Top Reasons Why QA Testers Are So Important In Development Process?

Let’s say, you have purchased a product from one e-commerce application, but in the ‘ your orders’ field, it is showing no orders. Won’t you feel angry? Obviously, you will.

No software made by developers is entirely free of bugs or needs no improvements from the very beginning. That’s why the quality of services can only be assured by a constant process of defining standards, checking whether the product meets them, and suggesting improvement. This process is called quality assurance and takes place simultaneously with the app coding process. It is to make sure such errors don’t occur, and it works as expected, that’s where the role of Quality Assurance team comes.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing is the evaluation process of software to detect differences between a given input and expected output. It is a set of administrative and procedural activities (e.g. process implementation, training, auditing, etc.) implemented in software engineering processes so that requirements and goals for software will be fulfilled. In a simple language, software testing is a verification and validation process.

Before we start understanding the importance of QA Testers in Development, let us put one real scenario happened in the past which shows how much it costs if there is negligence of bugs.

“ One of the major IT management companies of UK introduced a complex IT System. At the same time, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) decided to restructure the entire agency. The two pieces of software were utterly incompatible. Due to this, irreversible errors were occurred as a result. The system had to overpay 1.9 million people, underpay another 700,000, had US$7 billion in uncollected child support payments, a backlog of 239,000 cases, 36,000 new cases “stuck” in the system, and has cost the UK taxpayers over US$1 billion to date. Approximately 2/3rd of the money collected went toward fixing the system. “

Software bugs can potentially cause monetary and human loss; history is full of such examples.

What do QA Testers do?

A software quality assurance team is involved in following tasks include : software design, writing source code, control of source code, reviewing code, configuration management, change management, program testing, integration of software, and release management process.

They typically break up the entire process into goals such as verification, activities, measurements, abilities, and commitments. By doing this, they can not only keep the task from becoming overwhelming but maintain complete control over the entire project as well.

QA Team is equipped with following skills :

• Write test plans from the requirements, specifications and test strategies
• Use versioning systems to code test scripts
• Create and perform a test campaign whenever it is necessary to fit in the overall planning
•  Use bug tracking database to report bugs
• Analyses test results
• To make sure earlier features not get disturbed by the additional requirements.
• Raise an alert when an important issue is likely to put in jeopardy the whole project
• Logging the defects in the defect management tool
• Draft all type of scenarios

Why is it so Essential ? Here are the reasons why it is essential:

(I) To Find out and rectify the errors occurred during the Development :

QA testers check an app for bugs in the software, from complete crashes to minor glitches. Once you know the causes for software defects, it will be easier for you to take corrective actions to minimize these defects. Sometime minor bugs may result in more significant problems.

(II) To Verify all the aspects of the Software :

In Software Testing, QA team verify all the aspects of the software. Testers assure the quality of a product in every aspect – from functionalities and smooth working to spelling mistakes, localization problems, and graphical or audio glitches.

(III) For Effective Performance and Efficiency:

It is essential for any product to have an effective performance and efficiency. Poor performance may lead to customer dissatisfaction. Performance is mostly about the response time of the software. This response time should be in acceptable intervals and should not increase if transaction count increases. 

Without proper performance and efficiency, it is difficult to sell your product and convince the customers for that.

(IV) To Reduce the Overall time and cost of the Project:

The longer a bug goes undetected, the more costly it is to fix. That’s why well-equipped QA & testing team required to reduce the cost and time. Further, number of bugs and delay in reporting may increase the maintenance of the Project.

(V) To Build Confidence about the Product :

QA is believed to be the process that offers the management confident about their product. Testing helps to make the product better and which helps in growing confidence about the product developed.

(VI) Helps in building strategy for best practice in future for similar products:

Once the testing development life-cycle is completed, the QA team analyze the methods and find out the ways to minimize the time of the similar products. Such practices help making similar products more efficiently and better performance.

Testing Life Cycle :

There are different phases in Software Testing Life Cycle ( STLC ) . The testing cycle start from the Requirements analysis phase and go through all the phases one by one before completing with the Test cycle closure phase.

The 6 STLC Phases are given below : 

Requirement analysis: In this phase, testing team goes through the Requirement document with both Functional and non-functional details to identify the testable requirements. As an outcome of this phase, Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) and Automation feasibility report are prepared by QA team.

Test Planning : 

In this phase, the QA manager or QA Lead prepares the Test Plan and Test strategy documents. They find the best-suited testing approach.

Test case development :

QA Team write test cases and test scripts ( for automation ) in this phase. Both the test cases and scripts are verified by peers.

Environment Setup :

In this phase, the list of required software and hardware is prepared as per the requirement. After setting up the necessary hardware and software the installation of the build is tested. Once the installation of the build is successful and complete, then the Test Data is generated. After that, Smoke Testing is executed on the builder. It is checked that Basic functionalities are working or not.

Test Execution :

Test Cases written are executed in this phase. While testing, if any bug arises, QA team reports that bug and it is to be fixed by the developer. After the verification, it is again tested by the QA team. QA team makes test execution reports and bug reports.

Test Cycle Closure :

In this phase, the QA team prepares the summary of all the tests conducted during the life-cycle. They make a list of bugs reported. After resolving the error, the project is handed over to the maintenance team.

Conclusion :

QA team ensure developers follow best quality assurance practices and assist with technical and business test designs to help identify the most critical bugs before releasing software. Quality is about how the company runs and delivers value and experience to its clients. QA is a perfect perch from which to see how, who, and what gets done. That’s the reason why QA is mandatory in software development life cycle.