Abstracta

Passionate testing creates engaging software

4.8 8 Reviews
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Abstracta is a leading, pure-play and independent software testing services company founded in 2008 with offices in California and Latin America. We offer testing consultancy services centered on building custom, dedicated testing teams. Our teams have the added value of being able to leverage all of Abstracta’s collective expertise from years of partnering with clients ranging from startups to enterprise-level companies in a wide array of industries including healthcare, technology, and e-commerce. The Abstracta advantage is based on our intense focus on human connection, research, and development, as well as the quality of the +100 testers who work closely with our clients, caring deeply about their success.

Certifications

ISO 9001:2015
CMMI Level 4
$50 - $99/hr
50 - 249
2008
Locations
United States
44 Tehama St, San Francisco, California 94105
14157453678
Uruguay
Av. Sarmiento 2465, Montevideo, Montevideo 1300
59827096613
United Kingdom
71-75 Shelton Street, London, London WC2H 9JQ
Chile
Roger de Flor 2736. Piso 6., Santiago, Santiago

Focus Areas

Service Focus

100%
  • Testing Services

Client Focus

60%
30%
10%
  • Medium Business
  • Small Business
  • Large Business

Industry Focus

25%
20%
20%
15%
10%
10%
  • Information Technology
  • Financial & Payments
  • Healthcare & Medical

Abstracta Executive Interview

Matias Reina
Matias Reina
CEO
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Kindly share your feedback on how GoodFirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Being listed on GoodFirms has undoubtedly helped us to appear in front of potential clients when they are searching for the right software testing partner for them. It has also helped us to establish our reputation and credibility at Abstracta as a leading provider thanks to the testimonials it enables us to collect and share on the platform.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Abstracta is a leading, pure-play and independent software testing services company founded in 2008 with offices in California, the United Kingdom, and Latin America. The Abstracta advantage is based on our intense focus on human connection, research, and development, as well as the quality of the +100 testers who work closely with our clients, caring deeply about their success.

We have a proven track record for finding and applying the industry gold standard tools, practices, and strategies for the context of each client while controlling risks and costs effectively. We’ve been thrilled to work with clients such as Shutterfly, Broadcom, Lodgify, and Singularity University.

My role as the CEO is to help steer the company towards its vision, which is to co-create world-class software and generate development in local communities in order to improve people’s quality of life. I work hands-on with all departments to ensure organizational success. My fellow co-founders and I are highly involved with the day-to-day and we remain close to the client projects, giving our input wherever needed.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Abstracta was born out of our garage in Uruguay almost fifteen years ago with an idea we had to develop a test automation tool for software developed using the low code platform, GeneXus. We were literally the “three amigos,” Federico Toledo, Fabian Baptista and I with a mission to make testing better. Today, the tool, GXtest, has been widely adopted by the GeneXus community around the world.

In those early days, we saw a big need for more software testing services in our city, so we began to hire testers and work with clients in government and financial institutions. We’re passionate about software quality, knowledge sharing, and the power of technology to help improve lives. That is what I believe led us to where we are today, with six offices worldwide and over 100 testers.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We help our clients when they are ready to add quality engineering talent to their team by building a custom software testing team with our own, full-time Abstracta employees of varying experience in different areas, tools, and domains to work remotely with the client team. For each client, our testers are also led by an Abstracta Tech Lead who helps guide the test strategy and ensures the implementation of best practices. We also have Client Success Managers whose aim is to make sure that the project and collaboration run smoothly, taking into account everyone’s expectations and how well they are being met.

Our testers are largely based in Uruguay and Chile, so the time zone alignment is quite favorable with our North American and European clients. Even before COVID-19 obliged us to, we learned how to be efficient in remote work and collaboration.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
The way we build outsourced testing teams enables us to leverage the collective experience of all the test teams within Abstracta and connect it with the client project. This way, the client is benefitting by having access to test automation, performance engineering, agile methodologies, DevOps, accessibility, domain experts (e-commerce, banking, healthcare, etc.), and so on in addition to their dedicated testers. This is why we insist on the involvement of a Tech lead in each project. To add to that, our testers are all fully dedicated to a single client, because we found it leads to a greater degree of focus, engagement, and motivation on their part to help the client reach its goals, and helps build stronger bonds.

Unlike the larger outsourcing and consulting companies with a wide breadth of IT service offerings, we are purely focused on software testing. We believe that by specializing in testing, we are able to provide greater value, instead of trying to do everything for everyone. We are also tool agnostic, meaning that we will choose the best tool on the market for the context of our customers, without preference.

In order to stay specialized in testing, we realized that the world needs more and better software testers. So, to help widen the talent pool, we’ve created Abstracta Academy, global Meetup groups, and volunteer organizations that promote training in testing. The benefit of this for our clients is that we attract and develop some of the best talent, which in turn, means more passionate and engaged testers working with them. We’ve managed to create a ready-to-go talent pool for quick onboarding and flexible ramp-up for our clients.

Lastly, we place a heavy focus on developing our own software testing technology when needed which allows for greater flexibility and personalized solutions than our competitors. We have a team currently working on extending the capabilities of open source load testing tools, such as plugins for JMeter that have already been used by a major broadcasting company and other Fortune 500s.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We generally cater to organizations in the high-tech, e-commerce, banking and financial services, and healthcare industries. But, we’ve worked in transportation, education, and others. Lately, we have been working with more companies in the AI space.

The majority of our clients have extended the initial scope of work with us or signed on for a repeat engagement. We typically start with a 1-3 month-long engagement that helps the client get to know how we work and then enter an ongoing relationship from there.

I think why we have seen a high retention rate is due to the fact that we can adapt really well to our clients’ work culture, have state-of-the-art quality management systems (we’re ISO 9001 certified), and place great attention to customer success. Another reason is that we have earned a reputation for being reliable; 40% of our employees have worked with us for four years or more.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of testing an application & website.
The most important thing to prioritize is the client’s hard requirements which cannot be skipped. Some companies have fixed release times and fixed testing cycles that cannot be changed. On the other hand, others may not be limited by time, but they have a limited budget. For each client, the strategy, resources, and time needed have to be crafted to meet their needs.
 
We take into account:
  • Business goals and impact of user experience’s quality
  • The budget allocated for testing
  • Time constraints
  • What types of testing are needed: functional, accessibility, usability, performance, security, etc. according to business goals and associated risks
  • Number and complexity of functionalities the system has 
  • What is the impact of the system on the business and its end users (banking apps vs. healthcare apps vs videogames)
  • Development team and practices (CI/CD, automation, coverage or unit testing or other layers, code quality, environments and data available for testing, etc.)
  • Access to the source of truth (documentation, meetings with business analysts, users, product owners, etc.)
How much effort in terms of time goes into testing the front end and back end of an application & website?
We do not typically divide the test efforts between the backend and the frontend. We go about testing software units, components, integrations, and end-to-end, even when the application being tested doesn't have a frontend. We rely on and assist developers in testing the units (unit testing). The code there should have good coverage, but unfortunately, it's rare. We then help test the components at the API level and UI. The strategy is designed according to the context, needs, possibilities, access to information and resources, and so on.

I'd say that most of our efforts today are concentrated on the end-to-end, while pushing our customers to shift testing left (testing earlier in the dev cycle) at a lower level in the architecture, starting with the APIs as soon as possible. This combination should produce the best strategy, but the proportions will depend on many factors.
Agile Testing or Waterfall Testing. Which testing model do you prefer?
When it comes to agile vs waterfall, it depends on the context of the client and what really works best for them. We get involved with the client team as much as they allow us to and we adapt our methodology to create a tailored approach to work with each. This is what makes us 100% agile.

We typically prefer to work in an Agile environment because we have seen tremendous benefits for teams that work in this fashion, where quality engineering practices can start from day one, catching issues sooner in development and learning quickly, continuously improving the way the team works together as well as the product. Agile methodologies help detect and eliminate errors when they are cheaper to fix. Not to mention, Agile fosters greater communication and collaboration, with our testers working side by side with the client.

We can offer an approach that is customized, when needed, as well as help with the transition to Agile if that is what the client seeks to accomplish.
Please list some factors which are important while testing a product or service.
When testing a product, it's critical to first have the right talent, tools, and processes in place.

To do so, you first have to understand the business context of the project: who are the end-users, what are their biggest risks, how often do they expect the product to be updated? What are the most critical functionalities? What factors of quality are most important? They could be functional suitability, performance, usability, etc.
 
Other factors:
  • Documentation available 
  • Environments for testing
  • Test data available 
  • Development processes and practices
  • Methodologies, communication, and bonding of the team
Then, it’s necessary to put together a plan to prioritize tests based on risk and the company’s overall business goals.  We then help to assess what roles and tools to incorporate in order to carry out the most efficient testing possible.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
Our payment structure is time and materials based and we manage different rates for different tester profiles, which vary according to the skillset. Our clients are normally invoiced on a monthly basis, according to the profiles assigned to their team.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
In 2020, we took on projects starting at $5,000 per month and our largest project was $250,000 in total.

Abstracta Clients & Portfolios

Shutterfly: An Infallible Code
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Shutterfly: An Infallible Code
  • Shutterfly: An Infallible Code screenshot 1
$50001 to $100000
20 weeks
E-commerce

Shutterfly, Inc. is the leading manufacturer and digital retailer of high-quality personalized products and services that enable consumers to share and preserve their memories.

Challenge

A heavily visited e-commerce site with a high level of complexity of its proprietary technology, Shutterfly.com’s system performance is a critical component of the company’s success and award-winning customer experience.

Shutterfly’s team needed help to clearly understand the system’s behavior, understand when problems like crashes may occur, and take the necessary measures to uphold its reputation for reliability. They needed help building a test automation suite. They also needed greater clarity on how to improve the way in which unit tests should be written and a better understanding of the coverage to which to aspire.

Solutions

By leveraging the expertise of Abstracta's performance testing team, the team optimized the execution of performance tests, improved test scripts, and adjusted assertions.

Abstracta's expertise with tools such as Gatling, Jenkins, Graphana, AppDynamics, and performance analysis provided new insights. We integrated with their team in a fast and efficient manner, understanding Shutterfly's unique continuous testing methodology, and joined it promptly. We attended daily meetings via teleconference, provided useful suggestions for improvement, and consistently added value to the team. We executed tests and profiled them, and created detailed reports.

Some highlights

  • Revised and expanded performance tests coverage with their CI pipelines using Gatling and Jenkins to provide early feedback upon degradation in performance
  • High traceability between tests and incidents.
  • Thorough information and insights on incidents.
  • Increase in test efficiency (more coverage in less time).

Results

In only five months, we drew the path for intense testing to scale their business of preserving people’s precious memories. This way, Abstracta contributed to upholding the site’s competitive advantage of delivering a superior customer experience.

PedidosYa: Massive and Lightweight Mobile Apps
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PedidosYa: Massive and Lightweight Mobile Apps
  • PedidosYa: Massive and Lightweight Mobile Apps screenshot 1
  • PedidosYa: Massive and Lightweight Mobile Apps screenshot 2
$10001 to $50000
12 weeks
Food & Beverages

PedidosYa is the delivery market leader in Latin America. It was acquired by Delivery Hero in 2014, a delivery and quick commerce german company.

Challenge

PedidosYa apps are sent to production frequently as they need to be constantly evolving. Having developers adopt methodologies and tools that help reduce risk such as regression bugs, new glitches or crashes is crucial for their business.

Solutions

Our experts in automation worked on the development of scalable, resilient and maintainable frameworks that guaranteed the performance of their native apps, with over 20 million downloads.

In only 3 months we co-created a framework for PedidosYa’s requirements. We focused on Mobile Automation with Appium.

By providing a robust framework for iOS and Android, we helped developers write automated checks that could be run in the delivery pipeline. With the suggested changes, their feedback loops became more efficient and less risky.

Throughout the project, our team integrated to PedidosYa’s team in a dynamic, efficient way. Weekly reviews, retrospectives, demos and practical training of the framework. We made sure the devs team had all the tools needed to make the most out of the framework.

Results

In only 3 months we gave PedidosYa a faster and more reliable software delivery process. We helped them optimize their process by implementing mobile test automation in their pipeline. This resulted in top-notch quality for their native mobile apps, which are core to their business.

Threads: Revolutionizing Global Business Communication with a Successful Quality Strategy
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Threads: Revolutionizing Global Business Communication with a Successful Quality Strategy
  • Threads: Revolutionizing Global Business Communication with a Successful Quality Strategy screenshot 1
  • Threads: Revolutionizing Global Business Communication with a Successful Quality Strategy screenshot 2
$100001 to $500000
100 weeks
Information Technology

Based in San Francisco, Threads is a company that was designed to help teams inform, discuss and make large-scale decisions in enterprises. Threads is a modern forum for work where focused discussions and decisions take place.

Challenge

Co-founder, Suman Venkataswamy, sought an outsourced testing company to work alongside Threads developers for exploratory and manual testing support. It was important to him to find a partner that shared the company's values and worked within a similar time zone for seamless, real-time communication.

In early 2019, the company came out of hiding with $10.5 million in Series A funding and released the beta version of its web and mobile app to the market.

Solutions

Our team of experts helped Threads from their early days of product development to launch. We provided them with exploratory and manual testing support and assisted them in successfully launching and delivering a high-quality experience to their users.

From 2017 to 2021, our testers in Uruguay have been working with Threads on a daily basis to meet their development timeline goals and ensure the quality of the app.

Step by step:

  1. In the beginning, we started with a full-time tester who focused on functional testing of their web and native iOS and Android apps.
  2. Then, a part-time tester joined to perform accessibility and usability testing.
  3. The final team consisted of 4 testers and 1 leader from Abstracta.
  4. We used automation frameworks developed in Javascript for the test cases. This allowed us to have a wider coverage over the system.
  5. One of our testers visited Threads' San Francisco office multiple times, to work side by side with the team. This resulted in increased collaboration, trust, and knowledge transfer between Threads and Abstracta.

Results

Thanks to Abstracta's methodology and improvement suggestions from 2017 to 2021, Threads was able to launch and sustain itself successfully without sacrificing quality, delivering the innovative user experience promised by its technology.

Abstracta Reviews

4.8 8 Reviews
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Rodrigue Mouawad

Good service

Rating Breakdown

  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

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Review Summary

Helped us fill the gap in quality assurance for the needed time. Guzman the QA engineer provided good services

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

Osvaldo Rodriguez

Great value

Rating Breakdown

  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

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Review Summary

Very good experience working with Abstract, technically a solid and talented team. They helped us in the implementation of an agile team and the experience was great. The investment we did, had a high pay back

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

The Experience they have

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

The service the gave us, was nothing but perfect

Yamini Thirthar Kannankutti

Dedication and Commitment

Rating Breakdown

  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$50001 to $200000

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Review Summary

Abstracta is a very dedicated team. They even catch outside the box testing. On the whole their testing coverage is very good.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Coverage

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

Automation capability.

Daniela

Great results and a knowledgeable team

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  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

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Review Summary

Working with Abstracta has been a positive experience since the beginning. Communication with the team is strong and we are impressed by their attention to detail, scope of test design and execution.
The Abstracta team has significantly improved our test coverage and eventual quality of product released.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

Company Response
Abstracta
Abstracta

Thank you Daniela! It is a pleasure to work with you and your team.

Posted on Feb 09, 2021
Jacob Sharir

All you could ask from a services company

Rating Breakdown

  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$200000+

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Review Summary

Abstracta has been a perfect partner for us during the last 5 years for a wide scope of projects, mainly around performance testing. This company meets the highest standards of execution, they are always diligent, dedicated, and thorough. But above all, they have amazing folks over there who are a pleasure to work and collaborate with

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

They have top-quality personnel. Extremely reliable. Very communicative and transparent.

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

I can't think of anything.

Company Response
Abstracta
Abstracta

Thanks Jacob! It has been an amazing experience to grow alongside your team and to together help improve the performance testing solutions available to the world today!

Posted on Feb 09, 2021
Kristen Jarin

Great Team!

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  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

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Review Summary

We had a great experience with Abstracta and their QA team. They were extremely thorough, mindful of small details and great team players!

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

Company Response
Abstracta
Abstracta

The pleasure is ours! Thank you for your kind words Kristen!

Posted on Feb 09, 2021
Suman Venkataswamy

Great QA Testing Firm!

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  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

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Review Summary

I've had a fantastic experience working with Abstracta over the past 3 years. They've helped us scale our product and ensure that we're shipping quality, bug-free code as well as worked with us hand-in-hand to develop our QA Strategy.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

Company Response
Abstracta
Abstracta

It's been a phenomenal experience working with the brilliance behind the scenes at Threads. we really appreciate it!

Posted on Feb 09, 2021
Alex Sarmiento

Abstracta Professional Services - Highly Recommend

Rating Breakdown

  • Quality
  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

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Review Summary

Working with Abstracta over these last few months has been an extremely positive experience. The level of expertise and professionalism truly stands out. I would strongly recommend their services. They're a strong partner.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Testing Services

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

High level of professionalism and expertise.

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

NA

Company Response
Abstracta
Abstracta

Thank you Alex, we are excited for many more challenges and exciting projects to tackle together. It is such a joy to be on your team.

Posted on Feb 09, 2021

Resources

The Ultimate Guide to Continuous Testing
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A Complete Introduction to Functional Test Automation
View eBook
8 Mistakes Companies Make When Transitioning to CI/CD
View eBook
10 Mistakes Companies Make When Outsourcing Software Testing
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