The importance of Quality Assurance in software

What is QA?

Quality assurance is a series of actions for guaranteeing quality in the development process of the software. It establishes and maintains a set of requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products.

Why is QA important?

The importance of software testing is critical. A lot of times this process is overlooked, hence, the product and business suffer tremendously.

QA is a way of avoiding mistakes or defects in software to reach the production environment, and affect the user experience.

A defect or a bug is a faulty piece of code that causes the system to fail to perform its requirements. These can unintentionally end up in production and have a big impact on the quality of the software. The user experience is heavily affected resulting in lower conversion rates.

Reasons why QA brings value to the project and to the entire organization:

1. It saves you money and time

If defects and bugs are found in the early stages of the software development cycles it will cost less money and time to fix. The return on investment is quicker.

Here’s a chart to show how the costs to fix bugs and defects increase as they are found later in the development lifecycle:

2. Competitive and stable product

All companies want a successful product that runs smoothly without crashing and is reliable, without any defects or bugs. QA engineers ensure that the system meets all the requirements as far as functionality, reliability, usability, security, performance, and so on goes. Testing is done on multiple platforms, browsers and environments, so that the product will have a high compatibility rate.

Another role of the QA team is to develop a continuous process which will enable the prevention of recurring issues, hence, improving the quality of the software. High qualified software will mean a competitive product on the market.

3. Safety and security

A software should be secure, trustworthy and efficient, especially when dealing with personal and private user data. No company wants to be responsible for data breach or loss of customer’s and user’s business data.

4. Protect your reputation

If you launch a buggy and unusable product on the market, the end-user will have a bad experience using it. Fixing the problems after they end up in production doesn’t help either. It will be very difficult to ensure users that the issues have been resolved and they can use the product again. The first impressions are very hard to change.

5. Customer satisfaction

The ultimate goal is to give the best customer satisfaction, and quality assurance ensures that. Having a solid product in this saturated market will help you gain trustworthy customers. Users that have an awesome customer experience are your best advertisers. Customer trust is not easy to earn, especially when the product is glitchy and not 100% functional. Again, a QA team is your best choice for delivering the best customer experience possible.

Conclusion

Quality assurance is mandatory within a project. It assures the product’s success in a very competitive and saturated market. It helps companies bring development costs down significantly, it saves a lot of time and protects both the company and the end-user from malicious intents.