QASource Blog

Time to market and superior quality are the two key factors you need to lead in the digital industry today. The most diligent development teams take many steps to shorten their product release cycle in order to improve productivity, reduce time-to-market, and drive workforce efficiency.

As headlined in The New York Times only a couple of weeks ago, the Iowa Caucus debacle was “a systemwide disaster…” and the “app used to tabulate votes may have been inadequately tested.” While additional facts are still coming out, the entire nation watched as there were major delays obtaining and reporting on the Iowa results. And then there was uncertainty as to whether or not they were accurate. While the intent of creating this app was supposed to be positive – to enable simpler more streamlined reporting, faster – we know that’s not at all what happened. And, that’s not exactly how you want your new mobile app rollout and brand to be remembered.

As your business grows, data storage becomes one of the biggest challenges that you will likely face at some point. Among the myriad of big data challenges, the most notable are shortage of server capacity, sharing issues, security and file backup.

QA test execution can only be as strong as the strategy you have in place. One of the best QA practices we’ve noticed across many software companies actually happens before any testing begins. By implementing a strong plan with thorough processes, every member on your QA team knows what to deliver, when to deliver it by and why it's important. But how do you know if your strategy is sound?

Software quality assurance testing creates customers. Its value lies hidden within the smooth flow of your UI, the ease with which a problem turns into a solution and the reliability and security that customers come to take for granted. Software quality assurance is how you turn development innovation into customer experience execution.

The vastness of the internet rests on the myriad of individual web applications that make up its practically endless network. The ease of access a user experiences and expects belies the multipoint complexity of the underlying web server, application server and database. Pitching a new product into this balance between complexity and simplicity requires a profound commitment to software testing.

There is nothing more exciting than your first experience of success. Watching your vision and hard work take shape and become a real product in the hands of real users can be like actualizing a dream. For many startups, those early days are about pulling together as a small, dedicated team with everyone pushing the limits of their skills and experience to produce innovation within the tightest of resource limits. With success comes the promise of growth, and your dreams and goals become larger.

Partnership is the combination of skills and experience toward a common goal. It is the shared belief in and responsibility for a product. It is a trust that if you do your best and I do mine, we can create something unique and worthwhile. When you engage a QA partner to share the responsibility of your software project, you get to experience all those warm sentiments of cooperation and trust. But you also get to strengthen your own development engine with the skills and experience of expert testers.

Preparation turns big problems into little ones, and it turns bug problems into little sprints. When viewed from afar—as a single, monolithic step in your overall software development process—testing an entire application can seem overwhelming. How do you properly account for every potential execution, for every combination of platform, purpose and user? Or for every practical real-world contingency?