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QA teams can use Backlog to streamline quality assurance processes from beginning to end.

For example, project teams can build QA directly into project workflows by creating custom issue categories and statuses.

Custom issue categories enable QA teams to quickly filter project tasks to identify those under their team’s purview. For example, the QA team might be responsible for reviewing an app’s current features and gaps to create the framework for a new feature or create feature-specific testing requirements.

Custom issue statuses enable developers and quality assurance teams to work seamlessly within a single workflow. For example, once developers create a new feature, they can progress their Backlog task to the “QA” issue status to denote that it is ready for review.

QA teams can also conduct their reviews directly from Backlog, using the tool’s built-in Git and Subversion (SVN) integrations. These integrations enable teams to manage and update their code base directly from Backlog, insert comments, and create new issues.

Backlog also streamlines bug tracking. Teams can create a custom bug-tracking issue type and report all identified bugs by creating Backlog tasks to address them. Then, as the bug is investigated and worked on, team members can use comments to ask questions and share ideas and resources, streamlining collaboration.

Finally, QA teams can use Backlog’s Project Wiki to document all testing procedures, success criteria, and other important reference information. This makes it easier for team members to maintain a cohesive approach to quality analysis.

Because Backlog integrates code review, project management, and task tracking into one convenient platform, it is ideal for analyzing and documenting QA processes.

In Backlog, each project has a dedicated Project Wiki. QA teams can use this to document procedures, feature-specific testing, success criteria, frequently identified errors, and to create product documentation. With this centralized point of reference, QA teams can conduct their tests more cohesively.

Backlog also allows other teams, such as development, to develop a more in-depth understanding of what QA entails, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively.

But that’s not all. With custom issue types and templates, QA teams can standardize tasks and documentation, ensuring all relevant data is included in each issue. For example, if the development team creates a bug fix and pushes it to the QA team for review, a “bug fix” issue template ensures that no details—what the bug was, who originally reported it, etc.—are omitted.

And with on-platform code base management and review through Git and SVN, all comments and changes to the code are documented for everyone to see.

Finally, if QA teams maintain their own Backlog board, they can use issue statuses to create custom QA-specific workflows, ensuring that the correct processes are followed for every task.

Backlog's QA tools help teams monitor continuous improvement in a few different ways.

First, Backlog has two built-in features for on-platform version control: Git and SVN. While they’re unique in several ways, both Git and SVN enable teams to create branching code and track, manage, and integrate changes into the code base.

This helps teams to ensure that everyone always references the most up-to-date version. It also enables them to roll back to a previous version in case of problems.

Backlog also streamlines improvement monitoring within its project management features. Specifically, Backlog’s Versions/Milestones feature allows project teams to map out tasks in alignment with iterative improvements.

For example, if the team is currently working toward solving a series of critical UI bugs, the project manager can establish this as a version within the Backlog project and associate all relevant tasks with it. Once this milestone is achieved, this will act as a completed version.

As a result, iterative improvements will be more transparent, enabling seamless management and monitoring.

Cacoo’s user-friendly design features can enhance any project management workflow. By creating easy-to-understand charts and diagrams, QA teams can clearly document projects, product plans, testing flows, and more.

Cacoo’s free template library arms QA teams with intuitive, pre-designed graphics to illustrate any process or workflow. For example, the Product Review template could help teams standardize the testing and review process. Meanwhile, the Project Management template can place QA into the larger context of the project, helping team members to better understand how their work contributes to the overall project goal.

And after the project has been completed, Cacoo can empower project retrospectives with easy-to-understand data visualizations.

Need something more custom? Start from a blank canvas and design your own graphics by dragging and dropping elements.

Backlog makes it easy to communicate quality issues to the team so that they’re visible and prioritized as necessary.

For example, with integrated version control tools, teams can assess the quality of code branches, highlight problems, and suggest improvements without leaving the platform. This ensures that everyone on the project has visibility into both problems and solutions.

Team members can also report quality issues by leaving comments on the impacted issues and tagging anyone on the project team who needs to be looped in.

Backlog’s add issues via email integration can also help streamline bug reporting. Whether a feature has been released to users for further testing or is in production, if a user spots a quality issue, they can easily report it by sending an email to a designated support address. Then, the email is forwarded directly to Backlog, which creates a brand new issue. Once on the board, the team can prioritize it, assign it, and start working on a fix.

Yes. Cacoo’s dynamic charts streamline the data visualization process, even if you’re not experienced with design. The potential is limited only by your creative thinking and data collection.

For example, you can use data visualization for:

• Identifying patterns and trends in the types and number of defects found
• Monitoring test coverage to identify gaps in the testing process
• Tracking bug resolution times
• Communicating test results with the rest of the team and external stakeholders
• Analyzing test execution data to improve testing processes

To visualize your data, simply import your spreadsheet to Cacoo. Cacoo will automatically generate a presentation-ready graphic illustrating the data in an easy-to-understand format.

Once the design has been created, customize it by using Cacoo’s user-friendly design menus. Change the colors, fonts, and styles, or drag and drop additional visual elements to better tell your data story.

Once your design has been completed, you can either export it to embed in any presentation or use Cacoo’s simple video chat interface to present directly from the design platform.

Cacoo’s dynamic data visualization charts help teams spot data anomalies quickly.

Let’s say your team collected data on the response times of different features in a new app in various scenarios. So you upload a spreadsheet containing the data to Cacoo, and Cacoo instantly transforms it into an easy-to-understand graph.

With the response times data laid out visually, data anomalies are easier to spot. If one feature or scenario has significantly higher response times, this would be evident with just a glance at the graph.

Now, the team knows exactly where the problem is and can get started investigating a fix.

Backlog's quality assurance tools facilitate process improvement through user-friendly task tracking and custom workflows.

Using custom issue types and statuses, teams can map out custom workflows to streamline efficiency and create templates for better issue reporting and more intuitive task filtering. This makes it easier for QA teams to follow consistent processes, manage their workloads, and track their progress.

Each project also has a Kanban board, which individual team members can use to analyze their workload and spot roadblocks.

Additionally, Backlog’s Gantt chart provides teams with a birds-eye view of the project timeline. Team leaders can use it to analyze workloads, spot delays, and reallocate resources. This adds agility to the QA team’s workflow and makes for smoother processes.

Backlog and Cacoo provide several features that can help ensure compliance with industry standards in quality assurance and management.

In Backlog, teams can:

• Create custom workflows to manage quality assurance more easily, such as code review, bug reporting, and user testing
• Comply with industry-standard quality metrics and timelines by using burndown charts and Gantt charts to manage project timelines
• Streamline documentation and knowledge sharing with project wikis, ensuring consistent adherence to best practices and standards

And in Cacoo, users can:

• Visually document processes, workflows, and procedures compliant with industry and quality standards
• Collaborate in real time with video, chat, commenting, and multi-user editing, facilitating an efficient review and approval process of all diagrams
• Seamlessly integrate with Backlog, ensuring that all visual documentation is accessible to the whole team

By leveraging the features of Backlog and Cacoo together, teams can establish standardized workflows, document processes visually, and maintain traceability and transparency throughout the development and QA lifecycle.