Friday, 28 November 2014

What makes Software Quality Assurance a constant challenge as well as a formidable opportunity?

The constant pace of change has altered the parameters of Software Quality. The business advantage of cloud, the rising usage of smart phones and the enormous participation in social networks has multiplied the digital interactions making it challenging for businesses to keep the applications stable. With the inclusion of a new breed of devices and UI features in the global IT ecosystem, Quality now demands newer benchmarks of performance, security, compatibility and globalization.
The imposing dimensions of software quality are so overwhelming that software testing needs to be one step ahead of the defects with comprehensive coverage, smart reports and business friendly testing processes with minimal interruptions to the process workflow. Priority based requirement analysis and early integration have become absolute essentials to formulate test strategies that align business objectives with the testing services.
Quality Assurance levels build confidence on the outcomes of investments in new as well as running IT initiatives. Moreover, QA gives the business stakeholders drive ahead with innovative products/services and a faster time to market. On the same hand, the transformation brought on by Agile models makes it imperative to accelerate testing practices to deliver the requirements.
The fiascos of defects which are finding their way into the news headlines have made enterprises realise the extent of importance of having software testing in the business strategy. From long term business goals to ad hoc solutions, the priority on software testing is higher than ever. For example, feasibility studies which are part of software testing are known to have helped organizations restructure their Infrastructure and processes to improve optimization.
Devops is one of the most critical areas which requires greater focus in order to reduce post production defect density and aid rapid releases. The constant upgrades and transformation in terms of integration with newer information systems is essential to survive and succeed. This transformation requires the confluence of business and technology which determines the nature of the outcomes.
In such a volatile environment, organizations soon realised it was counterproductive to have an in-house test departments for very obvious reasons. Test requirements keep changing as new and new systems and requirements emerge. In addition, testing requires comprehensive capabilities including from dedicated infrastructure, device banks, cloud capabilities and specialist career testers whose expertise depends on test engineering expertise over a wide variety of business environments.
In addition, the compliance standards set by financial institutions and industry standards make it an essential to have third party assessments to eliminate the scope of bias in testing and assessment practices.
The ideal solution would be independent software testing Services Company with formidable test capabilities, test tool partnerships and a rich pool of professional software testers with domain and technology expertise. An engagement with independent testing not only strengthens QA but also extends the improvement of business outcomes with competitive business advantage derived from exposure to industry specific testing experience.

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

QA Staffing for Software Testing That Complements Time To Market


 Since technology is increasingly becoming convergent, especially in the way businesses are created, run, maintained and transformed, Quality Assurance has assumed multiple dimensions ranging from Information Security, Financial Messaging Standards, Integration, Migration, Adoption and Business logic in addition to the conventional test requirements to predict the application behaviour. Hence a faster time to market and a more stringent QA need to coexist and complement each other in a business strategy.

Quality is a consistent integration of well measured efforts across all operations that converge to produce unified outcomes. In addition to advanced systems, quality depends on the imagination of the stakeholders and the way to make things better, faster and 'effortlessly' usable for the intended users.

With a lot of concurrent updates taking place in the industry, the only way enterprises succeed is by testing the levels of Quality Assurance of their IT initiatives. Testing serves a variety of business objectives from making informed decisions, well calculated investments to well defined launches and releases. Because of the widespread access to internet, success depends on being the first one to reach the customer or a potential customer and offer a great experience.

Quality Assurance has evolved from being a corporate commitment to being a mandatory compliance by financial institutions, governments and regulatory authorities. The visibility of quality is also undergoing distribution from the final product/service quality to the quality of the production environment, quality of the processes involved and the quality of the integration of the components of the IT system. Having a computing system with inadequate levels of QA has been known to have a direct impact on the business outcomes.

Very often, quality also requires a balance of thrust and restraint among the various processes to achieve the desired results. This requires rapid QA staffing capability that supports a business environment. The influence of factors like Big Data, Mobility, ERP migrations also has to be taken into consideration to define and maintain Quality standards that in turn keep changing with the changes in the usage patterns and market scenarios.

It is evident that business environments need to be strengthened with highly customized Software Testing components managed by professionals with cross functional test expertise. Unlike the burdensome conventional export of test requirements or cost intensive in-house test departments, enterprises have begun to leverage the model of colocated testing which brings the third party test expertise into the development environment while cutting down the barriers of time and space.