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Why is Quality Assurance software testing needed in IT development?

03.08.2016 Regina Akhmetova
1 Comment
Why is Quality Assurance software testing needed in IT development?

Information technology demand increased exponentially last years. Software projects nowadays became more complex, which made Quality Assurance software testing a fundamental aspect of IT development. The cost of Missing QA software testing step can be really expensive not only because of product failure but, in some critical instances because of risks to human safety. Releasing unreliable software in the market leads to loss of goodwill and, consequently, leads to loss of resources, time and money.

What is QA testing

Software QA testing process is a process of error finding, verification, and validation at an early stage.

In this context, the question that would arise: why software developers couldn’t ensure bugs in free software and that it works according to initial specifications. The answer is that a QA test, by its nature, is a destructive process. Quality Assurance testing process needs a negative approach, adopted by testers. The QA testers do not only reproduce the bug; they try to find other potential ways to repeat it.

So QA testing is crucial for the reliable software development, because without testers, the burden of error finding, verification and validation would fall on developers, who may not often take the users’ perception into consideration. This is especially critical because developers are more technically oriented, while testers are more process and business oriented.

The software development process has the following phases:

  • Planning
  • Business Requirements analysis
  • Design
  • Programming
  • Release (Production)
  • Software testing
  • Maintenance (Support)

Alpha testing is used on the stage when testers engage users directly in system validation interaction with the system in controlled testing environments.

Beta testing is used, when testers engage end users through controlled software distribution processes, in a real-world environment.

The software testing process has three testing level stages:

  • Unit Testing (ensures that individual modules work right).
  • Integration testing (ensures that large software consisting of several units that were independently tested during the unit test, and the interference between these units both work right).
  • System integration testing (ensures that all the units are connected and complete software is tested under the simulated end-user environment).

There are functional testing and nonfunctional testing types. Functional QA testing looks at performance and ensures that a software product is consistent with the intended real-world business context.

Nonfunctional testing looks at the sustainability of performance, reliability, security. Nonfunctional software testing encompasses unit testing, validating a system (acceptance testing), monitoring the application at runtime.

Reliability or Stability testing checks the software capability to maintain its performance level over different conditions and at different times. In terms of software capability, nonfunctional testing consists of performance testing, stress testing and load testing.

UI testing checks GUI (Graphic User interface) design according to the requirements received. Usability Testing ensures that typical users are able to operate the software properly.

An important aspect of software concerns its protection, so security testing checks the software capabilities to perform the intended software tasks.

Quality Assurance (QA) software testing process has several methods, techniques and strategies

In terms of using human factor, the testing process could be approached by:

  • Manual testing
  • Automated testing

The software testing process could be approached by:

  • Black box (functional level testing).
  • White box (source coding level testing).

Since the software testing process requires resources that are not unlimited, exhaustive testing is typically not feasible, except in extremely trivial cases.

It is not beneficial nowadays for companies to launch the software which contains bugs. To maintain the goodwill, software companies need to maintain QA testing process.

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One response to “Why is Quality Assurance software testing needed in IT development?”

  1. Vyacheslav Volkov says:

    Reply

    Good article! I think our developers are really worthy. Like someone has sung once, ‘all you need is…’ a dedicated team of developers 🙂

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