In today's rapidly evolving digital world, software usability plays a crucial role in the success of businesses. Software has become the backbone of many organizations, from websites to mobile apps. In this article, one of our QA will explain what quality assurance is and its importance during the Software Developing Process.   

What is Quality Assurance and Why Does it Matter?

Given the business criticality of software, it's vital that the developed software is protected from vulnerabilities, performs predictably and meets the needs of the end users. This is where QA and testing come into play.   

Quality assurance is critical in software development because it ensures that the software product meets the end-users expectations and functions as intended. Quality assurance helps identify software defects and bugs early in the development cycle. That saves time and resources by catching issues before they become more complex and costly to fix.   

A proper QA testing approach also ensures that the software meets the quality standards set by the organization and industry regulations. It helps to ensure that the software is reliable, secure, and performs well. This ultimately leads to customer satisfaction and increased business value.  

Which is the difference between Software Testing and Quality Assurance?  

Software testing and quality assurance are two important software development life cycle aspects. While they are related, they serve different purposes.  

Software testing is evaluating a software application or system to identify defects or errors that could affect its functionality or performance. It involves executing the software to find bugs and verify that it meets the specified requirements. Testing can be done manually or through automated tools.  

Quality assurance, on the other hand, is the process of ensuring that a software product or system meets the required quality standards and customer expectations. It involves creating and implementing processes and procedures to ensure that the software is developed and delivered according to the desired level of quality. This includes verifying that the software meets the required functional and non-functional requirements, as well as assessing its usability, reliability, and performance. 

What are the key approaches to Quality Assurance Testing?  

What is Quality assurance in software testing? It involves using a systematic and structured approach to testing software products. This involves establishing quality standards for creating test plans and test cases, executing tests, and reporting defects. The quality assurance process helps to ensure that the software is of high quality.   

There are several key approaches to software quality assurance, including:  

1. Test planning. Defining test objectives, selecting appropriate testing techniques, and creating a test plan to ensure comprehensive test coverage.  

2. Test design. Creating detailed test cases that cover all possible scenarios and use cases, including positive and negative testing.  

3. Test execution. Running the test cases and verifying the results against expected outcomes.  

4. Test reporting. Documenting the test results and reporting any defects or issues found during testing.  

5. Continuous integration and testing. Integrating testing into the software development process, with automated testing running continuously to catch defects as early as possible.  

6. Performance testing. This means testing the performance of the software under expected and peak loads to ensure that it meets performance requirements.  

7. Security testing. This involves testing the software for security vulnerabilities and ensuring that it complies with security standards and regulations.  

8. User acceptance testing. Testing the software with end-users to ensure that it meets their needs and is user-friendly.  

9. Code reviews. Executed through reviewing the code for quality and adherence to coding standards and best practices.  

10. Quality management. Implementing a quality management system to ensure that all processes and activities related to software development are executed to the highest quality standards.  

What types of Quality Assurance Services QA companies provide? 

It's a must for specialized QA companies or software companies with QA teams involved to be responsible for ensuring that the software products developed by a company meet the quality standards.    

Commonly companies specializing in QA services provide these types of software testing services: 

• Manual QA testing is a process of testing software applications or products manually by human testers to ensure that they meet the specified requirements and are free from defects or bugs. It involves executing test cases or scenarios and recording the results manually without using automated testing tools or scripts. 

• QA automation testing is a process of testing software applications or products using automated testing tools or scripts to reduce the time and effort required for testing and improve the overall quality of the product. It involves using software tools to perform repetitive and time-consuming tasks that are difficult or impossible to perform manually.  

What approach recommend Opinov8 QA experts? 

At Opinov8, we follow the global gold testing standard and have three types of automated tests: unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. The test approach is agreed upon with the client and specifies the required test coverage and depth for each type of test. The team plans for the necessary scope of automated tests during the planning stage. Unit tests check the program units, integration tests check the integration between different system modules or components, and end-to-end tests perform an extended validation of the user flows. Smoke tests act as a quality gate during active development, and regression tests check all system components and features. The tests are automatically triggered with each code commit or system build, and some tests are triggered manually within increment finalization activities.  

Opinov8 recommends using both Manual and Automated testing together to increase system reliability and avoid potential pitfalls. Projects benefit from the synergy of these two approaches as automated testing requires low time to perform, while manual testing allows a human mind to check cases that might be missed by an automated testing program.  

At Opinov8, we are experts in Software Quality Assurance Testing Services. If you need help with your projects, please contact us.