Are your Testing Processes Effective? | TechVision Unleashed - Quality Assurance

Coming up with the third article from the TechVision Unleashed right after Mobile and Backend (event included), here we are with the focus Quality Assurance. No great digital product is built alone, so the communication between all these departments is essential.

Keep on reading to see if the way you envision the ideal QA process. Take this tried and tested advice from Dragos Dumitras, our Head of QA. Explaining en detail, Dragos comes to you for you QA processes clarity.

It becomes increasingly important for businesses to produce high-quality products and services in today's fast-paced technology world. Quality assurance (QA) guarantees that software, systems, and processes meet or exceed customers' expectations. I'll go over the critical components of a successful QA process, including as planning, test design, execution, and continuous improvement. Organizations can achieve excellence in quality assurance by focusing these important components.

What exactly is Quality Assurance? 

Quality assurance is an array of operations designed to ensure that a product or service fulfils the criteria and quality standards. The primary purpose of quality assurance is to ensure a constant level of quality throughout the development or production cycle. To accomplish this, QA entails using established procedures, standards, and best practices to monitor and enhance the end product's quality, resulting in improved customer satisfaction.

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How do I assemble to have a Quality Assurance Process?

Here are the key steps typically involved in a quality assurance process:

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1.Get your requirement in order

In the initial phase, gathering all requirements clearly and concisely is essential to establish a common understanding. This process helps to gain insights into the project's scope and shapes the QA strategy.

2.Speed means nothing without direction

Making a test plan and strategy document is essential in the second step. The test plan is a detailed document that outlines the areas and actions of software testing and contains testing objectives, scope, risk mitigation, defect tracking, and entry/exit criteria. A higher-level document known as the test strategy describes the test levels, procedures, modules that will be tested, documentation formats, test processes, and tools. 

3.Create scenarios, just in case

The focus switches to developing test cases and scenarios for each user story or issue established throughout the sprint during the following phase. This essential phase should be finished before testing to ensure effective test planning.

4.It's only complicated if you're not organized

To ensure that the newly implemented feature has no negative effects on other components, we developed a sophisticated strategy for the testing phase called the feature validation process, which entails both running test cases and test scenarios that have already been created and using specific testing techniques (integration testing, exploratory testing and so on).

5.Write it down

‍Identifying and documenting failures is one of the most essential steps in the quality assurance process. The QA team pays close attention to spotting deviations from expected behavior during testing, classifying the defects according to their type and importance, and prioritizing them in order of priority for fixing.

6.Run again

Once the issues have been resolved, we execute our internal bug validation process, which entails rerunning the test to see if the defect can still be reproduced. Using this technique, we can ensure that all bugs have been found and effectively fixed before the software or product is available to users.

7.Build resilience

Following successfully fixing and implementing all the identified issues, we conducted a thorough round of regression testing and a significant amount of exploratory testing in a stable and controlled environment. This rigorous testing strategy aimed to confirm that the newly added features had no negative consequences on the existing functionalities, ensuring the system's general resilience and dependability.

8.Stay proactive

After a successful release, we diligently focused on observing and tracking potential problems. We used powerful technologies like Sentry and other analytics packages to achieve this. Thanks to these monitoring and tracking mechanisms, we proactively identified and resolved any issues, mistakes, or performance bottlenecks that might arise in the live environment.

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3 important processes employed by Linnify in Quality Assurance form the sturdy tree trunk 

Our approach to software development is built around quality assurance, and we've established three key processes that form the foundation of our QA architecture. These procedures, which include feature validation, bug validation, and regression testing process, ensure that our software solutions are agile, dependable, and provide a seamless user experience.

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Feature validation

Initially, we run the test cases that have been produced and recorded in TestRail, our test management system. These test cases address several facets of the functionality being assessed. If a test case fails during execution, our committed QA team immediately opens a bug problem in Jira, our issue-tracking system. This enables us to effectively track and address any errors found, resulting in a seamless certification process. When all test cases have been completed successfully, and without major problems, we test the feature's integration with the other components. This phase entails extensive exploratory or integration testing to evaluate the feature's compatibility and effective operation within the larger software ecosystem.

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The feature is moved to the Sign Off column after extensive testing, including individual validation and integration checks. This means the feature has successfully completed the rigorous testing procedure and is now considered suitable for release.

Consider taking a look at the following illustration for a visual representation of this procedure:

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Bug validation

In our company, the bug validation procedure is critical to guarantee the completeness and quality of issue remedies. It consists of a sequence of actions designed to retest a reported bug to establish its reproducibility and the patch's effectiveness. Here's a full breakdown of our bug validation procedure:

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1. Retesting for reproduction

• When a defect is reported, our QA team begins the bug validation process by retesting the bug using the reproduction procedures provided. This phase determines whether or not the bug can be consistently recreated.
  
  

2.Component testing

• If a bug fails to reproduce, it is not immediately transmitted to the Sign Off column. Instead, we run additional tests on the component where the bug was discovered. This testing is done using exploratory methodologies, which allows us to see if any new bugs were introduced inadvertently due to the fix.
  
  

3.Verification and Sign-Off

• If no new issues are detected after extensive component testing, the bug is considered successfully validated and can be forwarded to the Sign-Off column. This indicates that the bug patch has been thoroughly tested, verifying its resolution and readiness for release.

Regression testing

When? 

Regression testing is performed to determine whether the updates or changes have caused new defects in the existing functions. This step would ensure the unification of the software. Regression testing is key to improving the overall quality of the product and user experience

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The regression process takes place before each release, and it is performed in a stable environment:

• for mobile apps: production build
• for web platforms: staging/production deployment

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How? 

We choose appropriate test scenarios that cover crucial areas or components that are prone to failure. These test cases are run to ensure that previously validated functionality continues to perform as intended. Any deviations or discrepancies are investigated, and if problems are discovered, bug reports are generated and quickly fixed. To maintain the stability and reliability of the software, regression tests are performed iteratively at each release.

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That's a wrap for this episode of TechVision Unleashed.

Stay tuned for more insightful tech articles as we have a lot planned, ready to help you reach the success you deserve.

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