There are a lot of myths out there about quality assurance—and we get it! It’s confusing. We’ll help you sort out the facts from the fiction.
Let’s start with what quality assurance is: it’s the process of evaluating whether or not software meets its requirements and performs well under stress. That means that QA professionals are responsible for making sure that the software development process is high-quality, efficient, and reliable enough to meet the needs of users and stakeholders. If something goes wrong with the system at some point down the road, a QA professional will be able to identify why it happened (and prevent it from happening again).
Here are some QA myths that we’d like to dispel:
QA Myth #1: QA is just testing
It’s easy to think that quality assurance means “testing,” but in reality, it’s much more than the testing process. Quality assurance encompasses all of the work that goes into ensuring you have a high product quality at launch time. It includes everything from automating and running tests continuously to manually feature testing activity across different platforms and browsers. It’s not a process you can complete once and move on; it’s something you have to do over and over again throughout the development life cycle.
QA Myth #2: QA Specialist is a failed software developer
Software developers are indeed the people who write code and create applications, but QA Specialists are not failed, software developers. They are simply not developers at all. Instead, they work to ensure that the applications created by their team members work as intended and do not have any bugs or other issues that affect their performance in ways that would harm the user experience or product maintenance.
In addition to having a passion for technology, QA Specialists need good communication skills, critical thinking skills, the ability to do the hybrid approach, and a high level of attention to detail. They need to be able to communicate clearly with their team members and managers, as well as understand when they’re confused by something and ask questions until they understand it completely. They also need to know how to do manual or completely automated testing so that they can quickly spot any bugs or errors before they go live. QA specialists often use software in their job, so they have a good understanding of the language and environment (e.g., Java).
QA Myth #3: A QA team is an expense, not an investment
QA teams are often viewed as an expense but should be treated as an investment. A QA team is more likely to find bugs in a product before it’s released, which will not only save time but also – money – that will be spent fixing issues after the product has been released.
In addition, since a Quality Assurance team has experience with the product and can anticipate how it will be used in real-world scenarios, a good QA team will also be able to work with designers and engineers to identify areas that need improvement or changes before they are implemented into the final version of the product. This means that designers and engineers can focus on making changes/implementing new features instead of trying to fix problems after they have been implemented into the final version of their product.
QA Myth #4: Manual testing always works best
You always go with the manual testers when you start working on a new project. But, as time passes and your software grows larger and more complex, you begin to realize that manual testing does not always work best. It is slow and non-dynamic. What you need is test automation. Automation reduces the time that you take to test your software and allows you to test your software more often.
Manual testing is a great way to evaluate your software, but it’s not always the best option. Manual testing usually takes a lot of time, which can slow down your team and cause it to be less efficient. Furthermore, manual testers can miss important bugs that automated testers would catch because they don’t have access to all of the same tools.
QA Myth #5: Automated testing will reduce your quality assurance efforts
Automated testing is a great way to make sure that the software you develop is free of bugs and ready for release, but it won’t reduce your quality assurance efforts.
It is important to remember that the goal of quality assurance is not to test whether a product works, but rather to ensure that it meets the requirements and standards of the business. Automated testing can help you achieve this goal by ensuring that all aspects of your product are functional, but it does not eliminate the need for manual testing made by human touch. Automated testing isn’t a replacement for human QA work—it’s just another tool in the toolbox.
The best way to ensure that your software is of the highest quality possible is to have both automated and manual QA processes in place.
QA Myth #6: All testing is created equal
Software testing is no small task. It requires a lot of hard work, patience, and attention to detail. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a product that doesn’t work how it should. But just because software testing is important doesn’t mean that all software testing is created equal. When starting out, some companies will use the same process for all their projects. This means that each project has the same test cases, and the same degree of effort spent on each one. As a result, over time, this approach tends to yield low-quality software and a lot of bugs that have been missed by both developers and testers. Software quality assurance can be broken down into 3 types:
Functional testing: This type of testing looks for bugs in the functionality of the software—how it works, what it does, etc. It’s typically done by testers who know how to use the product being tested but haven’t had much experience with its programming language or inner workings yet.
Regression testing: This type of testing looks for bugs that have been introduced in new versions of the software over time and then finds ways to reproduce them so they can be fixed. It’s typically done by people who are familiar with programming languages and techniques but don’t necessarily know how all the parts fit together yet.
Non-functional testing: This type of testing looks for bugs that have nothing to do with how well your product works for end users; instead, these are bugs that might negatively impact your company’s reputation.
Conclusion
Quality Assurance is a valuable service that helps developers create high-quality mobile app development, but it’s also important to remember that it’s not an easy process. It requires time and effort. QA is about ensuring the quality of software products and services. A good Quality Assurance team will ensure that the product meets customer requirements, user needs, and company standards. This ensures that your customers get what they want from their products or services—and you don’t have to deal with angry customers!
