QA Fundamentals: Building Quality Into Software Development

Quality Assurance (QA) is a method employed in various industries to verify that products and services fulfil particular quality criteria prior to being delivered to customers. It involves regular checks and evaluations to confirm quality requirements are met throughout production. Many companies have dedicated QA teams, and quality control plays a key role in using specific methods to meet quality goals. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of QA, its importance, key tools, and common challenges. Let’s begin!

What does QA mean?

QA is the procedure of ensuring that your services align with the quality benchmarks you’ve established. This typically requires examining and assessing customer service interactions, such as calls, chats, and other communications between your team and clients.

QA checks to assist in confirming that your team adheres to legal and company regulations every day, simultaneously ensuring a uniform, high-quality service that meets your standards.

Distinction between Quality Control and Quality Assurance

Quality assurance emphasizes the execution of processes or the provision of services, striving to avert errors by establishing and adhering to defined procedures, tactics, and brand standards. QA generally consists of a “checklist” of requirements to ensure that services fulfill the established standards.

Quality assurance involves everyone, but having a dedicated person, like a team leader or QA specialist, helps maintain these standards.

Quality control, on the other hand, is about checking the quality of products, often during the development phase. QC identifies and corrects problems, like product defects, and is generally done by a dedicated team responsible for fixing issues after testing. QC is more common in manufacturing or production settings where products are produced in large quantities.

Overall, having both QA and QC processes in place ensures comprehensive quality management for your business.

Why is Quality Assurance Important?

Quality assurance is essential to make sure your services, products, and team actions comply with legal requirements. Beyond that, QA ensures that you consistently provide a high level of service. Meeting your own standards for customer experience is key to meeting customer expectations and supporting business growth.

Ensuring that all team members deliver a similar level of service, regardless of how it’s delivered, builds reliability and a strong reputation, which can be a deciding factor for customers choosing your business over others.

QA also highlights areas where additional training or organizational adjustments are needed. It’s not just about checking off boxes—effective QA identifies areas where your team can improve, helping you refine your approach and enhance overall quality. Taking this feedback seriously allows you to develop a QA strategy that strengthens and evolves your business.

Stages of the QA Process

Here are the different stages that you can follow to execute the QA process:

Analyze Requirements

It’s cheaper to prevent bugs early than fix them later. QA professionals should be involved in analyzing both functional and non-functional requirements. They need clear, traceable, and comprehensive requirements, which help them design specific tests for the software.

Plan the Tests

The information from the requirements analysis is used to create a test plan. This plan should outline the testing strategy, scope, budget, deadlines, types of tests needed, methods for tracking bugs, and who will be responsible for each task.

Design the Tests

At this point, the QA team develops test cases and checklists according to the software’s specifications. Every test case must encompass conditions, data, and procedures to verify the software, as well as anticipated outcomes. Starting with some exploratory testing is also beneficial to become acquainted with the software. If automation is included in the strategy, this is when automated test scenarios are developed. Additionally, the staging environment should be prepared to mirror the production setup as closely as possible.

Execute Tests and Report Defects

Tests begin at the unit level with developers, followed by API and UI tests by the QA team. Any bugs found are reported in a defect tracking system for further management.

Run Re-Tests and Regression Tests

After bugs are fixed, the QA team re-tests to ensure no other issues were missed. They also run regression tests to ensure the fixes haven’t caused new problems in existing functions.

Run Release Tests

When a release is made, the QA team identifies the changes and tests the affected features. They perform smoke tests to check if the build is stable, then run additional tests based on the new changes and generate a report.

Principles of Quality Assurance

QA within any organization is driven by essential principles that aim to enhance processes and guarantee superior outcomes. Here are several fundamental principles:

  • Ongoing Improvement: This concept emphasizes the constant evaluation and enhancement of processes to boost their efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Customer-Oriented Strategy: This approach emphasizes the requirements and anticipations of the customer, aiming to enhance user experiences and services.
  • Risk Management: This includes recognizing and tackling possible risks to avert quality problems and guarantee seamless functioning.
  • Standardized Procedures: Implementing uniform processes aids in minimizing errors and sustaining high-quality results.
  • Data-Driven Choices: Choices must rely on reliable information to guarantee that enhancements are meaningful and efficient.

These principles aid in establishing a robust QA framework that emphasizes customer satisfaction and ongoing enhancement.

Quality Assurance in Software

Software Quality Assurance is a process that helps improve software development and ensures the software works well. It aims to find problems early, saving time and money. Even with great planning, sometimes fixing one problem might cause new issues, known as regressions.

Different Software Development Approaches:

SQA has influenced many software development methods to improve flexibility and efficiency:

  • Waterfall: A step-by-step method used when the project requirements are fixed.
  • Agile: A flexible approach that adapts quickly to changes and involves the team and customers throughout.
  • Scrum: An aspect of Agile that segments the tasks into smaller portions or “sprints.”
  • Extreme Programming: Emphasizes rapid adjustments driven by client input.
  • Lean Software Development: Seeks to minimize waste and enhance efficiency, grounded in lean principles.
  • DevOps: Integrates development and operations to accelerate delivery.
  • Kanban: Employs visual boards to monitor and organize tasks, ensuring the team doesn’t overload itself simultaneously.

Software Quality Assurance Tool

Development teams utilize QA tools to ensure their software satisfies the requirements, provides a positive user experience, and contains fewer bugs.

LambdaTest is a testing platform powered by AI that enables both manual and automated testing on more than 3000 actual devices, browser types, and operating system combinations. AI testing with LambdaTest aids in automating repetitive tasks, and enhancing QA procedures. Key features include:

  • Highest Coverage: Supports a wide range of browsers and OS for comprehensive testing.
  • Parallel Testing: Runs multiple tests at once to save time.
  • Integration: Works easily with popular test automation tools.
  • Advanced Debugging Tools: Helps track and fix bugs quickly with features like video recordings and logs.
  • Mobile Device Lab: Provides real Android and iOS devices for testing mobile apps.

Core Technical Challenges in Quality Assurance (QA)

QA testers face several challenges in ensuring software quality:

  • Test Environment Management: Instability in test environments leads to issues like server crashes and constant test restarts, making it hard to maintain consistency across development stages.
  • Test Data Management: Accurate and sufficient test data is essential for comprehensive testing. Poor data management can reduce productivity and affect test coverage and accuracy.
  • Insufficient Test Automation: Manual testing takes considerable time and is susceptible to human mistakes, particularly in complex applications, complicating the maintenance of consistent quality.
  • Performance Testing: Detecting and resolving performance problems necessitates expertise and tools that can be difficult to manage within strict time constraints.
  • Insufficient Security Testing: Overlooking security weaknesses can result in monetary losses, harm to reputation, and legal complications, thus making thorough security testing essential.
  • New Technologies and Opposition to Change: Incorporating AI, machine learning, and cloud computing in QA demands different skills. Opposition to these technologies may obstruct advancement and stop teams from adjusting to contemporary software development requirements.

QA Best Practices

To ensure consistent quality, all organizations should follow some basic QA best practices, whether the processes are simple or complex.

To implement effective QA:

  • Create a QA team: Assign specific people to QA to streamline processes and provide a group of experts who can answer questions from other team members.
  • Define processes clearly: Write down QA processes and standards, and make sure everyone in the organization has access to them to ensure consistency.
  • Set clear quality goals: Agree on measurable standards and goals that align with the organization’s overall objectives.
  • Consider customer expectations: Use customer feedback to set quality standards that improve satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Invest in ongoing training: Regularly update and train team members on new standards to maintain quality.
  • Prioritize open communication: Keep teams informed about changes, expectations, and quality standards to support organizational goals.
  • Use customer feedback to personalize interactions: Collect and analyze customer feedback to improve quality standards based on their needs.
  • Conduct regular audits: Regularly check for compliance and identify areas where the team can improve.
  • Understand team performance: Identify areas where the team needs more training or support to improve performance.
  • Leverage technology: Use AI to help monitor and review processes automatically, covering every interaction to make sure no improvement areas are missed.
  • Encourage collaboration: Promote teamwork and shared responsibility for maintaining quality and service standards.
  • Review and improve processes regularly: Continuously assess and improve processes to ensure better overall performance.

Conclusion

The core principles of QA—like continuous improvement, focusing on users, managing risks well, following standardized processes, and making decisions based on evidence—are key to achieving excellence in quality assurance. QA involves important tasks like planning, control, documentation, training, audits, prevention, and ongoing improvements.

By mastering these tasks, using advanced QA tools, and tackling related challenges, organizations can maintain high standards. Additionally, this approach helps QA practices evolve by embracing new technologies and trends. Adopting these strategies sets a business on the path to continuous success, ensuring long-term customer satisfaction.