Empirix QAZone Celebrates One-Year Anniversary
Unique online community provides valuable resources for QA/IT pros

In April 2007, Empirix unveiled QAZone, a unique online community dedicated to fostering communication and collaboration among QA and IT professionals. Since that time, the site has welcomed nearly 425,000 unique visitors and more than 1,300 of these visitors have become active QAZone members. Plus, more than 500 documents have been uploaded and 2,000 messages have been exchanged in QAZone Forums. Today, QAZone is linked with all major QA sites and communities—including Microsoft Test Center, SQAForums, Agile/Yahoo testing communities, and QA-centric blogs—as well as with QA-centric organizations such as WOPR, SQNE, ASQ, and PSQT.

“The feedback that we have received about QAZone has been overwhelming,” says Marina Gil-Santamaria, Empirix’s Web community manager. “It has been fascinating watching our community grow and develop its own identity.  QAZone members are learning about QA best practices and methodologies, advancing their professional careers, and helping out ‘newbie’ users in our  Forums….really outstanding.”

QAZone features a Resource Center, which houses more than 500 whitepapers, articles, and interviews with industry experts and visionaries, including James Bach of Satisfice Inc.; Rex Black, president of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board and the American Software Testing Qualifications Board; Paul Gerrard from testingreflections.com; Anuradha Biswas, associate vice president of Independent Validation Services at Infosys Technologies; Scott Barber, author of Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications; and Bob Galen, president and principal consultant of RGCG.

A new Resource Center section—Testing as a Professional Career—is dedicated to supporting members’ efforts to enhance their careers. Using information in this section, members can refresh their QA basics, learn how to communicate the value of testing, or find out how to improve processes and avoid common pitfalls.

Other resources include a comprehensive Knowledge Base, which provides information about Empirix products and services.

Menachem Dickman, director of software engineering at Empirix customer AdBrite, points to QAZone as instrumental to the success of his company’s Empirix e-TEST suite implementation. “Empirix’s support and services were outstanding. Having the ability to access additional help and advice through QAZone made the process that much easier for us. The user forums and wealth of information available on Empirix QAZone was a quick and easy way to get answers to our questions, and interact with Empirix experts and users.”

In addition, QAZone offers regular Educational Webinars  that allow members to interact as they share their approaches and hands-on methodology. To date, QAZone has hosted five webinars with hands-on practitioners. A new series—“When to Automate or Not”—was just launched, and a sixth webinar is in development. One recent webinar boasted nearly 1,500 registered attendees. And, QAZone members who missed past sessions can simply log on to take advantage of recorded versions.

QAZone Forums  give members a chance to share ideas and insights, and a new Where2Go@QAZone provides information on worldwide QA-centric industry events and enables members to provide ratings and comments.  QAZone also fosters a sense of community with special recognition programs—QAZone Featured Users  and QAZone Rewards—and other benefits such as job postings.

Since its inception, QAZone has had a significant impact on Empirix and the QA community. For example, Empirix’s e-TEST suite Advantage Certification Program was developed in response to requests from QAZone members. Designed specifically for QA professionals, consultants, and software testers, the e-TEST suite Advantage Certification Program enables participants to strengthen their professional credentials while ensuring they have a solid understanding of the e-TEST suite.  “I am really energized to see that Empirix has listened to QAZone community feedback, and is offering an e-TEST suite certification program,” said Jaspreet Sidhu from HCL.  “Receiving industry validation is going to help us grow professionally, as our team is constantly looking for ways to enhance and build our skill set.  Achieving substantiation that we all understand how to get the most out of the investment our organization has made in Empirix e-TEST suite is also viewed positively here in HCL.”

In coming months, QAZone members can look forward to even more functionality in QAZone. “Over the next year we hope to upgrade the underlying QAZone platform, so we can introduce a social networking aspect to the community,” explains Marina Gil-Santamaria. “We are still gathering input from community members, but we’d like to enhance our members’ experiences by enabling them to create their own custom views around specific topics, join smaller groups, write their own blogs, and interact a bit more personally with others if they so choose.”

Visit Empirix’s QAZone to find out more.