June 2, 2022 - Slitigenz

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements.

QA establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. A quality assurance system is meant to increase customer confidence and a company’s credibility, while also improving work processes and efficiency, and it enables a company to better compete with others.

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is a driving force behind QA practices and mapping the processes used to implement QA. QA is often paired with the ISO 9000 international standard. Many companies use ISO 9000 to ensure that their quality assurance system is in place and effective.

The concept of QA as a formalized practice started in the manufacturing industry, and it has since spread to most industries, including software development.

7 Reasons Why Quality Assurance Is Important

1. Quality Assurance Saves You Money and Effort

While it takes time at the beginning of the process to create systems that catch errors, it takes more time to fix the errors if they’re allowed to happen or get out of control. Software development is a good example. One analysis showed that fixing an error in the production stage took up to 150 times longer than repairing it earlier in the requirements design stage.

Some businesses might be a bit unsure about quality assurance because of its cost, but the fact is it actually saves money in the long run. Paying to prevent problems is cheaper than paying to fix them. Quality assurance systems also save money on materials because nothing goes to waste. As an example, if a business makes a toy and doesn’t have quality assurance in place, a low-quality toy won’t sell as well or people will complain and return them. The business then needs to make more toys to replace the low-quality ones, which costs them more money.

2. Quality Assurance Prevents Corporate Emergencies

With many software companies, the stakes would be high. A simple bug in the corporate software might result in system blackouts, communication breakdowns, or even missing data. So if you are planning to employ software throughout a firm or deal with sensitive info, make sure to implement quality assurance testing and guarantee that there is no room for errors.

3. Quality Assurance Boosts Client’s Confidence

By focusing on QA testing, you are sending your clients a message that you want to make their application run smoothly without any errors. This is especially important when you want to create long-term working relationships and improve customer loyalty.

4. Quality Assurance Enhances User Experience

It is quite obvious that user experience can be a decisive factor in the success or failure of an IT product. If your software is slow or constantly showing errors, your clients or users might feel annoyed and turn to your competitors’ products. Thus, it is vital to test your product meticulously by experienced employees to ensure that the user will run it smoothly in their daily job or task.

5. Quality Assurance Creates More Profit

If you are developing an application to sell or market, then the quality assurance process is one of the most important factors which determine if you can sell it at a higher rate. There is nothing worse than angry users who paid their money for a product that does not work as promoted.

6. Quality Assurance Improves Customer Satisfaction

In addition to profits, quality assurance can also improve the satisfaction of your customers, thus enhancing the reputation of the company. Through worth of mouth marketing, a satisfied client will tell their friends or family about your product, which helps your company enlarge the client base without spending too much money on marketing.

7. Quality Assurance Promotes Efficiency and Productivity

A faulty software can lead to hurried fixes or frantic communication, which might worsen the situation. Obviously, everybody can work better when they don’t have to deal with constant errors which can be time-consuming and challenging to fix. Being organized with quality assurance testing from the beginning of the project will enable the company to operate smoothly and more productively.

When quality assurance is a priority for a company, it sets the tone for the whole business. The drive for quality infuses every part of an organization and everyone has a role to play. Anything that seems to be inhibiting the organization’s ability to provide quality to their customers is addressed. A work culture focused on meeting certain standards is good for everyone – stakeholders, employees, and the business itself.

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What is Scrum?

One of the most popular agile methodologies in use today. Scrum is a lightweight software development methodology that focuses on having small time-boxed sprints of new functionality that are incorporated into an integrated product baseline. Scrum places an emphasis on transparent customer interaction, feedback and adjustments rather than documentation and prediction.

Instead of phases, Scrum projects are broken down into releases and sprints. At the end of each sprint you have a fully functioning system that could be released:

With scrum projects, the requirements for the project do not have to be codified up-front, instead they are prioritized and scheduled for each sprint. The requirements are composed of ‘user stories’ that can be scheduled into a particular release and sprint:

Scrum is often deployed in conjunction with other agile methods such as Extreme Programming (XP) since such methods are in reality mostly complimentary, with XP focusing on the engineering (continuous exploration, continuous integration, test-driven development, etc.) and Scrum focusing more on the project management side (burn-down, fixed scope for sprints/iterations) as part of the product management. So, project managers should choose elements of the Scrum project management methodology and other methods/tools together for the specific project. Since Scrum is a more defined project management methodology in terms of tools and processes, it is often easier to adopt from day one with less initial invention and customization.

10 advantages of Agile Scrum Methodology

1. Revenue

Using Scrum, new features are developed incrementally in short Sprints. At the end of each Sprint, a potentially usable Increment of product is available. This enables the product to potentially be released much earlier in the development cycle enabling benefits to be realised earlier than otherwise may have been possible if we waited for the entire product to be “complete” before a release.

2. Quality

Maintaining quality is a key principle of development with Scrum. Testing occurs every Sprint, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This allows the Scrum Team early visibility of any quality issues and allows them to make adjustments where necessary.

3. Transparency

Scrum encourages active Product Owner and stakeholder involvement throughout the development of a product. Transparency is therefore much higher, both around progress and of the state of the product itself, which in turn helps to ensure that expectations are effectively managed.

4. Risk

Small Increments of working product are made visible to the Product Owner and stakeholders at regular intervals. This helps the Scrum Team to identify risks early and makes it easier to respond to them. The transparency in Scrum helps to ensure that any necessary decisions can be taken at a suitable/earlier time, while it can still make a difference to the outcome. Risks are owned by the Scrum Team and they are regularly reviewed. The risk of a failed initiative is reduced.

5. Flexibility/Agility

In traditional product development, we create big specifications upfront and then tell business owners how expensive it is to change anything, particularly as the project proceeds. We resist changes and use a change control process to keep change to a minimum. This approach often fails as it assumes we can know what we want with 100% clarity at the start of development (which we usually do not) and that no changes will be required that could make the product more valuable (which is unlikely with the speed of change in many organisations and markets today).

In agile development, change is accepted and expected. Often the time scale is fixed and detailed requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed. For this to work, it is imperative to have an actively involved Product Owner who understands this concept and makes the necessary trade-off decisions, trading existing scope for new scope where it adds greater value.

6. Cost Control

The approach of fixed timescales and evolving requirements enables a fixed budget. The scope of the product and its features are variable, rather than the cost. As we are developing complete slices of functionality we can measure the real cost of development as it proceeds, which will give us a more accurate view of the cost of future development activities.

7. Business Engagement/Customer Satisfaction

The active involvement of a Product Owner, the high transparency of the product and progress and the flexibility to change when change is needed, create much better business engagement and lead to greater customer satisfaction. This is an important benefit that can create more positive and enduring working relationships.

8. A Valuable Product

The ability for requirements to emerge and evolve and the ability to embrace change help ensure the Scrum Team builds the right product which delivers the anticipated value to the customer or user.

It is all too common in more traditional projects to deliver a “successful” project and find that the product is not what was expected, needed or hoped for. In agile development, the emphasis is placed on building the right product that will deliver the desired value and benefits.

9. Speed To Market

Research suggests about 80% of all market leaders were first to market. As well as the higher revenue from incremental delivery, agile development supports the practice of early and regular releases.

10. More Enjoyable

The active involvement, cooperation and collaboration in successful Scrum Teams makes for a more enjoyable place to work. When people enjoy what they do, the quality of their work will be higher and the possibility for innovation will be greater. Happy and motivated people are more efficient, effective and more likely to stick around.