In any software development life cycle, testing and quality assurance are the two processes of vital importance to finalize only up-to-par products before they proceed any further to end-users.
Even though both share the same goal of rolling out high-quality software, the software testing process is slightly different when its emphasis is on product functionality and performance, whereas quality assurance is about defect prevention to ensure the software passes all the predetermined quality standards and meets desired customer expectations.
Within the limit of an article, we only manage to delve into software quality assurance. Let’s get started.
Key Takeaways:
Quality assurance (QA) plays an integral part in software development by ensuring the final product meets quality standards and user expectations. Its importance is underlined by several tangible benefits:
- QA minimizes defects, thus minimizing effort, resources, and costs.
- QA serves as a watcher to oversee and improve the entire software development process on multiple fronts, including quality, productivity, and efficiency.
- When implemented well, QA processes can speed up the SDLC and shorten the time-to-market of software products.
- Adherence to the regulatory requirements or industry standards is crucial for software products, and QA plays a significant role in ensuring compliance.
- QA practices introduce quality metrics that serve as benchmarks for measuring product quality and performance, ultimately leading to better decision-making.
- Ultimately, the goal of QA is to deliver high-quality software products and maintain their quality as an ongoing effort.
What Is Software Quality Assurance (SQA)?
Without any further complication, quality assurance, commonly known as QA, typically involves a series of processes and systematic activities carried out to validate product quality. Or you can think of QA as a gauge to measure how well a software application is developed and tested.
What do we actually do in QA processes? Here are the primary activities involved:
- Requirement Analysis
- Test Planning
- Test Design
- Environment Setup
- Test Execution
- Defect Tracking
- Test Reporting
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
- Release Management
- Post-Release Monitoring
SQA is not an independent task but an integrated part that functions in parallel with almost every step of the entire SDLC (software development lifecycle). It is a continuous process that begins from the very initial planning stage until the software product is released and maintained.
Software quality assurance ensures that the required quality standards are complied with and continuous improvement is maintained throughout the SDLC. It oversees the whole process of developing software in order to detect defects from within and provide the development team with ways for enhancement. Note that QA is responsible for the overall software quality management system rather than focusing on only an end product or service.
The Importance of Software Quality Assurance Processes
A software development process stands a tiny chance of success without an effective quality assurance system. In regard to product quality, there is no shortage of reasons to emphasize the impact of QA processes in software engineering or development. Needless to say, a sub-par product is not suitable for users, but the ramifications of releasing a low-quality software product go far beyond that.
Fewer Defects, Fewer Costs
QA processes offer cost savings in development.
From the term itself, QA ultimately aims to minimize the number of defects or bugs occurring in the entire development process. If software engineers and the QA team do it well, they can identify the root cause of all problems and fix bugs in the early phases. This proactive approach results in fewer problems in the later stages and after the product has been released. Consequently, your professionals can spend less time and resources on debugging. In software engineering, saving time translates into saving costs.
Oftentimes, bugs and errors in the later development phases are often more costly or even catastrophic to rectify than those found at an earlier stage. By addressing them before they are embedded deep down into your product, you can make it easier on your pocket.
Revealing Weaknesses in Processes and Procedures
SQA centers on the quality of development processes and procedures, thus offering a clear-cut view of underlying problems and weaknesses, including issues with communication, documentation, or team coordination.
If found, the QA team can immediately work with all stakeholders to review the processes and make necessary adjustments before they compromise development speed, budget, or end-product quality. SQA contributes to risk management by eliminating uncertainty and providing early detection of issues that may arise along the way.
Reducing Time-to-market
A solid, comprehensive QA test plan can commit your product to an on-schedule release or, better, a shorter turnaround time. With the software design and development processes being well-organized, software developers can shift their great focus to areas that add more value to the product.
As such, they can spare extensive debugging or retesting, working on more strategic functionality and operational processes. If QA professionals and the software development team can work in harmony, they can mitigate last-minute issues that would delay the launch. In another way, QA helps to boost development productivity and efficiency. Moreover, there will be less rework thanks to QA processes.
Ensuring Compliance with Standards
In highly regulated industries (E.g., finance, healthcare, or aviation), adherence to industry standards is an absolute must. Failure to comply possibly result in legal actions, reputational damage, or even worse consequences. The accomplishment of quality assurance processes assures that your software product meets all the necessary regulatory requirements and standards. It is not only about quality but also about credibility and user trust.
Establishing Software Quality Metrics
Software engineering processes with clearly defined QA practices are much more data-driven than those without.
When implementing quality assurance processes, QA specialists introduce specific metrics that serve as benchmarks for measuring the quality of the entire project cycle. These include code churn, code coverage, the number of bugs reported, defect resolution time, and heaps more.
In reality, the software quality metrics are the basis of fact for development teams to measure product quality and performance, identify potential areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions.
Optimal Product Quality & Reliability
All the benefits mentioned consolidate into a single objective, which is to deliver software products of the utmost quality. Whether it is a desktop/web/mobile app, software component or system, or anything else that offers functionality to end-users or clients, your ultimate goal should be to meet the exacting requirements of users. The QA processes support every step along the way and help maintain quality as an ongoing effort.
Some other notable reasons for implementing QA processes include:
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Enhanced team collaboration and communication
- Better risk management
- Strengthened brand image and reputation
- Etc.
All in all, the role of quality assurance in software development is unquestionable. In the end, it is all about delivering software products of the highest caliber, and QA processes are the key to achieving this goal.
Common Quality Assurance Methods
Now that we have emphasized the importance of quality assurance processes in software development, let’s delve into common systematic approaches and techniques. These are implemented in different combinations (multi-testing strategy) depending on the specific project and team needs.
Manual Testing
Manual testing is a fundamental aspect of any QA process. It involves human testers executing test cases and scripts manually. No automated testing tool is used to identify defects or bugs in the software product. The test results also reveal the weak points within the development process itself.
Manual testing is particularly useful for small projects with limited resources or those with new functionalities that continuously evolve or cannot be automated. Some of the commonly used manual testing techniques include:
Exploratory Testing
Experimenting with the application with different scenarios and inputs and identifying defects through creative and critical thinking.
Ad-Hoc Testing
Executing test cases with any predefined plan or script in a more informal and unstructured manner (Relying on the tester’s intuition and experience).
Regression Testing
Ensuring the correct behavior of a previously tested software system after it has been modified. Regression testing is done to guarantee that changes or enhancements made to a piece of software or its test environments, such as upgrading components or fixing bugs, do not introduce new problems.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Validating that the software meets its design and satisfies all functional requirements from the end-user perspective. UAT can be created by testers, business analysts, developers, or users who are familiar with the system. If the customer has not been involved in creating functional specs before this point, it is usually best to have them validate the system.
Smoke Testing
Preliminary testing checks the basic functionality of the software before proceeding to more detailed testing.
Automated Testing
As opposed to manual tests, automated tests are conducted with the use of specialized automation tools and frameworks. Indeed, it is a fast and cost-effective method of detecting bugs and errors in developed software. Not only does it speed up the process and save time as well as effort, automated testing enables to prioritize more complex tasks that require human intelligence.
Unit Testing
Verify if individual components or units of a software product function as expected. Unit testing is usually conducted by developers during the development phase and involves testing small, isolated units of code. Often automated using frameworks like JUnit or NUnit.
Integration Testing
Evaluating how different modules or services interact and whether any defects arise from their interaction. This testing can be done manually or with the use of automation tools that simulate various integration scenarios, such as Selenium or Protractor.
Security Testing
Software security testing checks if the software process remains secure throughout its execution. It tests for areas of software where vulnerabilities could be present to attempt to exploit the system by attacking it. A few security testing examples include:
- Penetration Testing: Test a system and its features (usually through automated means) to determine if vulnerabilities exist and can be exploited.
- Secure Coding: Make sure that all security information (including passwords) is encrypted, not stored in plain text, and hashed appropriately.
Functional Testing
Test and ensure each function of a software product operates in conformance with the requirement specification. Automation tools like Selenium and Cucumber can automate repetitive functional tests.
Performance Testing
Assessing how a system performs under specific circ*mstances. For example, high workload or heavy usage. Such tests evaluate response times, throughput, resource utilization, and stability of an application under load. Performance testing is usually automated using specialized tools (E.g., Meter or LoadRunner).
- Stress Testing: To put a software system under extreme workloads to check whether it can handle the increased load.
- Load Testing: Evaluate system performance under both expected and peak load conditions. This test identifies the maximum number of users an application can handle before showing signs of strain.
- Endurance Testing: Validate long-term usage and evaluate the system’s capability to handle sustained traffic.
- Spike Testing: Analyze the software’s performance when the workload is suddenly increased drastically.
Test-Driven Development (TDD)
This is a software development methodology that heavily relies on writing tests before any actual code is created. The TTD process is to facilitate early testing and guarantee that the code meets the requirements and functions. TDD can be implemented at all levels of testing (unit, functional, integration, etc.) and promotes continuous testing throughout the development cycle.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
This is an extension of TDD that focuses on testing behavior rather than specific features or outcomes. BDD uses a format called “Gherkin” to write tests in a natural language using keywords like Given, When, and Then so that even non-technical stakeholders can understand. BDD encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and business analysts to ensure that the tests reflect the desired behavior of the software product.
Peer Review and Code Review
It is like cross-checking that the developed software meets specific coding standards and is error-free. Code reviews involve a team member going through the code written by another team member to identify any issues, bugs, or inefficiencies. In peer reviews, two developers are paired together to check each other’s code as it is written. Apart from catching errors early on, these reviews provide valuable feedback and promote knowledge-sharing and collaboration within a team.
Quality Assurance Vs. Quality Control: What’s the Difference?
QA and QC are considered close cousins, as their natures are nearly identical. Both watch over the quality management aspect of software development processes. Still, they differ in many ways. The following table will help you understand the nuances of QA and QC:
| Parameter | Quality Assurance (QA) | Quality Control (QC) |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Oversee the whole process of developing software to ascertain the quality of end products or services. | Conduct checks and take corrective measures to ensure an end product or service adheres to quality requirements. |
| Focus | Process-oriented. Focus on methods, procedures, and systems of creating the product. | Product-oriented. Inspect and test the final product to ensure it meets requirements. |
| Objective | Prevent defects by enhancing development processes | Identify and correct defects in finished products |
| Activity | Documentation, project audits, process design, training | Product testing, defect logging, reviews, and corrections |
| Timing | Throughout the development phase. QA is conducted prior to QC. | After product development is completed. |
| Responsibility | Involves all teams | Typically handled by a QC team |
| Outcome | Processes are followed correctly. | The end products meet the specified requirements. |
Entrust Your Software Development Process to Orient Software
Fortunately, businesses or projects of today - those with limited resources or expertise in software development or quality assurance testing - can take a shortcut by outsourcing rather than struggling with its complexities.
Come to Orient Software, and we can streamline your effort to improve software development outcomes with our expertise in product engineering, DevOps, and quality assurance testing services.
In addition to QA testing services, we can empower you with our custom software development and staff augmentation services. Our experienced team consists of developers, QA engineers, testers, and others. They are all well-vetted experts in different fields of software engineering. You can rest easy when having the best talent on your team. Also, you can entrust us with assembling a full-fledged team of your desired professionals who will work exclusively for you.
Just contact us today to further discuss how we can help you achieve your business goals through efficient software development.
