How QA Builds Better Software

An organization’s credibility and reputation are governed by the quality of their products. And any product goes through multiple rounds of stringent quality checks to validate its build, reliability and quality. Similar is the scenario for the software industry as well. The surge in user expectations, rising competition, and shortened release cycles, have made it vital for the inclusion of quality at each phase. Quality Assurance is a critical pillar in the modern software engineering industry.

QA is much more than just catching defects or validating that the app works as expected. It is focused on building confidence in the solution, establishing trust with the clients, helping developers deploy faster without skimping on the reliability, all of which directly boosts the trust of the organization. Let us read on how QA is instrumental in building optimized software and also the universal set of best practices that need to be implemented for achieving the best results.

Understanding QA in Software Development

Quality Assurance is defined as the methodical approach to analyzing and optimizing software solutions consistently through the development cycle. While generally associated with testing, QA consists of a larger philosophy of prevention of bugs rather than just detecting them.

QA focuses on the following:

• Making sure that product satisfies non-functional and functional needs
• Verify usability, accessibility, security and performance
• Optimize development process to bring down inconsistencies and bugs
• Ensure smooth maintenance and deployments

Key Benefits of a Robus QA Team

Proactive Detection Prevents Soaring Costs

Delayed detection of bugs in the production can lead to costs 30 times to 100 times more to resolve than those detected during the development phase. With implementation of QA early in the SDLC, also referred to as the “shift-left” method, teams can detect and solve bugs before they raise costs.

Trust Building with Reliability

Stability is critical to user trust, regardless of whether it is a consumer-facing app or an enterprise software. QA ensures that the app displays consistent performance across environments, devices and browsers.

Facilitates Faster Releases

CI/CD, continuous feedback loops and automation testing helps with rapid deployments. QA builds a safety net for developers, helping them to deploy frequently with confidence.

Better User Experience

QA teams speak for the end-user experience. With accessibility checks, exploratory and usability testing, QA helps detect friction points that developers might have missed.

Cross-Functional Teams Collaboration

QA supports collaboration across design, product and development teams. If integrated early. QA facilitates optimize requirements, ensure alignment and rectify edge causes.

QA is Not Just a Department, it is a Culture

QA strategies need to be blended in the team work culture, and not just restricted to a single department. A shared ownership of quality needs to be encouraged by high-performing teams. Developers should insist on working with the QA right from the get-go rather than going for the “throwing code over the wall” method.

Quality is a Shared Responsibility

Integration and unit tests are written by developers. They consider accessibility. Test coverage prioritization based on business risks is taken care of by the product owners. QA facilitates in aligning these efforts by offering the framework, expertise and strategies.

Helping Developers Via Testing

Enablement is the name of the game for modern QA teams. They help developers build meaningful tests without hurdles via the testing frameworks and tools. This encourages a culture of autonomy and accountability.

Mastering the Rope Walk with Both Automation and Manual Testing

Automated testing boosts speed and scale. UI regression, unit tests and API tests make sure that changes to the code base don’t impact the existing features. However, manual testing is still vital currently due to its role in subjective validation scenarios like edge-case exploration, emotional resonance and design intuitiveness.

The tests that automation is successful at:

• Regression testing
• Load and performance testing
• Iterative tasks like form submissions
• Testing across different environments or devices

Where Manual Testing Excels:

• Exploratory testing
• Usability assessments
• Accessibility testing
• Non-deterministic behavior

Want to delve further into manual testing? Check out this expansive manual testing cheat sheet for helpful techniques and checklists.

Real-World QA Strategies

Big technology companies invest significantly in comprehensive test infrastructure and specialized QA roles like Software Engineers in Test (SDET). They focus on:

• Full test automation pipelines
• Scalable Stress testing
• In-house testing techniques, tools and frameworks
• Shift-left principles embedded into development

Startups often adopt leaner QA strategies due to limited resources and a focus on rapid development. They tend to pay more attention by:

• Developers own most testing responsibilities
• Focus on MVP stability and fast iteration
• Lightweight tools for bug tracking and automated testing

The important takeaway from both the above approaches is to integrate quality efforts into the development workflow.

Building Better Software with Quality Assurance Best Practices

Let’s learn more of the best practices that development teams can embrace to improve their QA methodology:

Leveraging a Shift-Left Testing Protocol: Implement QA into the cycle early. Bring it in at the planning, development, and requirement analysis. Build tests simultaneously as the code is being developed and collaboration on user stories helps detect bugs earlier and decreases rework.

Adopt Test Automation but Be Wary of Over-Automation: Automation is helpful yes, but don’t over-do it. High-value segments like integration, critical UI, and unit tests can be automated via tools like testRigor. But automation of one-off or unstable cases results in issues during maintenance, which is a headache that you can do without.

Leverage Risk-Based Testing: Prioritize to test what is critical. Business impact, usage frequency, failure frequency, and complexity are the scenarios that need coverage. Ensure your testing efforts are resource-efficient and focused.

Encourage Reusable Test Cases and Data Sets: Refreshable test data, anonymized and modular test cases help avoid duplication and save time. A central repository and a system to track changes via version control, all help to improve efficiency.

Adopt Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing: Leverage automated tests into CI/CD via tools like GitHub Actions, CircleCI, or Jenkins. Deploy tests on every commit to proactively detect bugs and ensure code quality.

Focus on Exploratory Testing: Often, edge-cases and unpredicted scenarios can be missed out by scripted tests. It is vital to set time aside for exploratory testing through methods like mind maps or session-based testing to identify usability issues and invisible bugs.

Integrate Development Cycles with QA Feedback: Incorporate QA in plannings and retrospectives. Leverage bug patterns, test results and user feedback to inform forthcoming sprints and consistently optimize product quality.

Observe in Production: Leverage tools such LogRockets, Datadog, HotJar, etc., to track performance issues, user behaviors and errors. Monitoring helps rapid detection and resolution of production issues.

Instruct the Team on Quality Practices: Encourage a quality-first mindset by conducting workshops, documenting benchmarks and promoting dev-QA collaboration. With everyone contributing, quality is not restricted to QA teams and becomes a team effort.

Regularly Review and Optimize the QA Strategy: Assess QA process often. Leverage metrics such as test pass rates and bug leakage to identify gaps and improve your strategy. Evolve your QA protocol as the team and product expand.

A Continuous Commitment

QA isn’t just a step in the development cycle; it is a stepping stone to continuous improvement. It makes it possible for teams to build applications that are dependable, safe, and easy to use, meeting business goals and satisfying user expectations.

Deliver software that not only works but flourishes by adopting a proactive, cooperative QA strategy and integrating the advantages of automated and manual testing.