A six-phase, risk-first, evidence-based methodology — Discovery, Strategy, Planning, Execution, Reporting, Closure. Built for teams that ship continuously but answer to auditors quarterly. Refined across hundreds of engagements spanning SaaS, BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing, IoT, and gaming.
Process diagrams without principles are decoration. These four govern every phase below.
Coverage targets follow risk impact, not feature count. A 10-test suite that exercises the 3 highest-revenue flows beats a 200-test suite that exercises every settings checkbox.
We engage at design review (catch ambiguities early) and operate synthetic monitors in production (catch regressions post-deploy). The middle — pre-merge automation — is the cheap part.
Every test produces a record an auditor can verify. No untracked spreadsheets, no "trust me" sign-offs. Audit cycles become 3-day exports instead of 3-week scrambles.
Testers are ISTQB-certified; the lab itself operates under ISO 9001 + ISO/IEC 27001. Customer data and test artifacts are handled accordingly.
Each phase has a defined output. Skip a phase, lose the evidence trail behind every later one.
Week 1
Deliverables
Week 1-2
Deliverables
Week 2-4
Deliverables
Continuous (per release / per sprint)
Deliverables
Per release + per audit cycle
Deliverables
Per release / per project end
Deliverables
Each phase has a dedicated reference doc you can copy as a starting point.
STLC is the academic six-phase framework — Requirement Analysis, Test Planning, Test Case Design, Test Environment Setup, Test Execution, Test Cycle Closure. Our 6-phase process is operationally similar but front-loads a Discovery + Risk Modeling step that drives every subsequent decision, and adds an explicit Reporting + Evidence phase tuned for regulated-industry audit cycles. See our /stlc-explained page for a detailed breakdown of the academic STLC framework itself.
Yes. For a 2-week startup MVP, Discovery + Strategy compress to a half-day workshop, Planning + Case Design happen in parallel with execution, and Reporting is a single PR comment + dashboard rather than a formal evidence pack. The phases stay; the artifacts shrink to match the risk profile.
Either model. Augmentation: Testriq engineers embed in your existing team, follow your ticket flow, contribute to your test suite, and exit cleanly. Replacement: we own the entire QA function with a dedicated lead, escalation channel, and monthly steering reviews. Most engagements start augmented and grow into managed if it works.
Risk-based testing requires a quantified risk register — probability × impact, scored, prioritised, dated, and traceable to a specific test case. We build that register in Discovery, refresh it per release, and decline to run tests that don't map to a register entry. That discipline is what makes the "risk-based" claim real rather than marketing.
Stack varies by client. Common: Playwright / Cypress / Selenium for web automation; Appium / Espresso / XCUITest for mobile; Postman / Newman / Pact for API; JMeter / k6 / Locust for performance; Burp / OWASP ZAP for security; Xray / TestRail / Zephyr for test management; Jira / Linear for defect tracking. We extend whatever you already have rather than impose a Testriq-only stack.
First-pass results inside 4-6 weeks (defect-leakage reduction, coverage visibility, evidence-pack discipline). Sustained improvement on the 8-16 week mark — automation ROI compounds, audit prep collapses from weeks to days, and release confidence stops needing "hope" in standup status reports.
Talk to a QA lead. We'll map your release rhythm + compliance scope to a 6-phase plan you can act on this quarter.
Talk to a QA Lead