What Is Quality Assurance In Software Testing – Software quality assurance has been a key component of software development for decades. QA helps developers and testers increase work efficiency, collaborate better, automate processes and see the bigger picture.
When we talked to project stakeholders, we noticed that some have misconceptions about QA, either limiting it to testing or confusing it with Quality Control.
What Is Quality Assurance In Software Testing
In this guide, we summarize our vision of Quality Assurance, defining the concept, scope, and capabilities of software QA. Hopefully, it will be necessary to read about Quality Assurance.
Why Is A Quality Assurance Tester Needed On A Software Development Team
To clearly answer this question, let’s break it down into its main components: quality and safety. By understanding the definition of software quality and explaining the concept of assurance, you will easily understand the concept of QA.
So quality assurance is a set of processes to ensure that a product meets the best quality standards. The main criteria for external and internal product quality are efficiency, functionality, usability, portability, reliability and maintainability.
Software development and testing are complex processes. There are too many details to consider and too much room for error. It’s easy to miss issues like technological debt, security issues, redundant functionality, or duplication. Without software QA, developers and testers would be too caught up in short-term tasks. The product will be dangerous and ineffective.
Quality assurance begins at the beginning of the project when a team defines the business, utility, functional and non-functional requirements of the products. The QA team joins the process to define the software quality standards of an end product. All participants can check their compliance with the criteria and give a better result.
What Are Software Testing And Quality Assurance?
So what is software QA? Basically, the QA process can be divided into 5 main phases: discover, plan, design, execute and improve.
The QA team helps define functional and non-functional software requirements and checks how they relate to business objectives.
Also, it is important to create a software specification document: this document describes the expected product in detail and will be used for reference by developers, testers, stakeholders and the marketing team. This is the main document of the software development process.
The first step begins with a careful analysis of the project, its risks and opportunities. The discovery phase is where all project participants meet with stakeholders and product owners, understand the business goals behind the project and the scope of the final software.
Software Quality Assurance Framework & Methodologies
The planning stage is oriented to familiarity with the current situation, although planning focuses on thinking about future moves. It is similar to discovery (because it involves a lot of analysis and research), but the methods are different.
The main objective of the QA team in a software development project is to create a sustainable long-term strategy. It will help testers and developers follow the best coding standards, manage QA teams and measure the final results.
QA and testing phases are characterized by specific activities and documents. In the design phase, the following artifacts are prevalent:
The design phase of a software quality assurance process is ongoing. As the project grows, the team will make updates to the quality assurance strategy, look for ways to reduce costs and time, and automate as many processes as possible.
Common Myths About Quality Assurance And Testing
SC is implemented through reports, audits and protocols. The tasks of a SC team is to maintain consistent documentation of the test and development process, measure the efficiency of the team, check whether the final results conform to the expected standards. Here’s how execution relates to planning and design.
SC experts deal with long-term processes and bigger-picture strategies. Here, tangible metrics are essential—otherwise, the team will easily lose sight of their pitch. Let’s take a look at some common SC metrics and their importance.
Using these key QA metrics provides QA testers, QC team members, test specialists, product owners, and project managers with a clear understanding of team accomplishments and remaining problem areas.
Closing the testing process is a process where testers draw conclusions based on the results. The team conducts meetings, analyzes metrics, user feedback and performance.
Importance Of Software Quality Assurance (sqa) And Software Testing
Here, test metrics are also the most important artifact of the process. Testers should track the number of bugs fixed, bugs saved, tests completed. During closure, teams identify new opportunities and activities.
Quality assurance is sometimes confused with similar terms – most notably, quality control and quality improvement. We have a guide on this – be sure to check it out – because in this article we only make a brief distinction.
Quality assurance is a process-oriented field: the team is focused on optimizing development and testing processes using SQA methodologies.
Quality control is a product-oriented field: testers are focused on delivering a high-quality product. The methods for this are defined by the QA team: the only concern of the QC team is cleaning the product.
Quality Assurance Definitions And Software Testing Industry Terms » Aspiritech
Quality improvement is a set of practical activities that a team does to improve the development and testing process. It is often performed by SC specialists, but large companies sometimes prefer to dedicate a separate team to this area. A general distinction is that SC is more theory-based and analytical, where QI is practical and actionable.
These two terms are often used as synonyms, but in reality they are not. Although QA experts are often also capable of performing software testing, this does not mean that the two fields are the same. In fact, QA differs from testing in its definition, focus, purpose, type of activity and orientation.
Quality assurance defines the areas where testing should be done, provides test frameworks, architecture, and certain software for quality assurance. It addresses all the organizational aspects of testing – but not the work itself.
Quality assurance is a process designed to minimize the risk of software testing and development projects. However, SC comes with some risks that teams should be aware of before hiring or onboarding SC experts. In our experience, companies starting to implement quality assurance for the first time usually face the following risks.
Importance Of Qa Testing For Modern Businesses
As you can see, SC risks can be navigated early in the project. Most potential threats lie in the recruitment and discovery stages. If you pay attention to miscommunications, misjudgments, and collaboration difficulties right away, you will be able to avoid most potential problems.
Although QA engineers must stay abreast of the technical side of testing and quality management, the most important aspect is their analytical, managerial and insightful skills. A SC expert must be able to act practically, but also to stand back and see the project from a bird’s eye view.
The SC team leader must, on top of that, have a very business-oriented mindset. The SC specialist must always look back at the business and user objectives and ensure that the final product meets initial expectations. Understanding the link between QA processes and business processes (revenue growth, expansion) is a key competency for a QA leader.
Learn the role of the Software Testing Lifecycle (STLC). The software testing life cycle is a sequence of systematic activities during the software testing process.
What Is Quality Assurance Testing? (with Types And Benefits)
Choosing a CA team is the most important step in creating a successful CA department in your enterprise. We recommend engaging outsourcing experts, even if you have in-house specialists: the influx of new ideas and methodologies will broaden your team’s view, enrich your practice and improve the final quality.
We always ask our clients how they chose their SC team and about their selection criteria – here’s a short checklist of what they usually tell us.
A team of quality assurance experts will openly share their experience, documentation examples, projects and previous reviews. They will also show what went wrong and how it was fixed. The SC team that cannot talk about the problems that arose during the project probably lacks transparency. Honest communication is another important criterion for choosing CA experts.
If you’re already working with a quality assurance team but are looking for ways to increase your efficiency, you should consider these best practices. It is possible that your team is not implementing some of the critical processes that make a difference in QA performance.
What Is Software Quality Assurance And Why You Need An Sqa Engineer For Your Team
You can use ERPs that are specifically developed for Quality Assurance such as GreenLightGuru or QT9QMS. ERP solutions allow measuring team efficiency automatically, transparently controlling the activities of all members, automatically generating documentation and conducting inspections.
Talking to customers gives SC specialists perspective on their activities. Ensuring that testers and developers, as well as QA teams, have access to focus groups, reviews and evaluations is essential.
Getting quick reviews and shortening the feedback loop between QA testers and users makes it easier for QA teams to update their practices and understand what can be optimized.
The whole point of quality assurance is process optimization. The team should be encouraged to try new methods, innovate and eliminate inconsistencies. A similar process should be carried out with the product – there should be no unnecessary features, operations or user actions.
Mastering Qa Software Testing: A Comprehensive Guide
The QA team should have a wiki to record technical issues, their causes, side effects, and their details. Keeping complete documentation will make maintenance and onboarding easier.
It is important to assess the priority of SC tasks and risks –
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