Quality assurance is a significant aspect of any production process, and software development is no exception. Though almost every start-up software development company considers quality assurance to be a sideline activity and often overlook its significance, several industry experts firmly believe that an ad hoc approach towards quality control is not considered as an industry best practice. Failure to adapt proper QA practices can lead to inability in meeting client expectations, negative feedback from the end user and ultimately bad reputation of your software development company in the marketplace.

A well-executed QA during the software development lifecycle ensures that the end product is high in quality, resulting in a contented end user, increment in stakeholder’s ROI and high rates of monetization. Thus, the practice of quality assurance can’t be ignored at any cost.

What is Quality Assurance All About?

It is a common misconception that quality assurance includes nothing but rigorous application testing. Testing process is very well a part of the QA process, but there is more to it- other than various testing procedures and overlapping with other SDLC milestones.

Validation and verification form two essential pillars of the QA process, which begins at a very early stage of the software development lifecycle. The initial stage of the process deals with preparation and includes staffing of QA team for a consolidate project, compilation stage where the scope, test plan goals, approach and deliverables are defined, and finally, the requirement testing stage. The specification, requirements, design, test plan and code evaluation performed during software inspection and meetings, results in verification. Verification plays a significant role in the QA process as it enables a software development company to check for all fallacies the initial stages of development lifecycle and keeps the call of bug fixing caused due to inconsistencies in documentation at bay. This means the whole development project becomes highly cost-efficient.

Important Software Testing Practices of the QA Process:

After the completion of verification process, the actual testing phase begins, wherein the QA team tests an application using various testing activities. Two major type of testing activities involved are as follows:

Functional Testing: This involves QA of functional features of software.

Non-Functional Testing: At this stage, QA engineers test the software to recognize any security, performance vulnerabilities and other flaws that relate to the non-functional features.

Once the QA engineers reveal the bugs and they are fixed, the software and code components undergo the validation process again. This stage is called regression testing, wherein all the patches in the code are checked for not leading to any further flaws in the software product.

The driving concept of quality assurance is to conform to standards such as readability, functionality, usability, maintainability, efficiency and portability. Eventually, adhering to quality assurance standards and furthering the acceptance of QA methodologies results into hefty payoffs- qualitative software and satisfied clients. Thus, every software development company must adhere to the QA best practices and empower themselves to cater to users in a better manner.

Author Bio: Maria Mincey is a blogger and an online marketer at a Software Development Company - Xicom Technologies Ltd. She has been actively writing on diversified topics and also participates in some communities and forums. Follow her on Twitter: @mariamincey64