As per the ISO standards, Software quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. But from an end-user perspective, quality software is simply something that is easy to use and is error-free. How can this be achieved? The answer is a dedicated Software Quality Assurance Engineering team that is always committed to quality. This straightforward approach always makes the SQA an indispensable part of the Software Development Team.
Importance of Quality Assurance in Software
To stop beating around the bush – software quality assurance ensures great value to the final product. SQA is a broad term that engulfs Quality Control and software testing:
The SQA team always stands for the end-user from the organizational hierarchy level. They think like end-users, argue like end-users, and more importantly, keep on raising more requirements so that the product will always make life easy for those who use it, but not for those who make it. They keep examining the process and make changes to it, leading to a fine product.
Role of QA in Software Development
SQA team dive deep into the complex and ever-changing business models or requirements and assume all the permutations and combinations to ensure the conditions are met and ready to serve the purpose.
The basic functions they undertook are as follows:
Requirement gathering and analysis
SQA team works with the functional analysts and solution architect to analyze the requirements. Being responsible for knowing every nook and corner of the business model, the SQA team plays a critical role in formulating the new requirements. It makes sure there are no conflicts on existing work models.
Effective test plans
SQA team invests considerable time and effort in creating the test plans –
This includes a good test strategy, drawing objectives, scheduling, and estimation, creating a robust test environment and test resources, execution, bug management, and sign off.
To achieve this, they take several practices under consideration.
Maintaining a Robust Testing Environment.
Careful selection of release criteria.
Time-saving approach for delivery.
STLC and bug prioritizing.
Form dedicated security and performance testing team.
Simulate customer accounts like a production environment.
SQA testing – Types
QA testing models are of different kinds based on the nature of the process and the business models. Few are mentioned below:
Functional testing: Primary aim of this model is to make sure all the available features work as expected and deliver the client’s needs. Thorough knowledge of the business model helps a QA engineer achieve this and forecast a functional conflict while introducing a requirement to existing available logic.
Non-Functional testing: Non-functional tests, on the other hand, verify the performance of the software and try to look for improvements in that matter.
Automation testing: Automation testing always compares the actual and expected results with the help of dedicated tools. Mostly use this for regression purposes when a large data and functionalities need to be tested in a short time.
Regression testing: This model confirms that the recent addition or modification to base code has not impacted the existing functionalities. This can be achieved through automation and manual testing, depending on the business model and functional complexity.
SQA in Agile development
Agile is an iterative increment approach to project management and software development in which the entire development project is divided into multiple small and consumable increments. This enables a sufficient understanding of the actual requirement, and there is always scope for changes to be accommodated.
The Traditional SQA process also got re-defined when agile came into practice. Unlike waterfall, SQA is very well into the project cycle before the prototype is ready. This provides much scope to foresee an issue, understand the gaps in requirements, understand the acceptance criteria, etc., and create user stories well before the developments begin. Also, the iterative design allows the developers to add maximum changes the SQA has derived.
The conclusion
To enable the product to compete in the cut-throat software business, there should not be any compromise on the quality and standard. This highlights the Software Quality Assurance role as a potential impact in the software development process.
In Intertech Software Development, our dedicated SQA team continuously shapes our software products to the finest level and gives at most care to customer satisfaction. We always strive for excellence as we know we have a reputation to maintain.
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