Garner the best from your software quality engineering strategy. Find out how?

The objective to attain commercial success through digital transformation initiatives has led companies to stick their neck out with new products at a much faster rate. This is also the outcome of an increasing customer appetite for new products with cutting edge technology. However, while doing so, maintaining consistency in quality can be a difficult proposition unless software quality engineering is incorporated within the SDLC. This is due to the fact that the traditional model of software quality assurance suffers from several inadequacies.

A classic example of inadequate software quality assurance is Heathrow’s fifth terminal baggage system fiasco. The baggage handling system at Heathrow’s terminal 5 went haywire post inauguration where luggage of thousands of passengers went missing, flights cancelled, and the British Airways lost around 16 million pounds. A closer analysis of the situation led experts to believe that lack of software testing was responsible for the glitches.

There are myriad examples of software glitches leading to unforeseen but dire consequences in an increasingly tech driven world of ours. To lessen or do away with such eventualities that can lead to a heavy economic or social impact, shift-left testing as a part of software quality engineering should be the key.

Quality engineering is about ensuring that a software product meets its quality parameters effectively and adequately. To achieve the same, there has to be a three pronged approach straddling technical (the types of tools and programming languages to be used,) strategic (the type of methodology and workflow to be selected) and personnel resource (selecting the team, skill sets and training) aspects.

The way to achieve enterprise quality engineering is by following procedures such as:-

• Automating the entire test sequence and integrating the same in the overall SDLC.
• Using resources that are scalable, reusable and that improve the efficiency of the software quality engineering services.

To achieve an impeccable software quality assurance approach is as important as the technology and personnel that are part of the whole process. Quality engineering should lead to agility in the process - right from the conceptual to the delivery stage. It should invariably produce better quality products in the quickest possible time.

Ways to enhance the software quality engineering strategy

Work on Agile: The demand to churn out quality products into the market in double quick time has brought the Agile methodology in the lexicon of QA. This mainly deals with shift left testing where development and testing are not mutually exclusive processes, but are concomitant to each other. It requires planning in sprints where testing is executed alongside development leading to a better test coverage area and identification of glitches. To achieve the best test outcome based on Agile methodology, the collaboration between the development and testing teams should be made more cohesive by choosing a robust test automation framework.

Work on DevOps: Where Agile comes a cropper as far as ensuring continuous quality and delivery is concerned, DevOps fits in with its emphasis on a seamless collaboration between the Development and Operations team. As an integral part of the software quality engineering services, DevOps looks at upholding the quality of a product during its entire lifetime. Here, the focus is more on offering a high user experience by taking care of the post delivery glitches promptly.

The need has arisen as the performance of a product should be consistent across frameworks, platforms, devices, operating systems, and networks. The complex IT infrastructure that is part physical and part virtual has meant there should be a greater collaboration between various stakeholders. The collaboration should be in terms of quality monitoring, reporting and provisioning of test environments.

Test automation: The best way to ensure a good user experience is by delivering quality products that have the best navigational and security features, aesthetic quality, and yes, devoid of glitches. The only way to ensure quality across environments and networks is by expamding the test coverage area through test automation. However, it requires the correct selection of an automation tool (open source or licensed) with features that facilitate the writing of automated test scripts.

Conclusion

The outcome of a quality engineering strategy depends on the successful execution of a number of strategies such as Agile testing, DevOps testing, test automation, service virtualization, test management, etc. The success of this strategy can lead to the development and delivery of better quality products and in the process achieve a better user experience.

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.