Why QA is Important in Software Development?
The era of digital products competition has arrived. When millions of digital products flooding the market. Digital product-based startups popped up like mushrooms in a wet forest, thanks to the rapid and intense use of the internet that becomes the melting pot of a new digital market. But there are few of them could survive and thrive enough for a long time. The competition is very tight, you burn money for the product, the result is neither you survive in the market or free-falling instead. There is one from several reasons why the digital competition was very struggling to beat for, the quality. Yup, the products — whether physical or digital — are valued by the users or customers by their quality. How your product quality can impress them? Is it already meet the standards? Is it worth the money you’ve burned all along?
When it comes to product quality, Quality Assurance taking responsibility for it. By implementing Quality Assurance on the products or software development especially, you’ve already step higher on the game. Making sure that the products you deliver come with the desired quality and today’s standard. QA role is very important in these recent years. As users not only want a properly useful, beautifully designed, and well-coded product. But they also want it to be errors and bugs-free. This why there must be a place for testing and qualifying the products before releasing them for public use.
What is Quality Assurance?
In general, Quality Assurance is a process to ensure that the software development progress already met the quality standards and the needed requirements. How the management can responsibly monitor the development progress, divided into several actions to execute the process. Quality Assurance is commonly being mistaken with Quality Control yet the two had quite a similarity and difference. In fact, QC is one part of the QA process. QA is more focused on the whole process of the software development pro-actively being monitored. When QC is more focused on the product and being reactive in the production line. QC used to find the bugs and issues as well as testing the running codes. Testing is merely more aim specifically at every code and function made by the developers. Testing the running codes may occur for the functionality correction, make sure that is already based on the procedure.
According to OpenSense Labs analytic, the QA process itself is about 10% of the whole software development process. When the core development process is about 70%, and the debugging and fixing of any issues afterward is around 20%. The amount of QA process is quite a few but has a bigger impact than it seen. When managing software development, there may a team that focused on testing and ensure the process as explained before. The QA team will use the right approach carefully to prevent any bugs and issues so the product can meet the needed requirements and standards.
What QA engineer do?
Preventing major failures
QA team will be focused on preventing any major failures, including the crucial ones. They must assure that the development progress already in line with certain procedures. So there shouldn’t be an issue that can change or even disrupt the software functionality. A mistake in calculation or programming codes could be a fatal catastrophe if it couldn’t found and fixed immediately.
Take a look at the 2008 Global Crisis, caused by poor HBOS (part of Lloyds Banking Group) quality management that caused a major crash in the wall street stock exchange. Or Deepwater Horizon accident that caused by poor quality control and calculation of machine software. Airplane crash or wrong vaccine calculation that claimed dozens of victims. There are a lot of unfortunate events and accidents that happen because of the missing quality control checked before usage.
Cost control
Involving the QA team in the software development process could save more of your pennies. Their analysis and monitoring along the production process definitely cut the cost of unnecessary post-development debugging or issues fixing. As long as they make sure the whole process is stick to certain procedures, keeping the workflow as scheduled, so it wouldn’t be any overbudget needed.
Quality Assurance vs Developer
The involvement of the QA team in software development is quite complex. Not only reviewing the final product but also monitoring the whole process of the development. It may take a lot more time to be poured into the work. If developers can actually run their own testing for the codes they’ve built, to avoid errors and issues. But it will distract their focuses on the core work of building the product.
Sometimes it would be biased emerged as developers are mainly trying to make the best built that they can do. Causing the testing progress not quite tight. So it will be wiser to involve the QA team in the development process so the work wouldn’t too much biased. A more subjective point will be given by the QA team on the testing process, focused more on the reviewing and testing while the developers stay on their course. It also helps the workflow stay in line with the deadline as the QA team can maintain and get the job done better alongside the project coordinators.
QA team involvement benefits
Performance
The quality Assurance process can improve the product development performance. Avoiding any delayed work as the QA team can help to report & documentation paperwork. Their help to improve the whole team productivity better and keep evaluating the work from one to the others.
Extensibility
The QA team can also help the software development progress to the next level. As they were helping in the documentation and their analysis on the development, they can suggest some improvements or any extendable features from their analysis result. Creating more useful features that can be dug up for the current product.
Usability
Usability testing is the most important job for the QA team. Testing the final product usability before it is handed to the clients or published. Guarantees the success of the product is a must. Considering that today’s digital product competition is quite tight. If the product wants to be successful in the market, quality and usability should be put first. QA team will assure that the final product can meet the standard requirements and can be fully utilized as it should be. That is why the product’s Quality Assurance is needed to compete and thrive in this digital competition.
Security
The other benefit of applying QA in software development is to have the progress being monitored, audited, and well evaluated. The audits and documentation can help the whole team to have a report of the development process so it wouldn’t be any unexpected expenses caused by accidental and unplanned action. The team will assure the security of the process by assuring procedures are being followed throughout the development cycle. Many accidents could be avoided as the QA team can assure the system already safe and can be used properly.
These are a little glimpse of QA’s importance in a software development process. We can provide you more information about the digital product and its peripherals. Just go visit our website at Glovory.com or send us an email at info@glovory.com and say hello to us. We are Glovory, your infinite digital partner! 😎
Contributor: Abdul Hamid
