Many of you may wonder as to why QA is important in software development. Well, you need to know that the process of Quality Assurance (QA) involves extensive testing of products at different stages so that you are able to deliver top quality software products to clients. It is your company’s reputation that is at stake and if it gets ruined, surviving in the highly competitive market can be difficult.
The term software testing refers to the process of verifying whether the elements and components used for producing a solution actually will make the system efficiently work. Both manual as well as automated tools are utilized by QA specialists to make sure that the system specifically matches the clients’ unique type of business needs and requirements.
A QA specialist is essentially a member of the software development team who checks and cross checks if the program or application that is being designed and developed works correctly so as to provide guaranteed results to the customer’s daily business operations.
Learn How To Determine The Cost For Building Your Own Ecommerce Business Website:
The overall cost to build a result oriented ecommerce website will depend on a host of factors as mentioned below:
1. Manual Testing (Functional and GUI): Experts who test software products manually for identifying any bugs, problems and even defects in the software system right at the development stage.
2. Automation Testing: Experts who design automated tests for checking overall functionality of the software program or application.
3. Narrowly Targeted: Experts that perform tests to verify the security of the software system, its usability in day to day functions and even ascertain the program’s real-time performance.
The difference between software testing and quality assurance is too subtle to understand. While software testing lays emphasis on the technical aspects of a system, the process quality assurance is about verifying whether the system meets the software specifications that are laid down by clients. Furthermore, QA procedures also evaluate the software development task and various test cycles which include tools, techniques and processes that are used for the purpose.
Thus, in a way the function of QA specialists is two pronged – they do product supervision as well as oversee the overall product development cycles. In other words, they follow both product-centric and user-centric approaches in the software/application development process.
They have been mentioned earlier and so, you have some basic idea about them. In manual testing, testers do testing at varied levels for detecting bugs and errors by taking into account the user perspective.
However, in automated testing, testers may write scripts and might even make use of some other software for testing the program being developed and which is already tested manually. Automation testing procedures ensure double checking of the software product quality.
1. White Box: It is done to ascertain if the internal structure (app source code) is properly structured to align with the client specifications.
2. Black Box: This testing method involves an in-put-output/data driven test that is driven aimed at measuring the overall functionality of the software application. Testers do trial and error tests at the interface level in this type of test.
3. Grey Box: This hybrid testing method is a combination of white box and black box tests. In this type of test, tester will access design documents and database. So, tester needs to have excellent knowledge and experience to work with the other two methods.
Here are the 4 broadly used techniques in the QA process.
1. Unit Test For validating unit level components in software. Testers inspect all source codes and match them with expected outcomes.
2. Integration Test Three types of approaches are followed for this purpose – Bottom-Up, Top-Down and Sandwich. The test is aimed at testing connectivity between different software modules.
3. System Test In this type of test, testers do end-to-end testing of the software product and also prepare comprehensive report pertaining to its performance as well as compliance with the desired standards.
4. Acceptance Test It is a pre-delivery in-depth test that testers perform to ascertain the system’s overall performance and usability.
1. Waterfall Model: In this model, testing of software is done by QA testers by taking into account client’s specific requirements, design, implementation, verification as well as maintenance.
2. Iterative Development: Every component and module of the designed software system is subjected to comprehensive testing by QA testers in this testing model.
3. Agile methodology: QA specialist follows an incremental testing approach to sort out issues in the software while using this type of software testing methodology.
4. Extreme programming: It is closely related to agile methodology and involves running of short tests or development cycles during the software building process.
The main objective of quality assurance services is to ensure that software programs run smoothly and efficiently, have minimum defects as well as meet the specific business needs and requirements of clients. It is vital to have QA over the entire software application development lifecycle and even during each phase of the solution building process. Without quality assurance, the task of building a a top quality software system will be hampered. If the software product flaws right at the drawing stage then the resulting program will be unreliable and so, customer may experience problems while using it for daily business operations.
Remember, quality assurance and quality control is two different things. This is because QA is meant to mitigate any software related problems before it is too late. Otherwise QA will be deferred to the QC phase, clients will unnecessarily have to bear huge costs for getting the issues rectified and it may damage the company’s reputation.
To avoid this kind of a situation from developing, it is necessary to have highly effective quality assurance practices in place. To that effect, a fundamentally sound “QA driven policy” might prove to be a big asset for any software apps development company.
Webmyne Systems is a pioneer of the web application development industry. It has the reputation for providing turnkey web based software solutions to clients across the globe. To know more about why software quality assurance is important and how we may enable you to get an affordable solution, contact us online today! Take advantage of a free consultation with our QA expert online now!
One-stop solution for web-app development, digital marketing & designing needs
