“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.” ~Peter Drucker
All we mean by this famous quote is to make a product that speaks for itself and let the quality be its best voice. To make this happen, we have to onboard a successful product launch. Well, before we jump into the topic ‘what is the importance of Quality Assurance’, just think about it.
You certainly want your customers to cheer and applaud as the first thing after the launch. Won’t you?
However, the growing market is one tough place. Hence, you got to get things not just rolling fast but own that great touch of quality. Talking about a rough market, for the software to survive needs to be perfect in terms of reliability, security, and efficiency. For which we need an extraordinary QA and the product team to monitor and make it rock-solid as possible.
Importance of QA in Software Development
A good QA is interested and expected to think outside the box. They are someone who knows the product quality importance. They bring fresh perspectives to the table and interact with the product features as a new user would. The only way, perhaps the best way to develop error/bug-free software, is by implementing strict quality control processes.
When quality assurance is done dedicatedly right, it plays a vital role in the growth of the business. Quality assurance and testing can be of great value to your company. They translate into customer satisfaction and ultimately add to the business’s bottom line. And finally, that answers the question of what is the importance of Quality Assurance.
Quality testing is generally needed at various stages of software development. Functional testing is done to ensure that the app can work as per the requirements. Integration testing is performed to check if the product can integrate with other platforms.
Note: The most notable difference between traditional software and the SaaS product is that the latter experiences frequent releases, i.e., multiple times during a quarter. Such rapid releases demand more testing than what is required in a traditional model.
What is the Role of QA in Product Development?
The word assurance means ‘guarantee’. So the Quality Assurance Group’s role is to guarantee that the product is of high quality. They should be involved in the overall software development process and their responsibility is to create and enforce standards and methods to improve it with the goal of delivering the quality product to the customers.
Product Testing Methodologies
The testing phase of product development ensures that the product works as expected. Based on the development methodology used in the product, testing will occur. The two principal development methodologies are:
- Waterfall Methodology: Testing will be conducted upon the completion of the product development for the particular product release.
- Agile Methodology: Testing will be conducted throughout the product development cycle from business analysis, design, development.
Significance of QA in the Product Launch
QA acts as a customer to your business who embraces the customer workflows, reviews them, and bridging the gap between business, engineering, and end customers. We have to involve the QA in the initial phase of the software development to save time and resources.
An interesting statistics about How Bug Fixing cost increases relatively in each phase of the SDLC. The statistics are shown as a graphical representation.
Top 5 Test Strategies to Achieve Successful Product Launch
The right test strategies will help to launch a successful product. We are going to see the top 5 test strategies to make it in action. They are below:
1. Align Test Strategy with Business Goals
Many businesses are not keen to consider QA strategies in their plan to achieve their business goal. As we have already discussed, the testing team should also be involved in the planning phase of development like every other department, like Business Analysis, Design, Marketing, and Sales teams. It helps the QA team to understand the business scenarios clearly, and they should be able to build the test scenarios based on that. You are betting a lot of money to get the things done right, and in the best time, you need to install integration within the organization first.
2. Team Collaboration
To have a successful business, the team has to be collaborative, and everyone should focus on a common end goal, and that’s quality product delivery. In simple terms, the team has to work together closely. Henry Ford nicely said about team collaboration as “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success.” And we couldn’t agree more.
3. Test Automation
Implementation of Test Automation saves time and resources. Test Automation should be implemented for functional testing, regression testing, performance testing, and integration testing. When you automate the regression tests, you will be able to save more than 30% of your time. What else better do we need!
4. Implementation of Testing in DevOps
It is vital to add your test automation to your DevOps build pipeline. So, the test scripts will be executed before pushing the code to production. We have to ensure that the configuration of pre-testing and post-testing activities should be correctly defined. If the test scripts fail, the build will be stopped and won’t be pushed to production.
5. Integrate and maintain a centralized repository
In the midst of uncertainties, we have a new normal called work from home. And so, the concept of work from ANYWHERE becomes essential. It is inherent to have a centralized repository of test management assets and test scripts in a centralized place instead of having it in the local repository. This will help the whole team access test cases, test scripts, test results, issues, etc.
Therefore, a quality assurance tool can speed up the testing process to deliver the software faster to customers with high quality.
Also read: Definitive Guide To Choose The Ideal Test Management Tool
When we involve QA in the product launch process, we will see the benefits of QA. The key benefits are below:
1. Ensure Quality
Unless a product is tested, no one can guarantee that the product will work properly.
2. Prevent Problems
QA can detect a problem before someone thinks of it. So, they will prevent problems.
3. Make Users Happy
QA contributes to the user’s first impression of the product and will make happy customers.
3. Protect your reputation
Protecting the brand’s reputation is quintessential for any business. An excellent and reliable product is obliged to achieve this.
4. Save Organization’s Money
Testing a product is cheaper than making changes later to the entire system in the maintenance phase.
I hope this blog helps to know and understand the irreplaceable importance of QA in Successful Product Launches. And further if you like the type of the content you are reading then be sure to subscribe to our QA Touch blog posts for more interesting content. Also, we are on social media where we do all the fun and interesting content on Testing and Tech.
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Happy Learning!! Happy Testing!!
Refrences:
Statistics Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/IBM-System-Science-Institute-Relative-Cost-of-Fixing-Defects_fig2_307466491
