When businesses aim for unparalleled digital transformation levels, Quality Assurance has taken on an increasingly significant role in the life-cycle of software development. As gatekeepers of product safety and best practice testing, this vital function has become deeply embedded into the delivery process—and for a good purpose.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality Assurance in Software Testing is a process for ensuring the quality of software products or services offered by an organization to customers. Quality assurance focuses on optimizing the software production process by making it reliable and successful following software products’ quality requirements. Quality Assurance is also commonly known as QA Testing.
QA includes monitoring different engineering processes, such as feature development, software/application architecture, hardware configuration, release management, and more. The global industry is gradually becoming digital, and so are their various consumer-oriented products and applications. Software development must then adapt to become even more diverse and agile than only functioning in a definite flow.
Quality Assurance Process
The quality Assurance Process has a defined cycle called the PDCA cycle or the Deming cycle. The steps of this cycle are as follows:
Plan: The organisation should prepare and set the process-related goals and decide the procedures necessary to produce a high-quality final result.
Do: Development and testing of systems and even ‘do’ modifications to processes.
Check: Monitoring processes, modifying processes, and checking if they follow the predetermined goals.
Act: Implement steps that are required to improve processes
The organisation must use Quality Assurance to ensure that the product is designed and delivered correctly. This tends to reduce complications and errors in the end product.
Changes In the QA world
Let’s look at what changes are taking place in the QA world today.
QA Toolbox Gets Lighter
Test/Defect Management tools had to be built on local machines earlier, had a server, a database designed for them, and had a specialist Admin who had to be consulted to add as many people. Despite all this, the tools were cumbersome on local memory usage and total network load. Although these methods still exist and flourish, the newer, smaller models are more efficient. They do not need installation, can be reached through the Internet via the URL, take minutes to set up, and the hosting of databases and servers is optional. These methods are low on the system and network resources.
Role of AI in QA
Instead of navigating through thousands of line codes, AI would search through log files, scan codes, and spot errors within seconds. Also, AI lacks Burnout Syndrome and thus produces higher and more reliable outcomes. Using Artificial Intelligence in Quality Assurance, it is possible to analyse similar applications and determine what led to their commercial success.
Changes in Customer Demands and Preferences
The consumer scenario is being increasingly competitive, with new technologies and apps being unveiled every hour. Enterprises are discovering new and potential forms to attract new customers and even maintain existing ones. This means that they need to deliver their goods individually and provide an Omni-Channel experience. This requires careful collaboration between development and testing teams. QA is expected to develop and test out new methodologies to address increasing industry demands and their consumers.
Increasing Security Concerns
If it’s cyber protection or application security, the software’s security has become a primary necessity for all digitally inclined businesses. Cybersecurity risks, violations, and data leaks have threatened every company and agency in the world. This means that standard safety testing mechanisms cannot work. You need a versatile approach that is much more responsive and adaptive and continues to evolve and challenge. QA has to implement new tools and exploit new methodologies that can bring down such complications.
QA in Digital Transformation
When people continue to adopt more technologies, their power continues to expand. Users prefer the technology that works. Otherwise, they’ll easily seek a better alternative. Such demands would lead aggressive businesses to place their QA resources as an important part of the digital transformation process. The location of quality checkpoints along this route would improve business results. That would also improve the importance of the ultimate performance metric: end-user satisfaction. Automating quality assurance would improve the product at each stage in the development life cycle. Besides, it also serves to mitigate the challenges of emerging technologies.
Although businesses are beginning to recognize quality assurance practices as strategic foundations of changes and development, the field is undergoing a dramatic shift in responsibilities, tools, and resources. By introducing new tools and research platforms/methodologies, QA can develop and re-invent its strategy. This gives even more inclusiveness and responsiveness to the outlook to accept development and new ideas.
With innovations and advancements emerging in 2021, it will be better to change user experience to QA and further develop it on DevOps and agile best practices.
