Heard of Software quality assurance; it plays a significant role in the software development life cycle.
In the past few decades, the globe has seen exponential growth in the digitisation push for almost every sector. It has led to increased software solutions possessing a fuller part of our lives. Organisations always seek out software applications left, right, and centre to keep up with the rising demand.
However, releasing software applications is one thing; it’s important to assure that the product works the way you want it to.
Most businesses are not just looking for a large selection of software choices; they also want quality products.
In this article, we’ll understand everything about software quality assurance and its importance.
Let’s dive in!
What is software quality assurance?
Software Quality Assurance (Software QA) is a process of activities and procedures to ensure that standards will be met from the beginning to the deployment of a development project.
It also means to assure the quality of the software product agrees with a predetermined set of principles.
It performs similarly to the software development life cycle, and the goal is to recognise possible problems and avoid them before they become an issue or a major problem.
Most developers look into the Internal characteristics tested by software QA processes, including structure, complexity, readability, flexibility, testability, and the coding practices to develop the software.
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Two major approaches to software quality assurance
- Software quality defect management approach
This approach centres on counting and managing defects. The development team recognises a defect, puts it into a type based on its severity, and takes specific actions like using tools like defect leakage metrics to handle the set of bugs recognised throughout the entire process.
- The Software Quality Attributes Approach
This approach works by assisting software engineers in assessing the performance of a software product. This approach helps in focussing the engineer’s attention on various quality factors, which are divided into five essential quality factors;
- Usability: The software applications should be user-friendly to consumers. It should be easy to learn, and the effectiveness of utilising the product is called usability.
- Reliability: This reveals the system’s ability to keep on operating overtime under several working environments and conditions. High-quality software is reliable, and the application should perform well.
- Functionality: The software should meet the necessary processes. Ability to interact with other system parts, handle data securely, and adapt to the required guidelines and laws.
- Maintainability. This shows you how easy it is to maintain different system versions and support changes and upgrades cost-effectively, and the system remains stable while those changes are made.
- Portability. This ability to easily adapt to changes in its environment. It should demonstrate the system’s ability to run effectively on different platforms. For example, hosting, data portability, viewing e.t.c
Read more: Six strategies to encourage innovation in software development
Why is software quality assurance important?
The human sensation can make mistakes, but sometimes a small mistake or omission can prove very costly. Just like everything else, this happens for software development too. Often flaws can be found in a software product’s design and code due to human error, but when these mistakes are hidden, they jeopardise the software quality, and the effect can be undesirable and costly. This is why “software quality” is so important
Let’s take a look at its importance
- Boosts security:
Executing quality control measures in the developmental stages of the software exposes system weaknesses on time, which makes the application efficient, secure, and trustworthy. It is important because cybersecurity issues take centre stage in the information technology sector.
- Saves time and money:
Software quality assurance confirms that the developers find bugs and mistakes early in software development. This makes it much cheaper and reduces the time to address software issues earlier in the development process.
- Sustain brand reputation:
It guarantees businesses that their product works as they aimed at before releasing into the market.
The tech industry is not easy when it comes to matters of software quality. Therefore, you can’t afford to release faulty software, which can cause the organisation to suffer from a bad brand reputation, which might be impossible to recover from.
- Helps in competitiveness
If you want to remain relevant in the software industry with the increase in competition, the only way is to use the software quality approach. Normal difficulties may cause a company to lose its competitive advantage as users switch to alternative providers.
Testing for different requirements like functionality, usability and many more helps confirm that their product is high-quality.
- Increase customer satisfaction.
It plays a significant role of importance in strengthening customer satisfaction.
It allows your software application to fulfil all the needs to satisfy the customers, allowing it to work smoothly without any malfunctions. With software quality assurance processes, you can guarantee that your product delivers everything your customer anticipates.
Read also: 7 Best Product Management Tools For 2022
What is the difference between quality assurance and quality control?
There is confusion among most people between Quality assurance and quality control in the tech industry.
As we have explained above, Quality assurance is a set of preventive rules that are enforced during the software development process in an attempt to produce a product that will meet the specified performance requirements. On the other hand, quality control is intended for corrective measures. It deals with the end product instead of the processes used to create it.
Read also: Tips on best agile product management resources
Conclusion
Software quality assurance has become an important role for any business because it ensures that they have tested every part of their product to the greatest standards before releasing it into the market.
However, due to its value, there is no doubt that software quality assurance is a significant aspect of any development project and should be conducted with all due diligence, supervision, professionalism and with the right developers.
Soar digital, we have helped hundreds of businesses to build and grow their businesses, using the right software quality approach and having laid a solid foundation for achieving the best result in the digital world.
