Quality control is one of the most important aspects of software development, especially if you’re in the business of creating custom software for clients and customers to use. Without the proper quality assurance testing, you run the risk that your application could be suffering from fatal flaws or not appealing to the target audience. But how do you implement quality assurance into the software development life cycle (SDLC)? Here are three essential ways to have quality assurance in custom software.
1. Test Automation
Quality assurance doesn’t require manual labor (although it should be a key focus, which we’ll touch on later). In fact, you can actually automate the testing process to identify key issues without requiring as much on your end, which can be extremely helpful when you’re making minor adjustments to your software. Automation testing involves using specialized tools that assess individual or multiple components of an application to provide you with an overview of how your application is performing.
What’s important to remember is that automation testing is just as involved as an SDLC, requiring you to identify your scope, create a plan of action, and select your ideal testing tools. You’ll also need to determine the types of software tests you want to carry out, including functional tests, end-to-end tests, and regression tests, just to name a few.
2. Performance Testing
Aptly named, performance testing is a form of quality assurance that aims to assess the performance of applications, guaranteeing that they meet expectations. While performance testing encompasses the functionality of the entire software, most performance testing is designed to evaluate areas like speed, responsiveness, stability, and scalability under a given workload. Much like with other forms of quality assurance testing, it’s important to develop a plan of action and create an approach that helps you test all of these areas successfully. Then, once you’ve identified any issues in your applications, you can remedy them and run the tests again to ensure they’ve been fixed.
3. Manual Testing
While all of the above forms of quality assurance are necessary and can help you save time or assess the capabilities of an application after it’s been developed, you still need humans to manually go through software to make sure that everything looks correct. After all, user experience is a big part of the reason why some consumers will choose one software over another. If your software is difficult to use and understand or looks unappealing, clients will go elsewhere. Have your own team tackle the manual testing of your application or consider outsourcing manual testing to skilled talent to make sure that it’s ready to go in front of customers and clients.
Developing your own custom software can be an exciting prospect, but quality assurance can often be overlooked or treated as an afterthought. Doing this will delay or even disrupt your project. Make sure to prioritize quality assurance and get started by using the three essential methods of quality assurance listed above. Having quality assurance in custom software is vital, and thankfully, it can be achieved.
