What is QA in Software Development

QA aims to ensure that the developed software can meet the requirements to perform the targeted functions. Therefore, this process brings unique value to the product. So, if you’re creating software, you should handle QA more rigorously than other processes. Many people also confuse quality assurance with testing. However, experienced teams know that they need to handle QA more carefully than the testing process. If you’re unsure how effective the QA teams are in perfecting the software, we’ve prepared an article that may change your mind. So, let’s start exploring QA and how it works now.

What is QA?

QA is an essential part of quality control processes, and it stands for quality assurance. It is one of the most basic processes of developing a product or service. In short, QA focuses on determining and sustaining a set of requirements for building reliable products. It is essential for every company aiming to increase its reliability to have a well-organized QA system. Because QA optimizes efficiency in the workflow and increases consumer confidence in products. Therefore, it helps firms to increase their competitiveness in the market.
The driving force behind the QA in the IT sector is ISO. Firms use ISO 9000 to optimize their QA systems. This practice to ensure quality assurance in the manufacturing industry has become a constant in IT today, like many other sectors.

What Does Skylab Know About QA?

QA works by testing software components at every stage of the building process. Thus, it helps to detect any issue that may cause a bug in the release. In short, QA greatly reduces the risk of your release is full of bugs.
The software can be developed for more specific tasks as well as to meet a need in the market. Regardless of its purpose, software must be QA-tested to ensure it performs its duty properly. QA tests affect the success of the software directly. Therefore, expert testing teams are needed for QA testing. If you’re not a firm in the tech industry, recruiting these professionals may be challenging. That’s why most companies use the team extension model to build their QA testing team. Let’s go back to what we know about QA testing now.
There are ten basic tests of QA in software development:

• Automation Testing

  Automation Testing This process requires pre-written scripts. These scripts help you to control the execution of QA tests. They save people from sitting in front of the computer for hours, debugging manually. Developing such a tool may require costly investments. However, it is necessary to optimize the speed and increase the efficiency of QA testing.

• Black Box

  Black Box It allows you to test software without knowing the structure, internal code, internal paths, and implementation details. Black box tests do not focus on the inside of the system. Rather, it focuses on the input and output of the software. In short, the black box tests software in terms of how the end user will experience it.

• Defect Management

  Defect Management To understand this process, first, we need to know what a bug is. A bug is an outcome that occurs in the software due to a coding fault. A bug causes the functionality to deviate from the end user’s requirements. Defect management is the process by which such errors are detected to generate a bug report. These reports must include detailed data about the detected bugs. Thus, it is easier to notice similar ones that may occur in the final product.

• Exploratory Testing

  Exploratory Testing QA test cases are pre-created. However, the QA test cases have not yet been created at this stage. So, exploratory tests allow you to check the system on the fly. It helps to predetermine what will be tested in the QA. The advantage of exploratory tests is that they provide flexibility to go beyond the limits of automation tests.

• Integration Testing

  The success of software also depends on its components working harmoniously by correctly connecting. Integration testing, as the name suggests, tests the interactions of the components in the software with each other. So why is it needed? Because every component in software is coded by different developers. So that these modules form the final product, it is necessary to test how they work together.

• Negative Path Testing

  Negative Path Testing In order for the software to function properly, it must also correctly handle incorrect inputs from the end user. So, failure testing is important to ensure stability. The most challenging aspect of these tests is generating as much invalid data as possible. The more creative the QA teams are in generating invalid data, the fewer mistakes your software will make in validating invalid inputs. It is the only way to figure out how the software validates invalid data.

• Regression Testing

  Regression Testing Software is subject to code changes over time for bug fixes and optimization. In this case, we need to test how these changes affect the existing features. For whatever reason, it is essential to apply regression testing at every code change. This test consists of three stages:

  • Debugging the existing code
  • Making the necessary changes to fix the errors
  • Testing both the modified code and the affected parts
  
  

• Smoke Tests

  Smoke Tests This test confirms that the core features of the software are working properly. Before the product is subjected to the QA, it is tested whether it is ready for the QA. This process is called smoke testing. You may ask why smoke tests are needed. Because QA testing products may be costly. So, smoke testing validates whether they are ready for QA testing.

• Test Case

  Test Case The test scenario consists of four stage:

  1. Test steps
  2. Test data
  3. Precondition
  4. Post-condition
  
  

  Any software aims to meet the needs of the end user. It is called expected performance. However, in order for any software to reach this level, we need real performance results to compare. For this, the test engineers determine the specific variables and conditions of the QA test case.

• White Box

  White Box In a white box test, the testing team can see inside the system. White box tests allow us to check inputs and outputs to specific components and functions. In short, they are tests on a structural level within the codebase.

How Do QA Teams Determine Software Quality?

Let’s finally talk about how the teams handling the QA tests affect the quality of the software. Quality assurance is built on two key dynamics: Quality attributes and defect management. Quality attributes consist of six basics:

• Functionality
• Reliability
• Usability
• Efficiency
• Maintainability
• Portability

On the other hand, a defect refers to an element that is not in line with the end user’s requirements. Buggy codes and poor data handling may cause defects. Inexperienced QA teams may not notice such error sources. As a result, this leads to critical design errors.

What is QA in Software Development, In Short

Digital transformation has almost completely digitized today’s production processes. As a result, the quality assurance of digital products has determined the fate of both the manufacturing and service sectors. In this article, we’ve examined the role of QA in the development of software, which is the main actor of the digital world. We also talked about the importance of QA test teams in these processes and inform you how to form a QA test team with the team extension model.