Magazine : 
Focussing more on quality than testing
With our digital topography changing every minute and speed being the ultimate, organizations often overlook the quality assurance of the application and focus only on the testing part. As of 2019, a panel of senior technology professionals and CIOs reported that approximately 23% of their organization’s annual IT budget was allocated for quality assurance and testing. Testing is an important task to ensure software quality assurance. However, an overall approach to encompass all project activities across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), covering QA from inception to delivery and governance, is more promising for the future of the application.
The average budget share towards quality assurance and testing has been decreasing in recent years, since hitting a high of 35 percent in 2015.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY QUALITY ASSURANCE?
Quality assurance refers to the conformance to all the explicit and implicit requirements, standards, and expectations. It is more precisely a meta-process that ensures consistent improvement over a continuous period; Software quality assurance and maintenance of processes to achieve and improve the product quality.
While testing, we need to assess the software quality according to a range of views:
- Transcendental View-that can recognize quality but cannot measure it
- User view- The experience or the end-user and software quality assurance
- Manufacturing view- Ensuring mobile app quality assurance and whether it was developed flawlessly for the first time during the end-to-end SLDC process.
- The product view - From evaluating the internal and inherent characteristics to checking if they conform to the defined requirements or not is necessary.
- Value-based review: Assessing how well the product satisfies the demands of stakeholders and entities associated with the product.
These constitute the essential part of any QA(quality assurance)process.
WHAT IS TESTING?
Now that we are already clear about quality assurance, we need to understand that testing does not necessarily give us quality assurance.
Testing is a process that is performed on delivery to assess its perceived quality. It is vital to emphasize the phrase 'perceived' because the quality objectives vary greatly based on the testing performed.
Testing benefits the delivery of a quality product when conducted as part of a quality procedure. For you to guarantee the strength of product quality delivery, your testing method requires a strategy, technique, and plan generated from quality procedures.
Following were the focus areas for testing mobile applications from 2013 to 2017
IS THE DIFFERENCE IMPORTANT?
The difference is crucial.
Testing is frequently the only way to measure or execute quality initiatives. Most projects will encounter issues once testing begins if the actual purpose of testing and what needs to be achieved are not understood.
These occur for myriad reasons but are primarily based on the concept of carrying debt forward. It is generally difficult to achieve your objectives at each level if you do not have methods to monitor quality during all phases of the SDLC. For example, if you are required to clearly describe and quantify the project's objectives as they emerge from the functional design phase? If you can't accomplish this for all of your project's phases and milestones, there's a good possibility that each will amass items that aren't entirely satisfied - this is what we call debt. This debt is often uncovered during testing. That results in much more faults and functional gaps than planned. Hence you might deviate from the intended goals, which raises the risk of a project.
If you leave anything till the last minute, the outcome and accompanying expenses will reflect it. Both testing and quality management aims to decrease risk early in the project lifecycle.
But How?
Shift-left thinking ensures that the needs are satisfied. It also ensures that planning and coverage are examined and executed sooner to avoid loss.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE QUALITY VIA TESTING?
Several phases or activities are conducted as part of project delivery in sequential (like Waterfall, V-Model.) and iterative (Agile, Kanban, DevOps) delivery models. With a quality process, you must be able to identify all the actions and describe the desired aim or outcome for each one and how you can assess it.
You can use Shift-Left thinking to guarantee that requirements are considered sooner rather than later. Analyzing needs, project planning, and risks will ensure that the coverage is minimized effectively.
11 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR SOFTWARE QUALITY
To ensure best practices for quality assurance for your organization, you can follow the following methods:
1. As far as feasible, reduce the scope of tasks.
Less code means fewer bugs. Since it is software, we may release our product in stages. There's no need for a feature rollout.
2. Understanding what is necessary. Never make assumptions.
Wrong assumptions are worse than ignorance. Someone who doesn't comprehend will inquire. However, someone who assumes may not examine and may do it incorrectly. Always make it specific that the programmer has the correct requirements and acceptance criteria.
3. Documenting is not just a writing process, but it also involves thinking.
Take some time to write out what is needed. It might be brief and straightforward. Documentation is the result of it. However, writing improves our thinking, and we may sometimes notice missing edge situations and possible problems.
4. Break work down into as few components as feasible.
Divide and conquer have been the policy for ages in various fields. It also works for programming. When you solve a tiny problem, you are more likely to handle it well than when you try to solve a large one as long as you know how to connect these small bits, making them self-sufficient correctly. By making them self-sufficient, we can assure that they operate as a whole. This will amplify your software quality assurance.
5. Coding is more than simply typing. Take pleasure in the process.
Enjoy the process of coding. Never hurry to complete a task. Consider what is most effective in completing the task at hand. Find a solution to make the code concise while remaining obvious. As you see the necessity, refactor and enhance. Handle the edge situation gracefully. It's an art form. In reality, code quality is the most critical aspect of software.
6. Automate the monotonous procedure to minimize unintentional errors.
I'm not talking about test automation here (although that is a big part). I'm talking to processes that we repeat repeatedly. The release procedure is one example. As a result, such a procedure should ideally be a command away and readily learned. The entire CI process should be as automated as feasible. Another basic example is code formatting, which can be automated in some development environments. Automation is more predictable and guarantees your software quality.
7. Use the machine as much as possible to discover problems.
Again, while automated and monkey tests are helpful, they are not the focus of this discussion. Instead, I'm talking about code quality. If the programming tool can help us spot errors sooner, it will save us from trouble later. As a result, TypeScript is favored over JavaScript since it detects errors early in the compilation process. Another good one is programming languages with no safety control. An automated code linting tool will also give more security. Another part of ensuring no uncovered region is automatic test coverage measurement.
8. Pair programming, code review, and learning and sharing
Teamwork is the key to improving software quality assurance. Two pairs of eyes are preferable to one. Two joined brains provide more excellent knowledge than two individual brains. Before merging code into the main branch, set aside time for pair programming and impose code reviews. These will aid in the improvement of code quality and the detection of missing problems. That will enhance your quality assurance techniques and strategy.
9. Think like a user.
Thinking like a user is of utmost importance if you create a software product for the general public. Don't just grow. Use it and see how well it works for you. Put on the user's hat and think like a user. Make anything that leverages APIs or libraries if you create them. Make something that will be distributed with your APIs or libraries if at all possible. When you are a user, you will realize how much more "friendly" it is. If we don't like it, the chances are that others won't either. Avoid self-denial and lying to yourself about how you feel while taking it. Believe in Customer priority. A consumer’s review of software quality enhances software quality assurance.
10. Remote control of the delivered goods
Except for web pages and server-based programmes, most applications are in the hands of consumers after they are released. However, you can still communicate with them thanks to the Internet if we arrange it properly. When you have such methods in place, we may toggle some features ON/OFF when you experience unanticipated challenges. Thus one may further regulate the quality of the product considerably sooner. But keep in mind that such remote controls come at a cost, as does having them checked. Use it with caution.
11. Genuine feedback: Collecting genuine feedback helps in improving your quality assurance strategy
These industry-proven practices will help you to improve your QA capabilities.
CONCLUSION
Quality assurance is an integral part of any IT investment. Getting things right from the outset narrows the uncertainty gap. That is especially important if your product must be "on target" from the start. It is necessary for this highly competitive consumer-driven business where the brand is everything.
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