We talk a lot about why a whole team of talent is required to make a successful application, as opposed to only one developer.
In order to build versatile and well-rounded custom software, you need a versatile and well-rounded team. Part of that team includes the vital component of Quality Assurance.
Here are the areas in which Quality Assurance (QA) benefits a custom software development project.
The Design Phase
During the design phase of a software development project, QA will review the functional specifications of the application and write use cases. Use cases are designed to test the different ways someone would use the application.
Often times, QA will also look at the designs and will provide input about the functionality and the overall user experience.
The Development Cycle
Development is truly where the QA magic happens. Throughout the development cycle, new features are pushed out to the test environment (a simulation of your application). This is where they not only test for the correct functionality, but ensure that your requirements are being properly adhered to. And most importantly, they test it out to make sure that the application will make sense to the user and that they have a great experience using it.
It’s during the testing of the application that QA looks for bugs and issues with the application to squash them. They, along with rest of the team, take bug squashing seriously. They create test suites to conduct thorough, repetitive testing with many rounds of feedback from not only QA, but clients as well. Bugs caused by the development team that make it to production are a cardinal sin. It should be the thing you dread the most.
That being said, there is no such thing as 100% test coverage, and unfortunately, the occasional bug will make it through production. That’s where Support and Enhancement comes into play and why it’s so important.
Support and Enhancement
In terms of custom software development, support is something you need in response to something that has occurred in your business that affects your application, and enhancement refers to a new feature that you would like to add. QA plays a large role in the support and enhancement phase of an application.
If a client reports an issue with their app, it’s delegated to QA to investigate. Once they identify the root cause, they work with the development team to fix the problem (squash the bug!). Both QA and the development team take production issues extremely seriously and they always work diligently to resolve issues as soon as possible.
Much like during the development phase, in terms of Enhancement, QA checks that any new features are implemented correctly while confirming that nothing else within the application will be negatively affected by the changes.
Along with operations and design and development, Quality Assurance plays a vital role in the success of any custom application from inception to installation. Don’t go it alone, if you want to build a versatile, well-rounded app, make sure you partner with a versatile, well-rounded team!