When developing a software product, it is important to comply with several requirements to ensure its quality. But what exactly is the quality of the program? After all, quality can be understood in different ways.
Let’s take a look at what software quality assurance and QA best practices are. Find more information about QA practices at https://www.qulix.com/about/qa-best-practices./
The essence of quality assurance practice
QA includes the list of the characteristics and properties of the program which should be observed during its development and executed during its work. It is carried out at all stages of software development: from the beginning to the release of the soft product for use.
Quality control means the verification of compliance with the requirements for the software and overall evaluation of the development. The main task of quality control is the search of errors in the program and their further correction.
Software control and quality assurance are determined according to different requirements. It depends on the specifics of the project. The main requirements often defined for any program are:
- Functionality. It includes a set of actions that solve the user’s tasks. You can find a set of these actions in the functional requirements for the software.
- Reliability. It defines the requirement that the program must perform its tasks under certain conditions and a given amount of time. The soft product must complete its work correctly, without affecting the safety of user data.
- Mobility. Defines the possibility to use the program on other hardware or together with other programs.
- Efficiency. Defines the degree of performance of the software with the resources of the operating system allocated to it.
- Usability. It means simple and easy to use the program and its components for the user.
- Maintenance. The requirements for the process of improving the product, fixing bugs, adding new functionality.
Quality assurance best practices
Software quality assurance and control are achieved by creating certain processes and practices.
Standards for software development
Define a common template of standards for software development. Take as a basis ready-made standards, or work out your own and invite developers to strictly adhere to them.
The absence of any accepted standards can complicate the process of developing and maintaining the program in the future. The adoption of the standard will make the process of developing and testing the soft product more qualitative. By adhering to the same requirements programmers make fewer mistakes. At the same time, the standard should not impose restrictions on the development if it does not contradict the program’s properties.
Instructions with Sequential Actions
If you are already using a list of development processes, make sure that they all fit and achieve program quality. Otherwise, you need to work out the processes that would allow the development teams to interact with the testers effectively. And ensure that the right tools and standards are applied.
Experience from previous projects
Experience and mistakes from previous projects can play an important role in ensuring the quality of the program. Based on this, you can make decisions about which actions improve the quality of the current project, and which do not. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the result of the work done so that you can study the experience gained and draw conclusions.
Previous mistakes
Absolutely every developer makes mistakes in every program. It is important not just to fix the error and forget about it. You should keep statistics about the errors you make so that you can analyze them later. This will allow you to take some measures to prevent the errors from happening again. This will also help the developers to improve the problematic parts of the program. It is a common practice during development to use bug trackers where all the errors found are recorded.
Improve approaches in development and testing
Constantly improve the processes and methods of software development. Study all the sides of the processes you use, and choose the best option for future projects. Pay attention to IoT software development as a sufficiently innovative way of operating a business. Read more about the features of IoT development.
To conclude
Remember that software quality assurance does not include improving testing, but rather improving all of your development and release processes.
If the program meets the needs of the users and the expectations of the developers, then you can say that the program has successfully passed the quality assessment and is ready for release.