Software Development Updates

1. Introduction

A product that has not undergone thorough testing or quality assurance can be the most vital reason for failure. This can happen because of innumerable other reasons as well like lack of time to test, projects already working in delay, checked superficially, no quality standard followed. All of these are posing for an inaccurate deliverable that we launch for our customers to use. 

When the development team creates an application, the software testing services provider team makes sure that all the QA strategies are in place before you give action to your plans. 

In this development phase comes the primary aspect of development which is the testing process. To elaborate Testing of Quality assurance accurately, It is a systematic approach to ensure the developed product meets the highest level of service quality. A strong quality assurance team scrutinizes the criteria for designing, developing, and manufacturing dependable products.

Once you’ve completed the QA process, you’ll notice that the app performs at an unparalleled level, boosting customer confidence, corporate reputation, and the capacity to compete with all prevailing peers. We’d like to share some of our best practices for the agile QA process with you.

2. Why Should QA Processes be Implemented?

Quality Assurance is one of the most important software testing processes that enables the testing team to ensure that the product created by the developers is built as per the client’s requirements and without too many iterations. Besides this, a proper QA process clearly defines the system requirements, gives software testers a thorough understanding of the systems’ functionalities & features, and offers the testers a blueprint for the system’s progress. This means that testing is a process that must not follow development but should support it as testing activities that occur parallelly can help in keeping the software in check. All these things prove that implementing QA processes while developing software can help in getting better outcomes. 

3. Stages of QA Process

3.1 Requirements Analysis

The first phase in this process of the Software development life cycle is analyzing the requirement. In this process, take up all the requirements from the client and analyze them meticulously so that you can predict the further roadmap accordingly. There are different development procedures that need to be followed by the development team. There is an SRS- software requirement specification which will ensure that whatever requirements are clear, consistent, comprehensive, and measurable.

The next step to this is planning for software testing.

3.2 Plan the Test

After analyzing the requirements for the quality assurance process, it is now time to plan the testing process. For this, there are some specific steps that must be taken by the testing team that we are going to discuss in this section. 

When you are executing a plan for your application that will undergo testing, there are a few serious aspects that need to be kept in mind before implementation. You need to develop a strategy in order to proceed ahead in this process.

The expectations from the testers are to develop a test strategy that not only allows them to test the software more thoroughly but also gives all stakeholders confidence in the product’s quality. The most important component of this phase is to develop a plan. During implementation, the developing software product should be error-free, long-lasting, and well-liked by its customers.

There are different types of tests that can be performed in different test environments. The QA team will take all the test data into the account and ensure a seamless testing method initiates. The testing types are unit testing, performance testing, security testing, integration testing, smoke testing, regression testing, load testing, cross-platform testing, and more. Each one can be performed in a unique staging environment.

3.3 Design Test Cases

The next step is to design the test cases. QA experts will create test cases and checklists that cover software requirements at this level. Each of these test cases will provide the circumstances, test data, and test methods required to validate specific functionality as well as the desired test outcome. Test engineers may begin test design operations with a certain amount of data in order to establish acquaintance with an application and come up with the best strategy to test design. Team members can write test documentation during this phase to ensure the test planning goes in the right direction. The QA team members can define quality metrics here.

The quality assurance process ensures to meet all the needs and perform all the required tests. This can have two types of testing- Manual Testing and Automated Testing. 

In manual tests, all the testing scenarios take place manually. Test automation engineers generate test automation scenarios throughout the test design stage when test automation is in scope. In addition, the test environment is set up for the execution of test cases. In terms of hardware, software, and network configurations, operating system settings, accessible databases, project documentation, and other features, the test environment should closely resemble the production environment.

3.4 Run Test Cases and Report Bugs

In this process, developers perform Unit tests at the beginning of the testing process. There is a bug tracking system designed by a QA engineer for each test case execution. This will streamline the bugs management and tracing will get easier. This will allow users to apply tests in each section and the end results received will manage the overall quality control of your apps.

Every team member will perform different necessary testing activities. 

Once every team member has performed their respective test programs, rerun the test cases to double-check if all the tests bring the expected outcome or not. If not, report the bugs and resolve them.

The QA team will then conduct testing at the API and UI levels. You can carry out manual testing in line with test cases with readily available specifications. All the discovered flaws will go through exploratory testing and get into a defect tracking system. Additionally, test automation engineers may run test scripts and create reports using an automated test framework like Selenium or Appium.

3.5 Perform Regression Testing

Now the next phase is to perform regression testing. When you identify the defects, it’s now time to repair and resolve them. QA engineers will perform regression tests to ensure that everything is working correctly and that the new changes have not changed anything. You can repeat this whenever you implement any new features.

The regression test’s primary goal is to find faults or flaws in the product. One of the most important aspects of the testing activities is the testing team’s and the project development team’s tracking of flaws and faults for the project development.

Regression testing is a process that retests all the functions of the project, tests the sections, and priotize the test cases which can help test the project very efficiently. 

The QA processes are critical because they indicate areas where development and testing might be improved. This means the expected test result is better than what’s assumed.

Full regression testing becomes time-consuming in Agile projects as the number of times a regression test suite is run grows. Test teams may mix partial and complete regression testing, prioritize regression testing operations based on defect risk levels, and automate a regression test suite to enhance the regression testing process.

3.6 Run Release Tests

This is the last stage of a well-established QA process where bugs will be detected by applying various quality metrics. There is a specific QA flow involved in every QA process. But, why is release testing a part of QA activities? This answer should be known.

The term Release testing has a set of coding techniques and test methodologies just like other testing methods. This test ensures a software release that is suitable for all users. The goal of release testing is to detect and fix faults and flaws in a software release before it is made available to the public. It meets all the testing goals and fixes the bugs from a unit level before the actual users use it. The test case which was not addressed during bug tracking will be addressed by QA specialists at this phase now.

After this, you can claim that the software quality standards are met and the developed software can now be used by consumers in the market.

4. Tools for QA Process

The correct tools are essential for any quality assurance team to thoroughly test software and catch any issues that end users may encounter in the live environment. To begin, let’s discuss the importance of actual device testing.

For any type of testing, QA teams need access to working devices. Putting a website or app out there for the public to use is impossible without first putting it through extensive testing under realistic user situations. Testing on actual devices is required regardless of whether the tests are performed manually or automatically.

If you don’t have access to state-of-the-art equipment in your own lab, cloud computing can supply the essential infrastructure. The solution also has to be scalable to accommodate teams of varying sizes without slowing them down or reducing the quality of their output.

The QA team may expand to as many individuals as needed with BrowserStack’s Live for Large Teams. Teams, in fact, are not restricted in the number of people they may have on their planks. With over two thousand supported browsers and devices, including the newest devices and the most recent versions of top browsers, each tester may conduct tests in parallel on all of them.

• There will be no delays or disruptions.
• Easy administration of teams with built-in tools for forming sub-teams, assigning licenses, and enforcing access controls.

Several more tools would be:

• Google Docs – Documentation for a task, like a test plan or a worksheet, may be kept on Google Docs, where it can be quickly accessed and shared by everyone involved.
• Jira – Jira is a helpful tool for managing projects, monitoring bugs, creating tickets, and delegating work.
• Zeplin – Zeplin is a helpful tool for exchanging and receiving designer-created documentation.
• Selenium – Website automation has never been easier than using Selenium.
• Cypress – Cypress is great for conducting automated tests on web applications.
• Appium – When it comes to automating app testing, nothing beats Appium.

Especially for a startup, putting together a quality assurance group might be difficult. Attempting this without a plan or framework in place will just make things more difficult.

5. Conclusion

Throughout this insightful blog, we have showcased all the QA best practices involved in aligning a setup for the QA processes. The bug fixes are a time-consuming process and thus, it needs a strategic plan to make a success. With the help of the development team and other team members, you will achieve desired testing results. The QA teams have to undergo this mature process to match the quality code and the test plan. Setting this up for your QA department will audit and ensure all the errors are handled first-handedly. You and your organization are all set to achieve comprehensive benefits of the QA process starting from scratch to end.