Binate Digital

What is Quality Assurance (QA) in Software Testing?

March 21, 2024

Imagine that your business has spent thousands of dollars and the past few months developing its primary app, only for it to stop working on users’ devices even before they could reach the home tab. Or maybe it did reach there and worked just fine, but it took ages to do that.

How will the app users feel? Will they keep using your frustrating app, or will they post negative reviews, send angry emails, or file complaints with your tech support? In the worst-case scenario, they will do more than that. They may pull their business out of your company.

Whatever the result of this fiasco is, it will surely deduct profits from your business and add costs to it. Would you want this situation to happen? Of course, you wouldn’t. Quality assurance (QA) is a standard practice in software development that ensures the prevention of such scenarios. It minimizes the number of unfound errors to make the user experience smooth and likable.

On this Article

Different Approaches of Quality Control in the Software Industry

The software development industry ensures high standards of quality to improve the customer experience, minimize data breaches and threats to data, and remove glitches. There are three levels of ensuring quality during the software development process. These are quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and quality assurance software testing.

The first of these steps starts with the planning stage of the minimum viable product (MVP), aka software. It defines the quality standards of the software and highlights best practices and workflows to achieve those standards.

The stage of quality control takes on the standards defined in the QA step and checks and validates quality at every step of the development process.

The third step involves testing the software at different levels from varying angles to ensure the defined standards are met. This post will talk about this third step of the QC process.

The difference between testing and QA is that the first takes a reactive approach to quality breaches by testing the software against predefined standards, and the latter takes a proactive approach and defines all the standards on which QA testing will be applied.

Agile Approach of QA Testing

These days, every nearshore and offshore software development team follows the agile methodology to achieve fast results without losing out on quality. They incorporate testing and deployment into every step of the product’s development.

In other words, when software is in the design stage, and its wireframe is being built, the design will go through a robust round of testing to ensure every navigation aspect is intuitive and practical. The same process is applied after every development of the software.

Levels of Software Testing

We can see that software testing is done at every step of software development under the agile methodology. It has two different testing levels for the coding stage: one level for testing the final product, and one level for testing the deliverable. Here are all these levels in detail.

Unit Testing

Often termed component testing, this level tests every functioning line of code for its functionality. The smallest part of the code that can be executed independently acts as a unit, thus making this test level unit testing. Developers integrate this testing system into their programming process.

Integration Testing

This is the higher level of testing, and it assesses the functionality of every two or more units of code together. At the start, this testing takes a bottom-up approach, connects two units, and keeps adding more. Another way to do this integration testing is with a top-down approach that tests the whole system and then regresses. This is the smallest level of testing taken on by QA testers or test engineers.

System Testing

As the name suggests, system testing tests the functionality of the whole system. Unlike the integration testing level, it doesn’t study the quality or clarity of the underlying code of the app. Instead, it only considers the practical output of the code. Independent QA testers run these tests.

Acceptance Testing

This is the last level of testing and may employ end users as well as QA testers to test the software. The goal at this level is to check if the program is easy and smooth for the users. In other words, it focuses on the speed, load, and usability of the code.

Types of Software Testing

Now, we know how different levels of code are tested in the QA testing process. Let’s consider the types of tests run to ensure users get the best results. These types differ from each other because of the purpose they serve.

Here are the types of software testing along with the areas of performance they check.

Functional Testing

This is the most basic type of testing software. It assesses if the program is performing all the tasks that it is meant to perform or not. It starts at the lowest level of software testing at the unit level and goes up to system testing to check the practicality of the whole program.

Performance Testing

It is another area of software quality assurance. Here, the focus remains on the speed and efficiency of the MVP. Different performance measures covered here include speed, stability, and responsiveness of the program under different work environments. Tests are performed under varying levels of workload to get real-life-like data.

Usability Testing

This testing aims at assessing the intuitiveness of the program. This phase of testing is carried out by users themselves, and they rate the app based on how easily they could get their desired results. It is easy to assume that this method is applied only at the end of the product’s development cycle, but this statement is far from the truth.

In essence, usability tests can also be carried out at the design stage using the prototype of the software.

Security Testing

This area focuses on making the software less vulnerable to cyber threats and malware attacks. There are several standard tests carried out to rule out vulnerabilities for this testing approach. A few approaches include penetration testing, security audits to detect gaps, and checking against defined security practices.

Regression Testing

It’s common for software solutions to go through a set of updates after their release. These updates may result in discontinuities in the units or components of codes previously written. Regressing testing is the type that addresses these potential regressions in a software’s performance because of new developments.

It not only assesses the functionality of the new units but also conducts system tests to check the operation of the whole system.

Who Should Conduct Software Tests?

In software development processes, quality control, testing, and the feedback loop are not standalone processes. Software developers have found that delaying testing allows errors to transfer from the initial level of software development to later levels. This progress of these errors progressively makes them more costly to correct.

In other words, delaying the detection and correction of quality issues costs the developers time and effort. To save these efforts, the developers have started taking the practice of quality control as an integral part of software development rather than taking it as a separate task.

The importance of QC and QA testing demanded that the same developers who were writing the code were in charge of testing it. Consequently, the unit testing, as well as the lower level of integration testing, have to be done by the developers.

As the complexity of the testing methodology grows, the testing is executed by QA testers and SQA personnel. In most collaborations, businesses keep the QA process within the control of their developers.

However, some businesses may want to add another layer of quality assurance. It happens when the software demands fool-proof security. Certain industries where additional tests are considered compulsory include FinTech, IoT, and MedTech industries. In these cases, the businesses request third-party testers to authenticate the delivered software.

Hiring a specialized QA and testing company brings focused and intensive skills to the mix. These companies present a mix of services, from penetration testing to usability tests to QA analysis and QA testing scripts. Most businesses find that they can easily get their desired set of specializations from the mix of skills these testing companies provide.

The best thing is the ease and efficiency these companies offer. As they usually offer a mix of manual and automated testing, the process is both effective and rapid. Even if businesses hire these agencies at the end of the product development stage, the results will be timely enough to allow amendments before launch or usability testing by end users.

Wrapping Up

QA testing is an essential step in the software development process, but it’s not a step; it’s a practice well integrated into the development process itself. It starts as early as the prototyping stage and continues even after the launch and implementation of the software.

There are various types of QA tests carried out by the developers, focusing on different aspects of the overall performance of the app or software. Some tests analyze the functionality of the end products. Others are more concerned if the app is pleasant enough for the users. Many tests are conducted to see if the code lines leave any gaps in the security of the program.

In short, the goal of maintaining the quality of software is to make it pleasant, efficient, easy, and safe for users. And don’t forget the purpose of the software. It should show all its efficiency and safety while delivering its purpose.