Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance defined by Webomates Team

“Quality is not just a process, it is a commitment.“ believes our CEO

This is an account of thoughts and ideas shared by Webomates team about Quality and their commitment towards it.

Head of QA Department shared some pearls of wisdom.

Quality is a very subjective term with different interpretations as per the industry and the need. Everyone has their own way of defining it. It can be degree of excellence, or conformance with predefined standards, or defect free, stable and robust product. Summarizing these characteristics, we can conclude that Quality is meeting (and exceeding) the expectations and needs of stakeholders in terms of functionality, design, reliability and durability of the end product. It is all about ensuring that the end product is free from any defects and adheres to the standards specified by the stakeholders.

The COO had some insights on what she thinks “Assurance” really means.

To survive and thrive, companies have to deliver quality products and services to their end users. Assurance is essentially a positive declaration by any organization on its products and services providing a guarantee that the end result will be glitch free and will be in adherence to the expectations.

CTO then put both the concepts together and explained the real meaning of Quality Assurance.

Quality Assurance (QA) is an end to end proactive process which ensures that efficient and effective processes are in place for a product/service as per the defined standards. QA provides a systematic monitoring, measuring, verification and feedback process to make sure that the end product is error free. It is part of Quality Management ecosystem that focuses on maintaining the integrity of the product/service thus inducing high level of confidence in stakeholders that their quality requirements are being adhered to.

The QA lead then elaborates more on Quality Assurance functions and the best practices that need to be followed.

• Knowledge and Technology Transfer: This function involves knowledge sharing amongst the stakeholders. The requirements are specified and a development process is set and documented.
• Validation: A Validation master plan is prepared, which covers the functioning of the entire system. Test criteria for validating the end product and process is defined.
• Documentation: All the documents pertaining to requirement specification, design, development and validation are managed. A change control process is defined.
• Assurance of Quality: This step involves ensuring that all quality criteria have been adhered to in development of product.
• Quality Improvement Plans: Any shortfalls in quality are handled by defining improvement plans.

• Create a robust testing environment in adherence to quality standards defined in consultation with stakeholders.
• All the tests being performed should have clear end objective. Analyse the quality benchmarks and select the release criteria carefully.
• Adopt “Test Early-Test Often” Principle. It helps in identification and rectification of errors in early stages, thus saving cost and effort.
• Allocate time appropriately for each testing process.
• Prioritize the bugs and fix them accordingly.
• Use automated testing tools to save time.
• Integrate risk management with Quality assurance process.
• Employ a good test management and reporting tool. Webomates provides services which help in maximizing test coverage, improving velocity and quality assurance by providing actionable insights on risk, progress, results and more.
• Good record keeping and bug tracking system helps in analyse and addressing the problem areas.

The Testing Manager wanted to talk little about Quality control.

Quality Control is a reactive process which aims to detect any issues in an end product/service. Quality control closely monitors and validates the deliverables for adherence with requisite quality standards. It introduces the element of standardization in Quality Management process. Quality Control also addresses any variations in target specifications.

The line between Quality Assurance and Quality Control appeared to be slightly blurred, so QA Manager explained the difference.

Quality Assurance and Quality Control are interdependent and complementary in nature. For a total quality management cycle, it is imperative to complete quality control stage, once all quality assurance procedures are in place. In simple words, Quality assurance is focused on setting up the processes and strategies followed to create a high quality deliverable, which is then validated by Quality control activities.

Quality assurance is a system to prevent any failures and Quality control is a system to detect failures.

Webomates has a revolutionary SaaS based patented testing platform and service called Webomates CQ. Webomates CQ aimed at significantly improving the quality of production software. It comprised of overlapping cycles of full regression, overnight and smoke that are executed using multiple channels like crowdsource, automation, artificial intelligence and manual to provide triaged defects. Webomates CQ offers extreme clarity on the quality of the latest software build.

If you are interested in learning more about the services offered by Webomates then please click here and schedule a demo, or reach out to us at info@webomates.com. You can also avail a free trial by clicking here.

Tags: Quality Assurance, Software Testing