5 minutes to read
How to improve SQA Process
Anastasiia Sokolinska
Chief Operating Office
Quality assurance has always been significant in the lifecycle of a software development process. Through QA testing, you want to make sure that you are releasing a quality product. Even beyond some of the regulatory bodies and agencies that require very strict testing, there are obviously very good reasons for doing QA testing with effective procedures and methodologies.
In 2010, McAfee released and antivirus patched. They cost tens of thousands of computers to crash and murder. Not only personal computers but also many enterprise users were severely affected by this and what they found was that there were some very specific steps in their quality assurance process that were not followed. They were not doing their standard peer review. Now, McAfee themselves have said that they will put in place the processes that will make sure that nothing ever goes wrong. So, something as small as just a quick anti-virus definition patch can really cause some big problems. And if you don't ensure that all the processes that you have in place are being followed, that would cost you a lot.
Below are some of the tips to improve Software quality assurance process:
Requirement-based testing: First and foremost, quality assurance process is to ensure whether all our requirements that we're developing are totally written? Requirements based testing is gaining more and more importance in several areas, including automotive and medical development. This type of testing aims to make sure that our requirements are covered by testing activities. Through this way, requirements management becomes a part of QA. If your requirements are designed in a way that they can be verified by test cases, it will be easier to fall out of the partitions practices and will save you valuable time in the long run.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): With a QA in testing module, ideally, you will also need a way to define and enforce these processes and a holistic ALM solution can make your life much easier. It supports collaborative and consistent testing management.
Right-time Testing: Testing your software throughout the SDLC is crucial for release of a quality product. When you test at the right time, you are able to detect bugs and errors at an earlier stage. Once the product is released, it becomes more challenging to update it and release again.
Balance your time and resources: We all know that we face the time and the resource crunch. we have to spend the time in developing the software. we have deadlines, that we're supposed to hit and we never have enough time to do as much as we'd like to do. We also know that complete perfect testing is impossible so it is all about a risk balance game to get things out of the door.
Performance testing is crucial: QA testing teams usually leave performance tests until very late in the software development cycle and what ends up happening is - you find big performance problems when you are on a deadline crunch when you don't have time necessarily to fix them; or you find out that some of your architectural assumptions are unsound and you don't have time to amend them. So always go for performance testing before it is too late.
Understand the mission thoroughly: It is the best thing that any tester or test team can do is to make sure that before they get too entrenched in what they're doing, they understand not just the mission that they've been given but the underlying reason behind the mission. As testers, we usually tend to focus on our seemingly internal desire for perfect quality, but the truth is that we all work for companies that have missions themselves. We are bringing software to market for a purpose and that purpose (unless you're in pure research and development probably) is not always about the perfect quality. So, it is imperative to understand what is going to make the business and the application successful, before getting focused on what might turn out to be nitty gritty details will really help focus your testing throughout the process.
Conclusion:
In order to ensure the quality of a software or product, it is vital to adopt effective QA methodologies and processes. One of these processes is the use of requirement-based testing, which aims to make sure that our requirements are covered by testing activities. Similarly, enforcing a holistic ALM solution can support collaborative and consistent testing management. Testing the right thing at the right time is very important and balancing your time & resources is the key. Never leave out performance testing at the end and understanding the context, mission and objective of the product can make your testing process worthwhile.