The importance of Quality Assurance (QA)
Why the testing stage of a product shouldn’t be overlooked
What is Quality Assurance? Well simply put, it’s the process of checking to see if a product or service that has been developed meets expectations and works glitch free. If an app for instance keeps crashing because no-one has tested if it actually works, it’s not going to take a user long before they get frustrated and stop using it and you can guarantee if something’s been missed the public will find it and take to social media to shout about the shortfalls; which as we all know is never good for a company’s reputation — for a customer a product or service should just work!
QA does a bit more than just seeing if something works though, it also goes hunting for bugs, and we don’t mean the bugs you can see, we’re talking about the bugs you can’t see. The ones that threaten your privacy or the security of a company’s confidential data, the ones hackers thrive on; so when iOS 10 was announced and Apple set about marketing it as the biggest release of iOS ever, the world listens. Along with iOS 10 came a security update for iOS app development requiring users to specifically trust the developer that signed the app, yet within lay a security flaw with the iOS Force Touch technology.
One of our QA testers was able to access a wide range of sensitive content by bypassing what is supposed to be the firewall between user data and hackers. When launching from the Force Touch quick action menu, he was able to override the untrusted developer security feature allowing him access to a menu containing sensitive data. This vulnerability is especially concerning as a user could innocently install an unreleased app from a noxious developer, with harmful consequences — maliciously stealing their passwords or in the case of a fake company branded app, highly sensitive company data.
Apple acknowledged this bug immediately on our QA tester reporting it to them and have subsequently released a fix, but this highlights the importance of Quality Assurance.
When we deliver a project for a client it’s our product too and we are extremely proud of them. We want every experience to be a great one. We want our customers to want to tell their customers about us, so it has to be perfect or at the very least as close to perfect as possible, which is why we take QA very seriously.
This article was originally posted on the Alliants blog here
About Alliants
Alliants develop digital strategies and build software solutions for some of the worlds most influential travel, hospitality and retail brands.
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