In today’s software development era, one major step is considered to be very crucial. It is the “guaranteed quality of the final product”. Quality Assurance is a vital step in software development procedure as it ensures that there are no defects or bugs in the final product. Even if the software is developed with maximum care by the programmers/developers, there are major chances of some bugs, routine issues or defects in it. QA helps safeguard the final product from breaches or potential problems that users may have.
But the question is what are these bugs and how they occur? Let us look at some of the points being the reason for bugs in software development.
- One of the foremost reasons is human error. The development of a program may be carried out by several people and it’s obvious to make mistakes.
- Communication mismatch or lack of communication between the developers can result in flaws and bugs in the system.
- It can easily lead to defects/bugs if the programmer is a fresher.
- A client can change the requirements and priorities whenever he wants. This can bring changes to the previous development process and defective software resulting in bugs.
- Bad documentation of codes can lead to a buggy app.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is the way of assuring the quality of the software by making it bug-free. It involves a set of activities that includes some processes, procedures, standards and correct implementation. These activities are estimated through process monitoring, product evaluation, audits and a number of testings. Where:
Standards are the set benchmark to which the software products are compared.
Procedures are the set benchmark to which the development and control processes are compared.
Developing software incorporates risks, both technical and programmatic. These risks hold back the website/software from performing better. Quality Assurance plays the role here, it reduces the risks. Hence it is a mandatory process for assuring the quality in both the workflow and in the end product. If this process is skipped, then there are chances of getting a corrupted and unacceptable end product that may cause bad impact on your business.
Role of Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance undergoes some stages called Software Development LifeCycle (SDLC). This is followed by Designing, Development, Testing, and Maintenance. Quality Assurance Engineers are involved in every stage of the SDLC. They parallelly monitor the system to make sure that it runs smoothly without any abnormality.
Below are some measures of Quality Assurance, often called PDCA, in which;
- The Plan refers to planning and establishing a process of the organization. With the objectives to find the right process of an excellent quality end product.
- Do refers to the development and testing processes when there are some changes in the requirements.
- Check refers to monitoring the processes while modifying them and to ensure that they are meeting its objectives.
- Act refers to the implementation of activities that will improve the overall process.
Quality Assurance brings value to the project as well as the whole company.
Let us explore the benefits of QA:
- Cost and Time Saving: When you detect the bugs & defects at the early stages of software development, it takes less time and cost in fixing them. Whereas, if you do not rectify the bugs in no time then it will lead to some dramatic increase in money over time.
- Stable and Competitive Product: A product that runs consistently with crashing, works smoothly and without any bug or defect is what every business desires for. The product should be capable to work in any environment, web browsers and devices. The testing and processes in quality assurance verify the functions, performance, reliability, security, usability and severe other factors.
- Safe and Secure: QA guarantees a secure, efficient and trustworthy product. It ensures that the developed software is not the source of the customer’s personal data breach or the loss of the customer’s business data.
- Generates Good Revenue: A good product needs no promotion, the users will automatically recommend it to one another. By offering an accurately tested and quality checked product means having respect for your clients. This will help in advocacy. In the long run, QA will save money and bring more profit because you are selling software that does not need constant fixing.
- Customer Satisfaction: An end product is considered to be successful if the customers are loving it. The software implementation needs to be simple, easy to navigate, understandable and easy to use. To fulfill these requirements, the product needs to be bug and error-free. By appointing a good software testing service along with a team of professionals, a better quality product and an excellent user experience are guaranteed.
- Optimized Business: Quality assurance directly benefits the business optimization. An optimized business comprises of a number of satisfied clients, customer retention, lower product maintenance and customer service cost, excellent quality & reliable products and improved brand value & image.
Conclusion
Quality Assurance is the collection of activities that checks if the actual results match the standard results and a process that ensures whether a software system is an error-free system. QA was previously ignored by the companies, as their major concern was to release the end product and generate revenue. But, Quality assurance is a significant part of software development and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It increases the Return on Investment (RoI) with increased percentages.
Quality Assurance ensures higher standards in development as well as in delivered products. This results in maintaining the old customers and generating new ones. Since QA plays a vital role in building the brand value of a business, therefore Jellyfish Technologies provides end to end quality assurance services to clients across multiple domains. So that they can retain their customers for longer. Our services are highly customized and cost-effective. We have a proven track record of value addition in terms of overall cost reduction and ensuring bug-free products that perform as per the requirements of the user under all circumstances. We have a team of highly experienced QA engineers and leads who can manage projects of any domain and scale with ease. If you are looking for Quality Assurance Services, feel free to contact us.