If you decided to start your own project and started to set up your own team, hiring a quality assurance or QA engineer is mandatory.
This person is aimed to make sure your software project will reach your audience without errors, crashes, or other mistakes, which can lead to negative feedback. So, QA engineer is aimed to make sure that the first impression of your product use will be fantastic.
Additionally, the QA role is vital during the development process. It is so because the new person, in our case, a tester (or QA), can oversee possible issues with the software at the initial stages. And most importantly, identify them before the launch and assist your developers in fixing them.
Usually, there are two primary ways the new project, i.e., software, is tested. It can be tested manually or using automation tools, frameworks, and scripts.
Yet, our article is not about how software is tested, and how bugs are found, but about why QA engineer is critical for your next development project.
What is quality assurance?
First, we need to define what is quality assurance. Quality Assurance or QA is the set of actions that are aimed to guarantee quality in the software development process. As a result, you are getting a quality product and less frustration among your users.
QA involves a set of primary actions:
- Process definition – it can be project management, software development, requirements development, design, estimation, testing, etc.
- Process implementation
- Auditing – after the process implementation phase, QA identifies the weaknesses in the particular process and assists in helping to fix these weaknesses to enhance the process.
- Training.
When we speak about software development, the QA role is a little bit different from the one we provided. Here QA is also called tester.
Who is a QA tester?
A quality assurance engineer or tester is a usual role in most software development projects. The responsibilities of this team member include testing, debugging, tuning, and suggestion the enhancements to guarantee the quality of the finished product. The tester’s job includes designing a plan for manual and automated testing with the help of bug tracking tools.
QA is an integral part of any project. This is an independent professional who, for sure, is beyond any questions and can demonstrate independence to encourage the client.
Usually, projects that are finished late or over the budget can be the symptoms of QA testing failure. It is so because QA is testing the product on all phases of the development process, making sure that a definite step meets the required quality standard.
Here are two significant assemblies on how product quality can be measured:
- Functional quality must demonstrate if a product meets operational requirements.
- A structural quality which shows if the product meets the non-functional needs, like accessibility security and usability.
So, as you probably understood, quality assurance is essential on any stage of software development, but still you would like to find out who is the real role of the engineer in your team. Here are seven points you should consider when thinking of your quality team.
7 Reasons why quality assurance is so important in the testing of your software application.
- QA is a panned and systematic set of actions that aimed to guarantee that your product and processes agree with the highest standards, outlined requirements and procedures.
- Processes incorporate with activities involved in design, creation, improvement, and management of software projects.
- All products include data, software, documentation, and support, as well as all reports and other paperwork.
- Qa covers the strategies for ensuring that standards and procedures are formed and followed during the development lifecycle.
- Standards are the known principles to which all the deliverability is compared.
- Procedures in QA have recognized principles to which all the processes of development and control are related.
- Compliances with known standards, procedures, and requirements are measured using process monitoring, product evaluation, audits, and testing.
QA is not just testing
When you are thinking that Quality Assurance is testing, you are not right. QA involves even more than testing. It evaluates the full process, includes documentation creation and analysts. QA role is highly important in the development lifecycle, and you should count that.
You cannot hire a QA person at the end of your development. This person, like business analysts, project managers, designers, and developers must be presented at the very beginning.
QA is a mandatory part of your dedicated team, and if you need one, you can always count at Efisco. Contact us today to get the most of your new project!