Optilyz: Automated Testing Without Agony

As scaling web engineering organizations grow their teams, their daily deployments, and their total velocity, automating end-to-end (E2E) testing becomes a necessity. The climb towards developing a full suite with adequate coverage is typically a long and arduous one, beginning with finding and recruiting the rare talent to manage the job. Thorsten Hemann, facing this hill, believed machines could get the job done better and faster, so he set out to find the right one.

Thorsten joined the founding team at Optilyz a few months after its founding as Chief Technical Officer. Optilyz’s product goes far beyond a typical web application: Optilyz allows businesses to automate highly-effective direct mail marketing just like email marketing, with great ROI for marketing teams. Their process requires a well-oiled software machine that integrates with lots of moving parts in real space. Thorsten has helped lead the organization through its first big fund raise, and his engineering team has supported Optilyz’s incredible growth with panache.

Reallocation of Budget and Focus

“I was looking at spending tens of thousands per month and a project of two years to hire, onboard, and manage the internal talent or external contract resources to build our E2E testing suite,” said Thorsten. “We’re a startup and need to move much faster and without burning unnecessary cash, and automation engineers are in high demand and hard to find, so I started searching. I believed there must be a better way.”

Thorsten found ProdPerfect and decided to get started right away. “I almost couldn’t believe it, but knew if it would work it would solve my problems.” Within a month of integrating, Thorsten’s application was covered by ProdPerfect’s E2E testing suite, without hiring and without having to manage ProdPerfect’s product. “It makes sense: our regression tests should cover what our users are doing. I don’t have to think about it until ProdPerfect sends us a bug report, which we can quickly resolve before the build goes to production.”

Thorsten’s team has continued to expand, and now includes Sai, Optilyz’s hot-shot QA automation engineer. “Sai knows what ProdPerfect is testing, so he can cover important edge cases and make sure brand-new features are tested. He and ProdPerfect are a perfect team together. I know we’re shipping quality code, and I can reallocate both budget and focus to improving the product.”