QASource Blog

Enjoying the advantages of offshore QA solutions should not mean you have to compromise your software development best practices. QA is a critical component of your SDLC, but it is not the only component that is important to integrate with your current development cycle. Similarly, while your QA team may be able to guide and optimize your testing requirements, they are not the sole stakeholders in your product’s success. Within this collaborative effort, your test management system aligns QA with other departments of SDLC.

So, do not feel the need to give up your test management software of choice in order to access offshore QA testing and its attendant time, cost and quality efficiencies.

This is how important software quality testing is to the success of your product—40% of tech startups fail because of poor or absent QA. Failing to implement one of the fundamental aspects of software development can sabotage your all efforts.

Now, if you are reading this, then the chances are good that you will not be making the mistake of bypassing QA all together. More likely, the danger you run is not optimizing your software quality testing for consistent results that deliver a quality product to your users.

Great automated test scripts go unnoticed. They hum away in the background of your development cycle free from intervention, silently churning hours of would-be human engineer time and resources into efficient, quantifiable, reliable, predictable results.

Successful software development projects that embrace the advantages of Agile methodologies rely on careful planning and execution. The cycle of coding, testing and refining a product through repeated iterations works only if the underlying automated test scripts keep producing results without drama.

We are all in this together. That is the accepted philosophy that underpins the continued growth of the software development industry’s twin 21st-century efficiencies - Agile and DevOps.

What is less recognized is the role QA plays in enhancing the flow of innovation and production within the two models. Quality assurance testing is the common link that ensures continuity of purpose through the entire product journey from inspiration to end-user experience.

Software testing is a continuously evolving sphere. Often, testers only have hours to test a software and as a result, QA engineers tend to opt for automation and parallelization. Enter Docker containers. Dockers have revamped the way testing is integrated into the CI/CD pipeline: the multi-container testing approach eliminates time and resource-based bottlenecks.

You may not realize it, but you have all the answers to find the right software testing tools right there in front of you. Even if you are unfamiliar with the names of the dozens of automation and manual testing tools currently available, you already have the information needed to maximize their application.

That is because you know your product better than anyone else. The first and most important step in selecting the right software testing tools is understanding the application at hand. Every project is different, every test environment is unique and every development team has its own strengths and preferences.

No automation service ever left a comment in a report that read: “Think we could do better here.” When you test using binary software, you get left with “yes” or “no” answers—never insights.

Automation plays an absolutely critical role in your software testing, but it does have its limits. To push beyond the functional criteria of “it works” and into the user experience simulation of “it is worthwhile,” you need to engage the human element.

Automation requires a lot of manual effort. Before you push a single test case through the precision rigors of an automation test suite, you have to account for and describe every potential.

Machines are tools. They are not thinkers. They do not recognize the genius in your coding or the end-user experience at the market edge of your product.

In fact, no matter how strong your code is, if you do not have the right test automation framework in place, your test will be brittle and it will break.