Discover the fundamentals of QA (Quality Assurance): the guardian of software excellence. From testing methodologies to their critical role in product success, delve deep into the world of quality control and ensure unparalleled quality.
Quality assurance and testing are what make or break a business. No matter the type of company, the business vertical or its services or products, all organizations must use some form of quality assurance and testing to ensure they are offering safe, useful and quality products to the world. This is especially true in the world of software development.
The only real way to ensure that a company releases high-quality, reliable software products is through thorough quality assurance during the development process.
What exactly is quality assurance?
Quality assurance is a process that focuses on identifying and maintaining defined requirements for developing reliable products. Companies often hire third-party QA outsourcing providers to do this during software development.
A well-developed and thought-out quality assurance system helps companies increase their credibility, while improving workflow efficiency and increasing customer confidence in products. It also offers a competitive advantage over competitors in the market. This practice has roots in the manufacturing industry, but now knows no real market or industry boundaries and has become a common practice across all sectors.
The International Organization for Standardization (or ISO) is the driving force behind quality assurance processes and procedures in the world of software development. Software quality control is commonly combined with the international ISO 9000 standard used by companies to ensure that the quality assurance system implemented is as effective as possible.
The objective of all quality assurance processes is to ensure that the final product meets customer expectations and requirements. Industry professionals work throughout the development process and the general software development life cycle. This allows them to create a proactive process that emphasizes defect detection, necessary rectifications, and prevention for the future to help continually improve software development.
Aren't quality assurance and testing the same thing?
Although many people use quality assurance and testing as interchangeable terms in the world of software development, they are actually different processes. Although both aim to provide software that not only meets quality standards but also necessary requirements, they are not exactly the same.
Software testing focuses on finding bugs, defects, and errors in software. Testers focus on applying rigorous testing processes to software to determine if any aspects need to be fixed before release to the customer or public. Testers are also only responsible for identifying problems, not fixing them. Software testing is part of the overall quality control process, but its focus is exclusively on product-oriented tasks rather than the big picture.
The idea behind quality control processes is to ensure that the overall quality of the product in question meets customer requirements and expectations. QA professionals and software QA outsourcing companies work on the development process itself and process implementation. This helps teams follow all required Software Development Lifecycle procedures. Rather than reactively addressing issues after they are identified, quality control focuses on continuous improvement to proactively prevent these issues from happening.
How is quality determined by quality assurance teams?
There are two main approaches when it comes to quality assurance: the quality attributes approach and the defect management approach.
Defect management helps you track defects and uses definition categories to classify the severity of those defects. Quality assurance professionals create control charts to measure the development team's capabilities. A “defect” is any element of the software that is not aligned with customer requirements. It is not uncommon for developers to misunderstand or not fully understand requirements, so errors naturally arise during development. Other common problems include inadequate logic, incorrect data handling, and generally buggy code.
Quality assurance in the quality attributes approach focuses on six main characteristics to determine the quality of a product:
- Reliability: QA professionals determine how software performs under specific conditions to see how often it fails. They also discover how quickly the system can reach its full operational level after failure.
- Functionality: QA teams test software functions to see if they are appropriate and their implementation is correct. QA professionals also test the interaction between the software test object and other system components to see how it performs. Assessment of data security and compliance with mandatory guidelines and rules is also required.
- Efficiency: The quality assurance team is responsible for determining whether the development team followed good coding practices during the development of software products. Efficiency should always be considered when designing software architecture.
- Usability: It is important that users understand the product’s functions as easily as possible. If understanding the software requires too much effort or is not possible, it will not pass QA.
- Portability: Each software must have the ability to adapt to changes in its environment. It should offer easy installation and replacement of system components also in a specific environment.
- Maintainability: Quality control teams evaluate how easy it is to identify and fix a problem in the program, as well as the root cause of the failure. They analyze how difficult it would be to modify the code in the event of a failure and how stable the system's performance would be when applying these changes.
Why You Need a Software QA Consultant in Software Development
Some companies choose to only test for defects and do not implement a quality assurance process for development projects. This is a big mistake. Quality assurance is a key element of the software development process, mainly because it guarantees that the final product will be of the highest quality.
There are other notable benefits to adopting quality control, including an increase in a company's reputation and credibility and an increase in customer confidence in its products. Additionally, companies can improve overall workflow efficiency and gain a competitive advantage. Most importantly, providing a near-perfect product is simply impossible without an experienced quality assurance team and robust quality control practices in place.
