Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is the process of checking to ensure that the products and/or services that are being developed meet the quality specifications. Many organizations appreciate the importance of quality assurance and are creating a separate department exclusively for the purpose of quality assurance.

The presence of a quality assurance system improves work processes and work efficiency and arms the organization to more effectively combat competition in the market.

Software quality assurance (SQA) is a manner of checking the software engineering processes and taking the systemic steps needed to ensure quality. The methods used by SQA are varied, and may include conforming to one or more standards such as ISO 9000.

ISO 9000 is an international standard that many manufacturers rely 0n to ensure that their quality assurance system is proper and effective. Compliance with ISO 9000 specifications is deemed as a certification that a manufacturer delivers quality products and services.

In a fiercely competitive business environment, lack of well-established quality assurance practice will result in failure to meet clients’ expectations and gradual loss of reputation.

Quality assurance plays an essential role in any production process including software development. Few less known software development companies fail to accord quality assurance the importance it deserves and treats it as a sideline activity.

SQA (Software Quality Assurance) is said to cover the whole of software development process and includes definition, software design, coding, source code control, code reviews, change management, configuration management, testing, release management, and product integration.

The plain truth is software is beginning to play a key role in today's business environment. In view of this, software production has to be done meticulously to ensure the software has value. Regardless whether you develop software for commercial use or for managing your own business, software development is costly and time-consuming.

Many software companies appreciate the need for value software and have changed the way they develop software and have introduced software quality assurance services. Quality Assurance produces improved results, faster production cycles, and lower costs.

There is a popular misconception that quality assurance is all about testing. While testing process is a key component of quality assurance practice, quality assurance is not limited to tests alone but has other aspects.

SQA entails both verification and validation and quality assurance procedures have to begin right at the inception stage. SQA is achieved through adherence to specifications, designs, code and test plan evaluation and SQA is a continuous process. Verification plays an important role in quality assurance as it allows a software development company to prevent bugs at the early stages of its life cycle.

After the verification is over, SQA team proceeds to conduct Functional Testing, which is quality assurance for the functional features of software components. This is followed by Non-functional testing which allows SQA team to spot performance, security vulnerabilities and any other flaws, connected with non-functional parameters.

Software companies must ensure through their SQA methods that software released to market perfectly meets end-user needs, is scalable, secure and high performing. Software companies must provide for independent testing that allows for a dispassionate examination of quality issues.

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Mobile Game Development (iOS, Android)

There is a steady increase in the number of smartphone users and commensurately there is an equal increase in the number of app developers for the same. Though there is a plethora of mobile platforms, developers invariably select one of the two most rampantly used platforms - Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Smartphones have brought mobile gaming to everyone and mobile gaming is turning out to be a huge money spinning business.

Developers are choosing to predominantly work on the iOS and Android platforms. The research study conducted by the well-known magazine Game Developer reveals that nearly 94% of the developers are working on or has games for iOS.

A further analysis show that only 30.7% of developers were building for iOS 5, with 39.4% targeting iOS 4.1+, 16.5% developing for 4.0+, and 13.4% developing for version 3.0+. So, the plain truth is iOS is not as unified a platform as Apple might claim or make us believe.

Android expectedly ranks second with 70.7% of developers working on this platform. One reason for Android lagging behind may be because the app revenue would be lower with Android or it may a matter of less aggressive marketing. There can be no doubt that Apple markets its products lot more vigorously than Android, and Apple also has a better brand recognition among casual users.

As is known to many, Android OS principally uses Java, which is, in fact, the common programming language used by developers. Hence, developing Android becomes simpler for most game developers.

The iPhone OS, on the other hand, uses Apple’s Objective-C language. This being more exclusive is a dampener for most developers who are not too comfortable or proficient in other programming languages. It is common knowledge that Android users are lot more cautious in spending than iOS users. The fact also remains that games sometimes fail to work consistently on one phone or another.

Whether your platform choice is Android or iOS, there are plenty of worthwhile choices out there. But the latest news is there is effectively one less choice on Android because Mika Mobile is withdrawing from Google’s Play Store. This can be sad news for many Android game developers. The principal issue was presumably the varying nature of Android hardware. Mika Mobile admittedly had to spend considerable time and money getting development devices and creating updates to get the game’s shaders to render correctly on multiple Android phones.

As the smart phone app market is exponentially growing, there is an expanding market that requires more graphically sophisticated applications and games.

The Android OS is very versatile and can be of great help to game developers. But this very multitasking ability of the Android OS very often creates problems for the less knowledgeable Android developer. This, combined with Android’s highly fragmented platform, makes things intimidating to the Android developer.

In contrast, Apple presents a more stable, exclusive platform for app developers, clearly specifying tools and their potential and limits. This makes it much easier for the iOS game developers to proceed with the task.

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Content Management Systems – Drupal, Joomla & WordPress

A content management system (CMS), simply stated, is a system for managing the content of a Website in its entirety.

Drupal and Joomla are both template based CMS applications and they are essentially built by programmers and not by professional designers who are aware of branding, and marketing expertise.

It may be possible to construct a site with unique branding using Drupal or Joomla. Using Drupal, Joomla or WordPress for building a site with many unique branding features will turn out to be tedious and time-consuming.

Drupal is the ideal choice for large Enterprise websites that demand high traffic. Drupal, known for its very dynamic nature, is useful for building websites relatively rapidly. It is also true that websites designed on the Drupal framework can be changed effortlessly by modifying modules.

Drupal, an exciting Open Source PHP CMS, is versatile in the sense it can be used to conveniently manage every aspect of your website – be it adding content and images or updating a product catalogue, processing credit card payments or taking online reservations. Drupal is indeed a cost effective CMS solution as it is capable of developing complex websites using commercial CMS technologies.

There is no denying that Joomla is one of the most powerful Open Source CMS that is rampantly used by millions of web designers worldwide.
It is a 'free' open source content publishing system tailored for creating highly interactive multi-language Web sites, online communities, media portals, blogs and E-commerce applications.

Again, Joomla can be used to manage every aspect of your website – be it adding content and images or updating a product catalogue, processing credit card payments as also taking online reservations. In short, Joomla is the tool to power everything from simple, personal homepages to complex corporate web applications. As opposed to commercial solutions that offer different versions conforming to your budget, Joomla is available in just one standard 'all encompassing' version - and it is free.

Comparisons are odious but it can be said that Drupal is better for Extensibility and Large Sites and Joomla is easier for the non-Geeks

People following the history of web development will know that WordPress started as a simple blogging platform a decade ago. Ever since its introduction, WordPress (WP) has matured into a premier content management system (CMS). WordPress has immense potential as people are widely using it for template designs, blogging, corporate websites/corporate blogs and a lot more.

WordPress is not just for bloggers anymore. The truth is many corporate websites are now running on WordPress and they adore its simple-to-use interface.

If there is a CMS platform system that has the innate ability of adapting to your differing and growing needs, then it undoubtedly is WordPress. WordPress has an extensive web library of templates and plugins. Many CMS boast about their multiple features, but the fact is most of them are quite complicated to use. WordPress, on the other hand, is easy to adapt and does not require much support.

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