The Beginner’s Guide to Good Quality Assurance Practices

These days, even non-technical people seem to have an understanding of, or at least a familiarity with, the Quality Assurance (QA) software testing process. What they may lack, however, is an understanding of the best quality assurance practices during the custom software development process.

Quality Assurance boasts a long history that predates the days of software and computers. Although QA for software testing originated in the manufacturing world, its importance is evident across all industries. Quality assurance testing examples include the small stickers that peel off the insides of pockets in new shirts or pants. Those stickers tell us that the product was inspected, passed, and even tell us who performed the check.

How does QA testing work in custom software?

In manufacturing, good quality assurance practices can be as simple as watching what’s coming off the line to make sure that what’s produced meets the predetermined specifications.

It’s not as easy in the custom software development world. As a result, following good quality assurance practices is critical. Custom software, by definition, does not always follow a prescribed list of standards. Instead, in custom software, you are testing your finished product against the requirements to see if the implementation has followed the design.

QA for software testing is similar to custom home building where you look to see if the finished home matches the blueprint. For this reason, the software requirements are the foundation of any good quality assurance process as they are the instructions that guide the development of the custom software product.

Good Quality Assurance Practices Help Catch Errors

Humans write code. If there’s one thing that’s consistent about humans, it’s that we make errors. Those errors get embedded into the software. In custom development, that’s where qa software testing comes in and plays its critical role.

In the Quality Assurance process, testing your software can help catch where humans might have made errors. Sometimes, these errors are the kinds you might have expected.

Suppose you have a custom software application that calculates customer satisfaction scores for a customer care department within a large company. What would be a quality assurance testing example?

While it might seem easy to program an application like this, the code may ultimately miscalculate customer satisfaction scores because the coder missed the parenthesis around a calculation.

Small errors in coding a calculation can totally change its output and these errors become embedded in the software. Good quality assurance practices are designed to catch and remove these kinds of errors before they get deployed to production.

The Hidden Benefits of QA Testing

What a lot of people may not know about good quality assurance practices is that they don’t just involve looking for errors in the software. Quality assurance testing examples also make sure that what we developed fulfills the requirements for the software project.

It’s pretty easy to discover that we have an error if you input 2+2 and you get 5. But what if that calculation should never include addition in the first place? What if the formula to calculate the customer satisfaction score should have used multiplication instead? Good quality assurance practices will check that code not only works, but that it fulfills the requirements and objectives.

QA software testing isn’t just checking for programmatic challenges, it’s also looking to validate that the requirements themselves have been met. To do that in Quality Assurance, you set up a series of test scenarios to help validate that the code is doing what the business user intended when the requirements were created.

There are three main objectives in this quality assurance testing example:

• Ensure the program operates correctly.
• Confirm that it fulfills the business and functional requirements.
• Confirm that it meets the performance requirements.

On top of this, there is one final difference between QA in manufacturing and QA in custom software development.

QA Does Not Just Happen in the Final Stage of Development

In custom software development, good quality assurance practices happen in parallel with development where testing can be performed continuously. This is similar to a componentized manufacturing process where each component of the product is tested individually before the finished product is tested again at the end to make sure everything went to plan.

When QA testing custom software, analysts are not just looking at a finished custom software product. They watch the custom software product come together throughout the process. Because custom software can be really large and have a lot of code, we want to catch problems as early as possible.

Ideally, good quality assurance practices should always be built into the development process. Testing only at the end will not be adequate.

From our experience, we subscribe to the belief that good quality assurance practices should be done in conjunction with development, not as an end function that occurs after development is complete.

Would you like to learn more about our approach to Quality Assurance and custom software development? Download our eBook below.

FAQs

What is QA in software testing?

Good quality assurance practices in software testing ensure that the product meets specified requirements by identifying defects and improving processes. It focuses on delivering high-quality software through systematic testing and quality checks.

Why is the QA process important in software development?

The QA process ensures software reliability, security, and functionality by detecting bugs early.

What is an example of QA?

An example of good quality assurance practices is performing regression testing after updates to ensure new code doesn’t break existing functionality. This helps maintain software stability and performance throughout development.

Thayer Tate

Thayer is the Chief Technology Officer at SOLTECH, bringing over 20 years of experience in technology and consulting to his role. Throughout his career, Thayer has focused on successfully implementing and delivering projects of all sizes. He began his journey in the technology industry with renowned consulting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM, where he gained valuable insights into handling complex challenges faced by large enterprises and developed detailed implementation methodologies.

Thayer’s expertise expanded as he obtained his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification and joined SOLTECH, an Atlanta-based technology firm specializing in custom software development, Technology Consulting and IT staffing. During his tenure at SOLTECH, Thayer honed his skills by managing the design and development of numerous projects, eventually assuming executive responsibility for leading the technical direction of SOLTECH’s software solutions.

As a thought leader and industry expert, Thayer writes articles on technology strategy and planning, software development, project implementation, and technology integration. Thayer’s aim is to empower readers with practical insights and actionable advice based on his extensive experience.