Introduction
With the application client becoming evermore aware and sophisticated, buggy, underperforming solutions can be very irksome. Quality Assurance is a set of activities designed to ensure that the software product at least meets or exceeds the customer’s requirements.
The goal of QA is to provide products of the highest quality that are compatible with the requirements and expectations of the customers. For this one tests the software to ensure its functionality and reliability. However, it’s not just about identifying the bugs and defects at the end of the fabrication – the process of quality assurance is integrated throughout the entire software development exercise, from design to deployment.
According to Verified Market Reports Group, the Global Quality Assurance Service Market is expected to be valued at USD 7.29 billion by 2026, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2% during the forecast period from 2019 to 2026, which shows the importance of this field.
Principles of Software Quality Assurance
- Defect Prevention: According to this principle, one should always keep an eye on the development process, so that bugs do not appear later. Prevention is better than cure. It may become too difficult to address the defect later. The foundation at least should be defect free.
- Continuous Improvement: This principle encourages one to constantly strive to improve the developmental practices so that the quality of the final product is enhanced. A passionate workforce dedicated to the project is essential here.
- Stakeholder Involvement: According to this principle, there should be clear and open communication between all participants to ensure smooth transition of the product throughout the development cycle. These include developers, testers, QA team leads, project managers and customers.
- Risk-based Approach: The risks associated with the product quality should be prioritized, and dealt with in a rational order. The most significant risks should be given more importance
Quality Assurance Practices
- Manual Testing: This type of testing is done by human hand. It includes exploratory, regression, and acceptance testing to identify defects and issues.
- Automated Testing: This involves using tools and software to run tests on the product automatically. It includes unit, integration, and performance testing.
- Code Reviews: In this type of practice, other developers discern your work for things like coding errors, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues.
- Compliance Testing: This ensures that the software adheres to industry-specific regulations and standards, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Payment Card Industry (PCI)
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT): In this practice the software is evaluated by end-users to ensure that it is in accordance with their needs and expectations.
- Black Box Testing: In this type of testing the examiner doesn’t have the know-how of the inner workings of the software. As a result the functionality is assessed without any biases
- Documentation: By preparing clear documentation, the whole team is able to understand the dos and don’ts of the task. This reduces the chance of a mistake
- Audits: These are usually done at the end of the software development process and can be used to identify weak points. This way future problems can be avoided
- Design Inspection: Testing the design is complex. One has to ascertain if the logic is correct, if the algorithmic sequences are correct and if the design will behave in the proper fashion
- Training: It is important for seasoned QA specialists to train new-comers. This way dips in work quality are avoided
Final Conclusion
Quality Assurance plays a vital role in the software development life cycle. To keep up with the increasing customer demands enterprises are always churning out new software applications. Though releasing new software applications is important, it is also necessary to ensure that the product comes out the way the customer wants. There is always demand for not only a wide selection of new software choices, but also software of very high quality.