Why Quality Assurance is a Must for Your Business?

Innovation and functionality are two of the key driving forces in modern software development. The pursuit of creating perfect software is endless. These software products or services have evolved from just being modern tools to highly profitable businesses.

Individuals and companies are brainstorming ideas day and night to shine in the technology world. The days are gone when great ideas couldn’t be transformed into successful businesses due to a lack of funding.

Startups are on the rise and investors are lining up to fuel the ideas into money-making machines through quality softwares, services, and advanced applications.

However, the one fundamental aspect that remains constant in the vast ocean of software development is Quality.

In this blog, we will cover some of the key aspects of Quality Assurance (QA) in software development.

A single blog or an article is not enough to cover the huge landscape of Quality Assurance (QA) and testing, but still, it will be a great overview of the playground for expert QA testers.

Let’s get started.

Table of Content

1. What is Quality Assurance (QA)?
2. Importance of QA in Software Development: The ROI of Quality Assurance
3. Important ways to Improve the ROI of Quality Assurance
4. Quality Assurance (QA) in Agile and DevOps
5. Important Testing Methods in Quality Assurance (QA)
6. QAble Enhances Your Software with Quality Testing for You to Make an Impact
7. FAQs

What is Quality Assurance (QA) and Why is it Important??

Quality Assurance (QA) is responsible to ensure quality for any software product or service. These QA experts have the final say in the product launch. They ensure that the product or service being released meets the highest standards and expectations.

Quality Assurance (QA) spans across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). The scope for a better product is always there. QA experts are well aware of this fact.

Through meticulous testing, validations, and continuous improvement, they make sure that the end product reflects the true vision of the core idea.

It’s not uncommon for companies to spend huge capital for ensuring a quality product. There is no better example than Apple Inc. and its persistence to create quality products and performant software.

Importance of QA in Software Development: The ROI of Quality Assurance

Return on Investment or ROI of Quality Assurance (QA) is a metric that compares the benefits or advantages that are achieved to the costs of Quality Assurance activities in software development. This metric is very important while justifying costs to the stakeholders and customers.

Quality Assurance is not cheap, but the benefits it provides justify its value in software development. The ROI metric is responsible to keep check and provide key insights on the testing efforts by the QA team.

It also helps to provide relevant information and data on how the resources are utilized and allocated. Additionally, it helps in pointing out areas of improvement and ways to make the testing process more efficient.

The ultimate aim is to improve the ROI of Quality Assurance getting maximum benefits. However, the ROI is dependent on many factors. Below are some of the factors affecting the ROI of Quality Assurance (QA)

• Dynamic business requirements
• Size and Complexity of the software product
• QA team expertise and experience
• Tools that are employed for Quality Assurance (QA) activities
• Timing and frequency of Quality Assurance (QA) activities

Important Ways to Improve the ROI of Quality Assurance

Improving the ROI of Quality Assurance (QA) is an effective way to get the maximum benefits. Since we already know that QA can be expensive due to its nature of work and its goal to make sure the product’s quality, the ways to use it efficiently can most certainly ensure cost-effectiveness.

• Make sure that the business goals and requirements are aligned with the QA team
• Planning and prioritizing Quality Assurance (QA) activities based on the risks and values
• Optimized usage of allocated resources
• Implementing best practices for Quality Assurance (QA) activities
• Utilizing Quality Assurance (QA) since early phases with techniques like Shift-Left Testing
• Implementing continuous improvement and feedback tools
• Leveraging tools to check the consistent performance
• Proper monitoring of the software development throughout the SDLC
• Regular knowledge transfer sessions among the QA team members for better collaboration
• Implementing modern Quality Assurance (QA) methods of QAOps to bridge the gap between QA and development teams

Read More: Need to Test Fast without Compromising Reliability? Better Shift-Left

Quality Assurance (QA) in Agile and DevOps

Agile and DevOps are two of the most used approaches in the current software development industry. Both approaches work on the concept of continuous and iterative ways of developing and delivering software.

Traditional Quality Assurance (QA) was not fully compatible with these approaches. The solution to this problem was in the form of QAOps.

Traditional Quality Assurance (QA) required the QA experts to test the software at later stages of the SDLC. This led to slower workflows and sometimes resulted in delays. Since Quality Assurance (QA) was very important for any development work, it was necessary as well.

QAOps bridged the gap between Quality Assurance (QA) and development teams by including DevOps methods in quality testing. With this approach, Quality Assurance (QA) was able to match up with the Agile and DevOps methods.

Since Quality Assurance (QA) required a high level of accuracy aiming to deliver, embracing the QAOps way created a significant impact on software development.

Read More: Benefits of Implementing QAOps

Below are some of the ways that Quality Assurance (QA) can align with Agile and DevOps:

• Shift-Left Testing
• Automating Testing Processes
• Collaboration with Teams with DevOps Tools
• Implementing Cloud-based Solutions

Read More: Importance of Scalability Testing in Cloud-based SaaS Products

Important Testing Methods in Quality Assurance (QA)

There are a lot of testing mechanisms when we talk about Quality Assurance in a broad scope. This section includes the ways of Quality Assurance (QA) is implemented while testing software.

Manual Testing:

• As the name suggests, this kind of testing is done manually with the use of manual techniques and methods.
• It is a very flexible way of testing software and the experience of the QA testers can be a key to it as well.
• Some of the methods utilized in manual testing include making test cases based on business requirements, conducting exploratory testing, and reporting underlying defects.

Automated Testing:

• Automated testing makes use of automated tools to perform testing.
• This type of testing is usually adopted for repetitive tasks or test cases.
• Indeed, everything cannot be automated but yes, automated testing does save a lot of time and also reduces human efforts.
• Some of the tools for automated testing includes Selenium and Appium.

Unit Testing:

• This type of testing tests individual components of the software.
• It enables to write clean code and also to detect and resolve errors from early stages of software development.
• It can also be a part of an existing workflow that utilizes Test-Driven Development or TDD and Continuous Integration or CI.

Integration Testing:

• As the name suggests, integration testing refers to testing the software while individual components or parts of the software are bought together or integrated.
• Integration testing makes sure that the functionality doesn’t break.
• It helps find issues and defects that could uncover while separate parts interact with each other.

Functional Testing:

• Functional testing determines the functional aspects of the software.
• It checks if the software is working as per the written code.
• It also makes sure that the software does not miss out on the pre-defined or even a dynamic business requirement.
• Some of the key functional testing methods include smoke testing, regression testing, and sanity testing.
• By applying real-world test scenarios like testing a shopping cart, logging functionality, or the calculations are coming out accurately as per the business logic.

Read More: Important Testing Strategies for a Seamless Online Shopping Checkout

Performance Testing:

• Software needs to be performant enough to provide great user experiences. Performance testing focus on how fast the product or service is in terms of response times for various functions, how reliable the system is, and how scalable is the current or implemented solution.
• By simulating real-world test scenarios for the application or software, QA testers see if everything works as expected.
• Some of the key techniques incorporated while testing for software performance are load testing, stress testing, and endurance testing.

Security Testing:

• Security is of utmost importance while we go online or use software or applications. Data breaches and cyber threats are on the rise.
• QA testers make sure that our software is fully protected against such threats. They use modern tools and methods to mitigate such risks and keep us and our data safe.
• Some of the security testing methods include penetration testing and VAPT testing.
• Real-world scenarios are simulated for the application to make sure that it does not fall prey to hackers and bad actors.

Usability Testing:

• QA testers simulate real-world user-like scenarios to test software products or applications and try to resolve issues.
• Usability testing, as the name suggests tests for how easy is the product or software to use.
• By getting actual reviews and feedback from real users of the software
• Usability Testing helps to for better planning of test cases, better implementation of business requirements, and ultimately enhances user satisfaction in the long run.

QAble Enhances Your Software with Quality Testing for You to Make an Impact

As a leading software testing company in India, QAble ensures that it surpasses mediocrity while testing your software. Our QA experts leverage the latest testing tools and QAOps methods to engineer greatness.

QAble doesn’t just help release your product with impeccable quality, but it also ensures that your reputation is paramount and reflected through your product.

We are a company that not only provides quality testing services, but we are passionate about what we do.

Some of the testing services that we provide include functional testing, UI/UX testing, automated testing, mobile app testing, security testing, API and integration testing, load and performance testing, mobile game testing, Chatbot testing, blockchain testing, IoT testing, and many more.