4 Quality Assurance Cures for "Nightmare" IT Releases

Charles Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” I couldn’t agree more.

To evolve and grow, businesses must uncover novel opportunities: they accelerate their digital transformations and introduce advanced technologies. With AI/ML, low-code, IoT, 5G, AR/VR, etc., they build the capabilities necessary to outpace the high market competition and win new customers.

However, releasing complex IT products with such technologies at the core isn’t easy. With all years of my experience working with businesses that care about their reputation, it’s important to build effective software launch processes, giving due attention to software testing.

In this article, I’ll focus on the main aspects to achieve this. Let’s cut to the chase!

TOP 3 REASONS TO FOCUS ON INDEPENDENT QA BEFORE SOFTWARE RELEASES

Researchers mention that in less than 10 years, the software testing market size will hit new records and comprise more than $90 billion! An increasing demand for quality control is the result of businesses’ desire to exceed customer expectations and gain a solid market position.

And it’s no wonder, as even a single critical defect can ruin everything. For instance, recently, T-Mobile has confronted a solid data breach that exposed the personal data of 50 million customers! Or another high-profile case: in 2016, Pokemon Go website faced an influx of downloads around Europe resulting in server crash.

Before any software release, I often advise businesses to make sure their IT products undergo independent testing. Have a look at some of the benefits they can get:

• Customer satisfaction. First impressions last, that’s why they are so crucial. To make your IT product stand out from the rest, expand a user base, and attain high customer retention, companies should enable unmatched UX, speed, and responsiveness.
• Enhanced software quality. With an unbiased view of software’s operation, deep niche expertise, and full dedication to reaching set business goals, independent QA providers help organizations confirm that their IT products are reliable, secure, able to withstand high loads, and are smoothly run on diverse devices and OSs.
• Decreased expenses. The earlier in the SDLC you detect the defect, the easier and more cost-effectively you can mitigate it. Shift-left, continuous testing or their combination provide improved capabilities for preventing defects and optimizing costs.

I see businesses believing that prevention is better than cure have enhanced releases, boosted organizational performance, and obtained greater sales opportunities!

4 QA BEST PRACTICES FOR YOUR UPCOMING SOFTWARE RELEASES

To promptly mitigate weak spots and reach impeccable software operation, I suggest you to leverage the following tried-and-true hacks:

1. Test early, test often, test everything

When relying on methodologies like Waterfall, companies have less time to fix issues, and their remediation in general is more complicated due to the close interaction of software parts. What we often get are missed deadlines and decreased quality. As I mentioned above, apply continuous and shift-left testing or their wise combination.

Continuous testing allows ongoing QA support throughout the entire development process. Before integration, each new code part is tested automatically and continuously, reducing business risks related to the poor functioning of products and their features.

Shift-left testing approach to QA is, in my opinion, even more effective. It offers to start testing as early as possible, ideally from the requirements stage, to prevent issues and optimize QA efforts.

2. Automate as much as possible

Today, companies, among other things, adopt automated workflows to speed up testing cycles. However, this isn’t the only benefit that QA automation provides for checking software before a major rollout.

QA teams can significantly enhance the accuracy of a testing process and expand the depth and number of tests with fast feedback cycles, good scaling possibilities, reusability of tests, and a chance to maximize test coverage.

Software testing engineers can seamlessly assess the stability of software builds and make sure that the growing application functionality operates flawlessly.

3. Adjust QA processes to your business needs

Compiling a tailored QA strategy is a vital step on the way to earning end-user loyalty. Your customers will hardly highly rate your product if they meet with numerous bottlenecks. So, do invest your time in building a well-balanced QA strategy. It is a cornerstone of a successful software rollout as it combines a set of activities and techniques that are a last frontier from defects slipping into the production.

My personal algorithm for creating a good strategy includes the following steps:

• Define clear objectives and deadlines for achieving them considering the business needs.
• Make sure they have precise software acceptance criteria to understand the expected behavior of each feature.
• Pinpoint the way they manage current tests and documentation to ensure full transparency and reliability.
• Settle a sufficient scope of testing activities, including acceptance verifications, and set up an execution schedule to make a release candidate a success.
• Identify probable risks, their severity, and the aspects that help timely mitigate them and avoid any outages.
• Consider diverse standards that the IT solution must comply with.

This compound perspective will provide a more structured approach to QA and increase the efficiency of software releases.

4. Do utilize QA metrics

Planning QA processes and enhancing software product quality is hardly possible without monitoring the effectiveness of QA activities with diverse metrics that depend on unique business objectives. For instance, gauging end-user feedback, the cost of a defect, test coverage, test reliability, defects per requirements, risk coverage, test execution progress, etc., help evaluate productivity and impact of software testing workflows, meet desired goals, and improve release efficiency.

PS. Do not forget to align your metrics with a QA strategy and use items suitable for controlling results within each testing type.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

To ensure smooth software delivery, optimize costs, and mitigate business risks related to code issues or missed deadlines during an upcoming release, organizations can benefit from independent QA activities.

It’s significant to apply them early in the SDLC and perform continuously, accelerate processes with test automation, customize them in accordance with IT product specifics, and support effectiveness by using QA metrics.

This is how your team can avoid expensive post-release defect fixing and ensure successful software rollout without any bumps in the road.