Quality in software should be considered of paramount importance, since there is an upward cost involved in solving any type of bug! The cost of locating and solving the bug increases significantly if the bug is located at the later stage of product development.
A report by CISQ states that the cost of poor quality software costed around $2.84 trillion alone in the USA. New-age enterprises are under a constant pressure to ship quality products at lightning speed. This is primary reason why testing (and other QA activities) should be go hand with the development activities.
Shift left testing in Agile is the way forward for enterprises looking to release products at a top-notch speed. Partnering with software testing consulting services company like KiwiQA can further help in accelerating the entire process. Intense software testing is the only solution to ensure a perfect product is released to the end customers.
In this blog, we deep dive into some of the proven strategies for accelerating business growth by adopting the best-suited software testing practices.
Craft QA Strategy aligned with the Business Goals
There is a significant amount of difference between the QA strategy and test strategy. For starters, QA strategy is created at the BU (Business Unit) level, whereas a test strategy is created at the project (or product level). Hence, QA strategy is more aligned to your business goals.
When working on any project, it becomes important to craft a detailed QA plan that helps the QA teams to create an exhaustive test plan that aligns with the project goals.
Right Balance Of Manual and Automation Testing
Though automation testing can be considered as the go-to approach to scale testing activities, fact is that not every test activity can be automated. For example, scenarios involving Captchas, reading QR (or bar) codes, video streaming, etc. cannot be automated using test automation frameworks.
On similar lines, scenarios that can be automated using popular frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, etc. should not be considered for manual testing. It is essential to have the right balance of manual testing and automation testing so those tests scenarios can be executed using the right approach (i.e. manual or automated).
Also Read – Automation Testing Vs. Manual Testing
Document the QA and Testing processes
As mentioned earlier, it is important to document the test (and QA) strategy that is aligned to the business goals. A crystal clear document helps in providing a wholesome picture to all the project stakeholders. Documentation is one of the major factors that ensures that there is consistency on all the aspects of quality.
Here are four major logical parts of the perfect documentation plan:
- Quality management plan: This is where the quality objectives and the key R&R (roles and responsibilities) are documented for ensuring that the desired quality levels meet the expected customer requirements.
- Test Strategy: As stated earlier, a top-level test strategy has to be designed for documenting the testing processes that are inline with the business requirements. This test strategy will be further helpful in creating a detailed test plan at the project (or product) level.
- Test Plan: Test plans are devised for each project. They document the test scenarios that have to be executed using manual (or automated) approach. The plan also outlines the what and how of test execution.
- Test Scenarios (or Test Methods): Test methods (or scenarios) are the actual tests that would be executed during the test runs. Test scenarios have to be tested against different input combinations for ensuring that all the product quality requirements are met.
All the documents much include relevant sections related to process, people, and execution; that eventually help in running tests at scale. A software testing consulting company like KiwiQA can help in all the areas related to software testing; thereby ensuring that best quality products are released to the target customers.
Also Read – Guide To Create An Excellent Testing Strategy From Scratch
Measure Code Quality
The number of bugs discovered during the testing phase is inversely proportional to the code quality. For example, lesser the bugs; better is the code quality and vice-versa. The CISQ Software Quality Model outlines the following major metrics that help in measuring code quality:
- Reliability: It indicates the reliability of the code (i.e. how effectively it can run without any issues). Higher the reliability, lesser are the chances of catching bugs in production.
- Security: It indicates whether the code has any vulnerabilities, which eventually makes it a target for malicious attacks.
- Performance and maintainability: The performance of the source code should not degrade at different loads. This is where load testing and stress testing play a major role in ensuring that the performance of the website (or app) does not degrade with an increase in the load. Rather than writing a monolithic code, it is important to focus on the maintainability & reliability of the source code.
- Delivery Rate: We are living in an age where consumers (and customers) always have some options up their sleeves. The delivery rate indicates the speed at which updates and new features are pushed to the end users (or customers). This minimizes the probability of customers shifting to different products (or services) offered by your competitors.
Adopt Cloud Testing
Scalability, security, and reliability are some of the key aspects that have to taken into consideration when devising a formidable automation testing strategy. However, these requirements are difficult to fulfill if your team does not adopt the cloud-based automation testing tools.
Testing using the in-house infrastructure is not scalable and maintainable, since it will not help in achieving the ideal test coverage. Testing on the cloud provides numerable benefits that eventually help in faster release of the software. Cloud testing is the ideal way to make the most of automation testing and cloud infrastructure.
Also Read – Benefits Of Cloud Based Regression Testing
Conclusion
Irrespective of the size and complexity of the software project, it becomes important to follow the best testing practices to realize faster Time to Market (TTM). In this blog, we had a closer look at some of the ideal testing methodologies (or techniques) that should be used for accelerating business growth.
Many enterprises also seek services from reputed software testing consulting company like KiwiQA that has provided testing services to a large number of global clients. Such a partnership eventually helps in releasing software product at an accelerated pace.