Quality Assurance In Development Process: How to Make it Better

Quality assurance (QA) in software development is an integral part of any project. It focuses on improving the UI and UX designs, in conjunction with sophisticated code development and delivering quality products to the end-users.

In this article, we will discuss quality assurance’s advantages that make the development team better.

1. What are quality assurance activities in the development process?

Quality assurance is a methodical approach to preventing errors and ensuring adherence to requirements that help provide the highest-quality goods and services. It involves identifying potential flaws and risk areas, planning and carrying out quality management tasks, and keeping track of how projects are doing in accordance with quality standards.

1.1. Why is quality assurance important in the development process?

It is essential to have a stringent quality assurance procedure for each project you take on. If you don't, the final product or service you produce may have flaws that harm it or put it in danger.

The reasons why quality assurance activities should be carefully planned and carried out by project managers are outlined below.

Quality is a crucial success factor in project delivery. A project is more likely to achieve its goals and objectives if its quality level is higher.

QA finds potential risks in the project: Clearly, quality is far more important in risk identification than in project planning. However, since quality is connected to numerous other aspects of project management, it is a useful resource for spotting potential issues early on.

Stakeholders have more faith in quality assurance activities: You demonstrate that everyone has made a serious commitment to producing a high-quality deliverable by implementing quality standards throughout the project.Your project plan and the final product or service gain credibility thanks to the high-quality deliverable.

QA indicates that the project team is meticulous: If your final product or service has undergone stringent quality assurance, it will surpass your audience's expectations. A product of high quality will have fewer flaws and be better able to withstand scrutiny from stakeholders and the market.

2. Quality assurance activities in Software Development

Let’s evaluate how QA can be part of each of these different phases and make an impact on overall product quality.

2.1. Planning

A good QA tester should be an advocate and expert on the user experience. After all, user experience plays a vital role when planning out new features. QA can point out potential issues with the user experience that may even affect the team’s decision to move forward, which, in turn, can save thousands of dollars in design and development efforts.

2.2. Design

Lastly, even if QA’s input doesn’t result in any significant product changes, sneaking through the upcoming features can help QAs plan out test scenarios, edge cases, and test cases.

Similar to the planning process, QA involvement is critical in the design phase, as it can save companies significant resources in the long run. Potential gaps in designs or wireframes are magnified exponentially if QAs are exposed to designs directly in the testing phase or towards the end of development.

On the other hand, involving quality assurance in the design phase would help identify aspects of the design that might cause future usability problems. Early intervention enables UI/UX designers to make changes on the fly, resulting in a better end product and happier customers.

2.3. Implementation

The project team focuses on writing source code during this phase of the application development lifecycle, and the concept of continuous testing continues to play an important role in modern best practices for the implementation phase. We recommend following a component testing approach for continuous testing, as it helps the team check each component of the application (object, module, etc.) to validate if the system works properly.

Each small component is tested in isolation. QA creates a list of test cases describing the steps to be performed and expected results. In case an issue or defect is found, this approach helps in redesigning or recoding only the tested module instead of working on the entire codebase.

2.4. Testing

As a tester, you know that testing is the most important phase of the software development lifecycle, and you need to be prepared to hit the ground running. At the same time, quality assurance does not only relate solely to the “testing” of software but also includes activities like:

• Writing test cases
• Filing bugs and testing Bug Fixes
• Regression Testing
• Preparing bug reports
• Preparing testing status
• Prioritizing client-supported browsers and devices.

2.5. Deployment

Quality assurance in software development plays a less crucial role in the deployment phase, as this phase encompasses pushing the code into production. However, you still want to perform smoke testing in this phase to make sure the deployment didn’t cause any issues when it went into production.

2.6. Maintenance

You sometimes miss bugs in the production phase due to strict timelines or a simple mistake. As a tester, you’re counted on to fix these bugs in the maintenance phase, where you’ll be on hand to test the bug fixes or upgrades to features.

3. Build a Quality Mindset: Make your team better

3.1. Bug Report

When quality assurance specialists report a bug, they aim to quickly explain to web or software developers the issue that the user is currently experiencing. When building websites, they employ particular QA tools for website checking. They do this to help the overall development of the project.

Before quality assurance specialists write a quality bug report, they should answer the following questions: First, QA specialists should know what happened to the application or software. Next, they should be able to identify what the user clicked or did to produce the bug. Lastly, quality assurance specialists should locate which part of the software or application the user found the bug in.

3.2. Quality Assistance

Quality assistants empower and educate developers to test their own features to production quality standards. It evolved this over time by keeping the tester-to-developer ratio low, not because of resource constraints but to force the “whole team” mentality when it comes to quality. As developers learn to build quality into their features from the start, rework is reduced, and the team can achieve both quick and safe delivery. A QA engineer becomes the facilitator for this instead of the individual performing the tests.

3.3. QA Audit

A quality audit is a routine, methodical examination of project operations to see whether they are carried out in accordance with organizational procedures and strategic choices. A project quality audit also tries to identify any absent or ineffective policies, practices, or tactics that lower quality standards and raise the likelihood of project failure.

The team can analyze quality metrics (such as budget deviation, on-time performance, failure rate, and defect frequency) and compare project activities to the quality baseline during a typical quality audit session while working under the project manager's supervision.

Conclusion

The quality assurance activity provides confirmation that the project is performing in line with organizational processes and tactical decisions.

Once you find an experienced quality assurance team that can handle your project, make sure you agree on all details concerning your cooperation in advance. This will provide you with a clear understanding between teams, so your expectations will be fulfilled.