QASource Blog

Are you doing all you can to make your software stand out? Every day of every year, 6,140 new software apps are released on Google Play for Android alone, according to Statista. Switch to the Apple app store, and you will find a further 1,434 added daily. And that is just the mobile market. Those are the raw numbers behind the clichés we hear about “ever-increasing competition” and “rapidly evolving markets.”

As developers, you are not judged solely on your end product. Every step along the way to delivery is monitored and measured against software quality control standards. All your engineering processes, methods, activities and work items are subject to scrutiny. In today’s environment, you can get it wrong even though you, ultimately, got it right. In the realm of quality assurance, the expectations are that we understand both the need for and the burden of meeting such high software quality control standards. We also know that the way you design your software quality control plan is critical to your professional success.

Free often comes at a cost. In terms of open-source test management tools, that cost is the quality limitation placed on your QA. Even the savings you seek by choosing a free test management source disappear if a critical bug is missed, your launch date is delayed or you are forced to make expensive fixes later in production. While the well-established open-source test management tools have survived a decade or more in the software testing industry, their role has been greatly reduced. The simple irony is, it is hard to achieve maximum QA value with a free product.

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.

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.

Digital technology faces its sternest test when it is applied to our health. The benefits of speed, accuracy and automation are balanced against the responsibilities of consistency, reliability and mobility. Those who work in the medical software domain are charged with walking the line between innovation and regulation. Every potential advance in medical device sophistication faces a gauntlet of regulations before it ever gets tested within the realities of the commercial market.

Agile teams produce better products because they see the bigger picture. Involving those with a business perspective along with your technical team during the software testing process helps maintain focus on where all the hard work is headed. Adding an expert QA team to that mix only improves matters. Now, you have a diverse range of skill sets, experience, and perspective to round out your product offering.

Outsourcing QA leads to a higher-quality product and faster releases. It allows you to ramp up the skills and resources of your software development team when needed to ensure you realize the full potential of your product. Managing the talent and input of an outsourced team of experts requires a keen mind for organization. In addition to the technical aspects of launching a QA process, you also must balance the communication and workflows of both your internal and external teams.