Explain the top five aspects of your software quality assurance strategy.

The growing complexity of software applications means monitoring their quality on a continuous basis. And when applications built on the latest technologies run across geographics, platforms, devices and networks, ensuring their seamless functioning is a pre-requisite for businesses to stay agile and competitive. Moreover, the growing digital initiatives taken by businesses to meet specific objectives such as creating revenue streams, enhance user experience and streamline processes necessitate the conduct of software quality assurance.

With evolving technologies, shifting user preferences, and a competitive digital landscape, the requirement for software applications to be quality compliant has become more apparent than ever before. The software quality assurance services have to be on the top of their game to validate software even on a real time basis. The advent of DevOps has made software quality assurance testing services incorporate continuous testing as an integral part of the overall SDLC and beyond. In fact, in the present digital ecosystem, conducting software quality assurance testing is not merely the job of QA testers alone, but should involve all the stakeholders. Listed below are the top five quintessential aspects of a software quality assurance strategy.

#1 Incorporate risk management in the overall QA software testing strategy

A glitch filled software carries risks that can lead to unforeseen and even dire consequences. These can be related to a bad user experience, loss of credibility, regulatory censure/penalties or inviting lawsuits. When the stakes are so high for a business, then quality assurance should not be confined to a department alone but involve everyone in assessing the risks and mitigating them.

A culture of quality awareness should be developed among all the stakeholders to provide a better customer experience. The underlying motto should be, ‘quality assurance is everyone’s job’. The overall thrust should be aimed at fine tuning the systems and processes instead of the end product alone. The presence of robust systems and processes can ensure the development and delivery of quality software.

#2 Conduct software quality assurance testing across the SDLC

The QA strategy should encompass the entire SDLC phase and beyond. Although, this is a mandate of DevOps, the functions or processes in a business often work in respective silos. The QA team should test the codes concurrently with their development teams and eliminate any glitches. The idea is not to let a glitch prone code go to the next sprint.

This is in sharp contrast to the traditional waterfall model where QA testing exists as a separate function. Furthermore, with continuous improvement and deployment being the essential attributes of DevOps, quality testing should extend beyond the development and deployment phases. In fact, based on the customer feedback, the QA team should fine tune the quality of software on a real time basis.

#3 Apply automation

The inherent deficiencies of manual testing leave a lot to be desired. These come in the way of ensuring continuous testing across the SDLC and beyond. The software quality assurance services should incorporate test automation as an essential part of their strategy. While doing so, they should choose the best test automation platform, such as Selenium, Robotium, Appium, etc.

The successful implementation of test automation leads to a better identification of glitches on a continuous basis. Moreover, the test scripts can validate innumerable variables that are spread across locations, devices, platforms or networks. Also, as opposed to manual testing, test automation can proceed on its own irrespective of the time period.

#4 Compliance with industry standards

The software to be used by the end customers should adhere to the exacting industry standards. This assumes a greater significance with embedded systems that are used in the critical areas of medical equipment, avionics, signalling, and railways amongst others. It is only when the software products meet accepted quality protocols, the number of glitches gets reduced or eliminated.

#5 Establish a robust reporting mechanism

After selecting a suitable testing platform and methodology that involves unit testing, integration testing, functional and security testing, the test outcomes should be duly recorded for further analysis. In fact, these can be handy to conduct regressive testing as well.

Conclusion

The top five quintessential aspects to be considered for quality assurance testing should aim at reducing cost and enhance the end user experience. The focus should be to adhere to the regulatory protocols and industry best practices.

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, Global Leaders in Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at Cmmi-Svc v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also Iso 9001:2015 & Iso 27001:2013 certified.