Engaging Quality Assurance Experts in Software Development: Why It’s Important and What the Benefits Are
Close cooperation with QA experts throughout different stages of software development can offer you much more than bug-free code. In this post, we will try to understand the topic and highlight the main points.
Why is quality assurance important?
Quality assurance is a complex process that includes multiple steps united by the same goal: to ensure the security and quality of the software under development. When professionally organized and executed, QA enables you to find and eliminate possible security and performance issues before the product is released.
QA is often mentioned alongside two other terms:
- Quality control
- Software testing
Risks of neglecting quality assurance activities
Neglecting certain QA activities may create the illusion of faster feature delivery or reduced project costs. However, in the long run, not paying enough attention to quality assurance processes leads to dangerous risks, both technical and commercial:
QA Benefits
Why and when to involve QAs in software development
Even when implemented as a traditional stage of the SDLC, quality assurance can provide a project with a number of valuable benefits. However, if you decide to leverage quality assurance throughout the entire software development life cycle, you can experience even more impressive and valuable benefits. Here are some of them:
Benefit 1: Project documentation review
Apriorit’s quality assurance professionals get involved in the project at early stages, usually starting with reviewing project documentation and requirements.
Benefit 2: Planning and estimation of the testing process
Apriorit’s QA engineers pay special attention to creating testing strategies and testing plans for each project they work on. When planning testing activities, we focus on:
1 Preparing a test plan
2 Determining a test strategy
3 Estimating QA activities
4 Preparing a testing schedule
5 Assessing risks
6 Selecting testing tools
Benefit 3: Preparation of test documentation
When designed properly, test documentation can help you accomplish all sorts of tasks:
Benefit 4: Product testing
To ensure successful product testing, a QA specialist should take into account:
- The type of product under test
- Technologies used
- Core functionality
- Potential weaknesses
Depending on these specifics, QA professionals choose relevant testing approaches and use different types of functional and non-functional testing.
Benefit 5: Product stabilization
When the product is almost ready for release, our goal is to make sure the system is stable and performant, all of the planned functionalities are released, and the result of our work fully matches our client’s expectations.
Benefit 6: Product maintenance
Even after the official release of your product, Apriorit QAs can continue monitoring and supporting it. The key is not only to keep your solution performant. Being able to check and validate possible product improvements fast is the key to gaining a competitive advantage and attracting new customers. It’s also important to make sure that any issue that can compromise your product’s stability and security is detected and addressed in a timely manner.
Professional quality assurance is the key to building a quality, stable, and secure product that your end users will find comfortable and pleasant to use. While there are different opinions about the necessary level of involvement of QA specialists in software development, at Apriorit, we prefer to cooperate with our QA experts at all important stages of this process.
Explore the full article in our blog to find out how QAs can help you prepare better estimates, avoid extra spending, and make sure you get the exact product you wanted.
