Fractional QA
Fractional QA is a QA owner you don't have to hire: one named person, a set share of their time, a monthly fee. For a team of three to thirty it is usually the first QA function that makes sense.
Why "fractional" instead of "outsourced"
Outsourced QA gives you capacity. Fractional QA gives you ownership: the same person each release, who knows where your product is fragile, keeps the checklists current, and is the one you message when something looks wrong. The difference shows up in the second month, when they already know what changed.
What a fractional QA owner does
- Owns coverage — turns your critical flows into living checklists and keeps them honest as the product moves.
- Runs the passes — per release, nightly, or weekly; plus ad-hoc passes on a risky branch or release candidate.
- Files findings with evidence — reproduction steps, viewport, state, and the screenshot or clip, straight into your tracker.
- Reviews design quality — accessibility, hierarchy, spacing, copy, and confusing flows, not only "does it work".
- Reports what was not tested — coverage gaps are visible per session, so nobody is surprised later.
Fractional QA vs. a full-time hire
| Full-time QA engineer | Fractional QA (Agent Design Check) | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Weeks to months to hire and ramp | First recorded session usually within the week |
| Commitment | Salary, benefits, management time | Month to month; scoped to surface area, cadence, and depth |
| Coverage when they're away | None, unless you have two | Covered by the service |
| Evidence trail | Depends on the person and the tooling you buy | Every session recorded; screenshots linked to checklist items; notes pinned to the moment |
| Tooling | You choose, buy, and maintain it | Included |
| What you keep if it ends | Whatever they documented | All recordings, screenshots, checklists, reports, and filed issues |
When fractional QA is the wrong answer
If you need testing across 100+ languages and thousands of devices, you need a crowd (Testlio and similar). If you need a large automated regression suite maintained around the clock, you need a managed automation vendor or an in-house SDET. Fractional QA fits the team that needs a real person to own quality now, at a fraction of the cost and the lead time.
How it works with us
Every Agent Design Check engagement comes with a named QA owner — that is the fractional part — plus the recorded sessions, tracked coverage, delivery into your tools, and agent-ready findings described in what you get. Scope it on one call; see pricing.