well as licensed software.

Automated testing is, of course, important—it allows us to save time and resources while expanding test coverage. But we can’t rely on automation alone. Manual checkpoints remain a crucial part in our efforts. In order to support continuous coverage featuring both automation and human oversight, we maintain a team of dozens of Unqork-certified QA testers spread out across 11 locations and multiple time zones around the world whose sole responsibility is preventing any defects from making their way into the platform. 

We should also note that we kept our process moving seamlessly despite global WFH orders in response to COVID-19. Indeed, we were even able to accelerate and increase our workload from before the pandemic. That is all part of Unqork standards of quality and reliability.

We know our customers—and their users—depend on us, and we don’t take this responsibility lightly. If you’re ready to tap into the potential of no-code, schedule a demonstration and learn how it can be implemented at your organization. 

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Kory King, Director of Quality Assurance

Kory is the Director of Quality Assurance at Unqork where she established the QA department and strategy. Her thoughtful leadership has matured the Unqork QA department into three divisions with over 60 employees. For the last several years Kory has built a career on establishing quality practices, procedures and teams to professionalize any software product. Kory has a regimented and proven software quality strategy which creates room for innovation at an unprecedented speed. Kory’s industry expertise enables Unqork to build systems that innately prevent defects and maximize quality. 

Prior to Unqork, Kory practiced QA management and strategy on no-code building platforms with companies such as Squarespace, & Verst. 

 

Karen Laiacona, QA Delivery Manager 

Karen manages the QA division of Delivery at Unqork. Her main responsibility is to resource all projects with the appropriate team members in regard to their availability, skill set, and time zone. She manages relationships with 5+ SI Partners to maintain QA coverage on 60+ Unqork applications according to internal standards and expectations. As one of the founding members of the QA department at Unqork, she has seen countless opportunities to engage and improve the Unqork QA Process.

Before Unqork, Karen garnered a useful mixture of experience in both content development and insurance agency management in Virginia’s technology corridor.