Our recipe for efficient QA services

Quality assurance is a crucial aspect of the software development process that involves monitoring and ensuring that software products and services meet project’s standards of quality. Here are some reasons why quality assurance is important in software development:

1. Reduces the cost of errors: Quality assurance helps to identify and mitigate errors, defects, and bugs in software applications before they reach the end-users. This means that issues can be resolved before they become more complex and difficult to solve and can save the software development team a significant amount of time and resources that would otherwise be spent on correcting errors and fixing issues.
2. Enhances customer satisfaction: When software applications are thoroughly tested and meet the quality standards of end-users, it enhances their satisfaction with the product. This leads to increased loyalty, positive feedback, and increased revenue for the software development company.
3. Improves software performance: Quality assurance helps to identify issues that may affect the performance of software applications. This includes things like slow loading times, crashes, and other issues that can impact user experience. By identifying and fixing these issues, software developers can ensure that their applications run smoothly and efficiently.
4. Ensures compliance with industry standards: Quality assurance helps to ensure that software products and services meet industry standards and regulations.

Quality assurance is an essential part of the software development process that helps to identify and mitigate issues that may impact the quality and performance of software applications.

By investing in quality assurance, software development companies can save time and resources, enhance customer satisfaction, improve software performance, and ensure compliance with industry standards.

QA with a Salt&Pepper twist

In Salt&Pepper we work in an agile environment, meaning we’re blending STLC (software testing life cycle) phases into our project timelines. STLC is a systematic process of testing software to ensure that it meets the required quality standards. Here are the typical stages in the STLC that we integrate into our processes:

1. Requirements Analysis: In this stage,the requirements of the software are gathered and analyzed to identify testable requirements. The testing team works with the development team to ensure that the requirements are testable and that the testing process can be easily integrated into the development process. In this phase, errors can be found in this analysis, that can be solved before implementation.
2. Test Planning: The testing team creates a test plan that outlines the testing strategy, test objectives, test scope, test schedules, and test deliverables. The test plan is reviewed and approved by stakeholders to ensure that it meets the project requirements.
3. Test Case Design: In this stage,the testing team creates test cases,test scenarios, and test scripts based on the test plan. Test cases are designed to cover all functional and non-functional aspects of the software. Test scripts are created to automate the testing process, which can reduce the time and effort required for testing.
4. Test Environment: Setup of the test environment is an independent activity and can be started along with Test Case Development. This is an essential part of the manual testing procedure as without environment testing is not possible. Environment setup requires a group of essential software and hardware to create a test environment. The testing team is not involved in setting up the testing environment, it’s senior developers who create it.
5. Test Execution: The testing team executes the test cases and test scripts to identify defects or issues in the software. The testing team reports the defects to the development team, and they are fixed and retested until the software is bug-free.
6. Test Closure: In this stage,the testing team prepares the test closure report, which includes the summary of the testing process, test results, and any lessons learned. The report is reviewed by stakeholders to identify areas of improvement and make recommendations for future testing projects.

By following these STLC phases, our Q&A team can ensure that softwares meets the required quality standards. Since Quality Assurance services are an integral part of ensuring the success of a product, here are some guidelines that we try to follow in S&P, besides the phases of the STLC:

- Quality planning: creation of a comprehensive quality plan that outlines the testing strategy, test objectives, test scope and test deliverables; this plan can be reviewed and approved by the client to ensure that it meets their requirements and expectations.
- Continuous improvement: continuously review and improve the quality assurance process to ensure that it meets the changing needs of the client. The quality assurance team identifies areas for improvement and makes recommendations to enhance the quality of the software development process.
- Establish Quality metrics: Quality metrics should be established to align with the quality standards and the quality assurance plan. These metrics should be measurable and tracked regularly to ensure that quality is being maintained.
- Maintain a culture of Quality: A culture of quality is fostered within the company, where quality is seen as a core value and a shared responsibility. This culture is reinforced through communication, recognition of quality achievements, and the adoption of continuous improvement initiatives.
- Defining Quality Assurance Standards: create,update and improve policies and procedures that an organization uses to ensure that its products and services meet the quality standards of its customers.

Tips&Tricks from our QA team

1. Create a test plan that describes the scope, estimations, deliverables, resources and schedule, as well as entry and exit criteria.

2. Create a test strategy in which we should include the testing approach, testing objectives, testing procedures, coverage, testing scope, what needs to be done and how we accomplish it.

3. Have a separate test environment, so that code changes don’t affect the testing.

4. Complex Test case design in our Test Case Management Tool (Qase) based on requirements and acceptance criteria or Basic Test case design in our Test Case Management Tool (Qase) based on design if requirements are not available.

5. Smoke testing done one very build received by the QA team-a few hours spent to see if the basic functionalities of the application work as expected.

5. Regression testing done one very build that will be released on production environment – a few days spent to see if old functionalities and new features are working together as expected.

7. Exploratory testing done whenever the time allows it, to ensure the discovery of edge cases.

8. Create reports to ensure visibility on what was tested and what the results are, for every sprint/ regression cycle.

9. Define Clear Quality Standards: Establish clear and measurable quality standards for your software project. These standards should align with the project’s objectives and stakeholder expectations.

Additionally, if QA is done on larger projects or the project’s needs requests to, we also recommend other processes:

- Test Early and Continuously: Start testing as early as possible in the development lifecycle. This helps identify issues and bugs at an early stage, making them easier and cheaper to fix. Continuously test and retest throughout the development process to catch regressions and ensure ongoing quality.
- Utilize automation: Leverage test automation tools and frameworks to automate repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks. This includes automated unit tests, integration tests, regression tests, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
- Perform Performance and Scalability Testing: In addition to functional testing, conduct performance and scalability testing to evaluate how your software performs under different workloads and user scenarios. This helps identify bottlenecks, optimize resource usage, and ensure the system can handle anticipated loads.
- Prioritize Security Testing: Incorporate security testing throughout the development process to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities. Conduct regular security assessments, penetration testing, and code analysis to minimize the risk of security breaches.
- Perform other testing types, based on the needs of the project (usability, compatibility, etc).
- Monitor and Analyze Metrics: Establish relevant quality metrics, such as defect density, test coverage, and mean time to failure. Continuously monitor and analyze these metrics to gain insights into the overall quality of the software and identify areas for improvement.

What our QA team can do for you:

- QA Manual:
- QA automation/ Programming Languages/ Tech Stack:

Other tools: Git; Jenkins; Postman; PowerBI; Kibana; Grafana; MongoDB; AzureSQL; Tableau; App Center/ Test Flight

Our QA teams have mastered both manual and automation testing and are familiar with different scaled projects from startups to enterprise across the world. If you are looking for any of the services above, we’re the team for you.

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