Software Quality Assurance 101 – The basics

What is Software Quality Assurance?

Software quality assurance (SQA) generally refers to the process of assuring that the end product performs as intended and as supposed to. It is an ongoing process that takes place before, during, and after the software development cycle.

SQA identifies all the potential failures and catches all the shortcomings as well as deficiencies before it backfires the financial loss. According to The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report, the total Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US is $2.08 trillion, accounting for a 14% rise compared to 2018 statistics.

In order to ensure Software Quality Assurance processes and procedures are up to certified standards, Software Quality Assurance often combines with international standards, such as ISO (The International Organization for Standardization), CMMI model, TMM, etc.

In Quality Assurance methodology, the PDCA cycle is applied as a well-defined process model, developed by Dr. William Edwards Deming in the 1950s aimed for continuous improvement of a product effectively.

How to do Software Quality Assurance the “right way”?

This four-step approach iteratively detects the problem when the software is not functioning properly or delivering the desired results. PDCA comes in as an analysis tool to explore and discover the rooted issues while finding possible solutions to resolve and improve such. The 4 stages of PDCA are:

• Plan
  Establishing the project’s objectives and goals is the very first step in kick-starting this cycle. From here, define success metrics and the processes (supporting methods) to achieve these goals.

• Do
  At this stage, we execute our plan, implement it and collect data for later analysis of the next stage.

• Check
  Here we evaluate the results of the implemented plan and certain that our set out goals and objectives have been reached. Coming up with a checklist of revision to refine and striving to meet the defined goals.

• Act
  This step closes the circle. Reflected on whether the improvements and changes that have been made were our predefined goals or not. If not, continue the cycle by carrying out a new task of improvement with another plan. Repeat the cycle over and over again until we achieve our goals.

An organization needs to have a decent software testing and quality assurance process in place to monitor the consistency of the production process. Many companies have pursued the help of third-party software testing and quality assurance service providers, fully outsourcing to concentrate on the coding itself. SHIFT ASIA is a leading Software Quality Assurance company providing the best test automation, system testing, and other testing solutions as required. For inquiries and questions on our services, contact our support team for assistance.