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Thursday, August 16, 2012

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.


Read More : http://www.snyxius.com/blog/quality-assurance/

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