Maximizing Risk Coverage with Limited Resources
How Fuserwise Helped a Swiss Startup Scale Testing
Introduction
As software complexity grows, so do the challenges in ensuring comprehensive testing coverage without scaling up manpower. This case study highlights how Fuserwise, providing flexible and scalable testing services, partnered with Acodis, a Swiss startup to overcome these challenges. Faced with an increasingly complex AI Data Extraction platform, limited testing resources, and the need for higher risk coverage, Fuserwise developed a strategic testing approach, integrating risk-based testing and test automation. This enabled Acodis to maintain and even increase risk coverage without increasing manual testing resources, ensuring continuous product reliability by a comparatively small but efficient QA team allocation.
The Client: A Growing Swiss AI Data Extraction Platform Startup
The client, Acodis is a Swiss SaaS startup pioneering the field of AI Data Extraction, aiming to provide new solutions for any document-related challenges. Their AI data extraction platform is an end-to-end solution that transforms unstructured data from any document type and makes it into high-quality, reusable, and traceable data ready for LLMs, RAG, data analytics, and process automation.
A few years back, when Acodis decided to partner with Fuserwise to introduce external testing for its software product, the platform’s complexity was much lower, allowing smaller manual testing allocation to cover all test cases at the end of each Scrum sprint. The testing was conducted just before each software release, ensuring product quality with minimal resources.
The Challenge: Increasing Complexity, Limited Resources
As the startup’s platform evolved, the scope of its features expanded significantly. This led to a continuous growth in both the complexity of the software and the size of the test suite. What was once a manageable process for the manual testing soon became too much. Manual testing could no longer cover all test cases within the time constraints of a single sprint.
One option to manage this would have been to prioritize only newly developed features in manual testing. However, this approach would mean skipping tests on older areas which test are critical for catching regressions and verifying core functionality. This risked letting regressions, vulnerabilities, or defects in established parts of the software go unnoticed, ultimately impacting overall system reliability.
The Solution: Risk-Based Testing Strategy
To address this growing challenge, Fuserwise implemented a risk-based testing strategy based on ISTQB standards. The goal was to prioritize test cases based on the risk impact of different areas of the software. This would allow for smarter allocation of manual testing time while still ensuring that critical areas of the platform were regularly tested.
Risk Score System
Fuserwise developed a risk score system for different functionalities and areas of the platform based on their importance, frequency of use, and potential impact of failure. The risk score helped the team determine which test cases were most critical, allowing them to focus on areas that would have the most significant negative impact if defects were present.
Balancing Old and New Tests
Recognizing that ignoring older tests entirely was risky, Fuserwise introduced a strategy to regularly re-run older test cases based on a calculated risk score, that accounts for the assigned risk impact and calculates risk likelihood. By rerunning these tests periodically, the team ensured that no critical functionality was left untested for extended periods.
Expanding with Automation: Maintaining Coverage
Although the risk-based testing strategy helped alleviate the strain on manual testing, the complexity of the software continued to grow that would have resulted in a decreasing risk coverage level or a need to increase manual testing resources as the software grew. To further increase risk coverage, Fuserwise introduced test automation for test cases that cover high-risk software areas.
Automation of High-Risk Test Cases
The team began by automating the highest-risk areas identified by the risk score system with the lowest effort to automate. By automating these critical tests, they ensured that essential functionalities were covered at every sprint (even every day) without increasing the need to increase manual testing capacity. Test automation not only provided more comprehensive coverage but also allowed for faster execution of test cases, enabling more frequent testing cycles that leads to earlier and more accurate feedback which ultimately leads to higher development and debugging efficiency.
Impact on Risk Coverage
With automation in place, the total risk that could be covered in a sprint increased, with no additional manual manpower required. Automated tests could now be executed as part of the continuous integration (CI) pipeline, ensuring that critical features were tested consistently throughout development, not just at the end of each sprint.
The Results: Sustained Reliability without Increasing Manpower
The combined approach of risk-based testing and automation led to measurable improvements in testing efficiency and risk coverage for the AI Data Extraction platform of Acodis.
Key Results:
- Increased Risk Coverage: The risk score system allowed for targeted testing of high-impact areas, ensuring that even with limited manual testing resources, critical functionalities were regularly tested.
- Automation Gains: The introduction of automation led to a sustainable risk coverage level every sprint, without requiring additional manual testers as well as providing additional efficiency gains for the development team.
- Client Satisfaction: Acodis expressed high satisfaction with Fuserwise’s approach, noting the platform’s continued reliability despite the increased complexity of its features. By balancing manual and automated testing, Fuserwise was able to ensure product reliability while keeping the overall testing costs low.
Key Takeaways
This case study highlights several important lessons for companies facing the challenge of scaling testing efforts with limited resources:
- Prioritization is Key: As software complexity grows, it’s impossible to test everything comprehensively with limited resources. A risk-based approach allows you to focus on what matters most.
- Automate Wisely: Investing in automation early can prevent bottlenecks as manual testing only becomes less sustainable. Automating high-risk, high-priority tests ensures continuous coverage of essential features.
- Test Both New and Old Features: Even when prioritizing new features, older functionality cannot be ignored. A balance between regression testing and new feature testing is essential for long-term reliability.
Conclusion
Fuserwise’s approach didn’t just solve a testing problem, it empowered the Swiss startup to scale with confidence. By introducing a risk-based testing strategy and leveraging test automation, the team was able to ensure reliable, high-quality releases while keeping resource demands minimal. This allowed the startup to focus on innovation and growth, without worrying about missed bugs or quality issues.
For startups facing similar challenges, this case demonstrates that it’s possible to enhance software reliability and reduce risk without relying on increasing headcount. With the right strategy, you can achieve smarter testing, better coverage, and sustained growth—all while maintaining agility and efficiency.
In today’s competitive landscape, balancing cost efficiency with high product standards is essential. Fuserwise’s solution shows how even rapidly scaling companies can maintain quality without overburdening their teams, ensuring both customer satisfaction and long-term success.
