Quality assurance is a critical component that underpins the success and sustainability of software products or business ventures. It ensures that a product meets industry standards. Quality assurance strives to execute both back-end and front-end processes efficiently. This assists in delivering products and services in a timely manner and within budget. One of the pivotal methods utilized for quality assurance is regression testing.
Regression testing entangles retesting previously developed and tested software to check for any new bugs or issues that may have arisen. This blog will explore the significance of regression testing in quality assurance and how it can be utilized to review both your own and others’ work. But before that, let us have a brief understanding of quality assurance and its importance in software testing.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is a process of ensuring that your business outcomes stay in line with your business objectives. The aim of quality assurance is to not only provide the best possible customer experience but also to maintain consistency in the long term.
Here the question arises how?
Quality assurance provides you with deep insight into your customers’ requirements, wants, and satisfaction. It also provides insight into the performance of the team. It authorizes tailoring the support strategies, adjusting the focus on what is required to be improved, the perfectionism of the services, and boosting the motivation of the employees for better performance.
However, to adequately implement quality assurance in your organization, you need to understand what you expect and anticipate from it. Once you will be able to understand your purpose for quality assurance, you can target a specific category.
What is Quality Management?
Quality management is a strategically-oriented approach to ensuring and maintaining high levels of quality assurance. This incorporates planning and evaluation, assisting in changing quality assurance scores from negative to positive via targeted action.
Nevertheless, quality assurance processes are essential for an organization to deliver services that are productive and outstanding. Quality management extends beyond conventional approaches. It helps to flag potential quality issues and to take action to guarantee that other issues across your organization are fixed.
For instance, the QA team might spot calls that end with a suggestion for another product, increasing the likelihood that the customer spends more than they initially planned. While it may not be an explicit requirement to check this particular factor for quality assurance, sharing this additional information with management could potentially lead to improvements in staff training practices.
The below-listed approach should be implemented for quality management:
- Gather data for analysis
- Examine the data against the quality assurance standards
- Make individual recommendations for quality advancement
- Improve the overall criteria and procedure by suggesting strategic modifications
- Repeat steps that had a favorable impact on customer experience
Importance of Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is a crucial process for checking that your services, software products, and team approach are in compliance with legal regulations. It also reviews whether you are maintaining consistency in your product outcome or not. Sticking to your standards is essential for meeting customer expectations and positioning yourself for growth.
Ensuring uniform service across all delivery channels by calibrating your internal teams is crucial for achieving success in your organization. Quality assurance can help you to identify opportunities for organizational change. Quality management plays a pivotal role in this context. Instead of perceiving quality assurance as a mere checkbox activity, it should be recognized as a valuable function that can identify areas requiring enhanced coaching and structural improvements.
Significance of Regression Testing in QA
Regression testing is crucial in QA because it helps pinpoint any new issues or bugs that may have been introduced during the development or modification of a software application. When incorporating new features or updates into a program, there is always a potential risk of inadvertently disrupting existing functionality. By conducting regression testing, you can guarantee that the modifications made don’t negatively impact the existing functionality of the software.
Furthermore, regression testing authorizes you to verify that any bugs or issues discovered in previous versions of the software have been successfully fixed. This measure aids in preventing the recurrence of identified issues and guarantees the ongoing functionality of the software.
By reviewing your own or others’ work for quality assurance utilizing regression testing, you can have confidence in the reliability and functionality of the software. It helps to catch any potential issues before they reach end-users, saving time, money, and frustration. So, whether you are a developer, tester, or project manager, incorporating regression testing into your quality assurance process is a vital step toward delivering high-quality software that meets user expectations.
How Do You Review Your Own Or Others’ Work For Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is essential because it aids an organization in setting standards and guidelines, such as those for training, monitoring, documentation, and audits during production. It is a continuous endeavor to improve and ensure software quality. Quality assurance guidelines keep products in scope and on track. This is achieved by aligning team members on collaboration methods and practices, like code reviews in software development.
Quality assurance is a set of activities and processes, named quality standards, performed during and after product development. The quality assurance professionals help to ensure that the development team is creating a high-quality software product and seeks to solve issues experienced by end-users after a product hits the market. The professionals also ensure the software product is advancing toward final release and that the organization is adhering to quality standards.
Here are a few approaches and techniques to review your own or other work for quality assurance:
Conduct Cloud Testing on a Regular Basis
Cloud testing implies the verification of product quality on a real-device cloud. Quality assurance teams can access numerous real mobile devices and desktops for testing websites and applications in real time. Due to the utilization of cloud-based servers, these devices are constantly accessible online. This helps in facilitating effective cloud testing.
The process takes the complete testing process online, sparing quality assurance professionals the hassle of extensive setup and maintenance procedures, geographical limitations, limited browsers/device/OS coverage, and the like. Cloud testing brings the benefits of high scalability, low cost, and availability. It authorizes web and mobile testing in various environments and numerous machines without building the infrastructure.
The increasing popularity of cloud testing has resulted in the rise of a wide array of cloud-based testing tools, such as LambdaTest.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform to run manual and automated tests at scale. The platform allows you to perform both real-time and automation testing across 3000+ environments and real mobile devices.
Set Up the Right Quality Assurance Environments
Setting up the suited test environment guarantees successful software testing. If the testing environment is established correctly, it may lead to both monetary and time loss. Furthermore, the selection of the testing environment should align with the specifications furnished by the client for the application. It should be identical at both the client and server ends.
Not testing in a staging environment may result in inaccurate testing outcomes. It is always recommended to pre-configure the testing environment and other testing components well in advance. Additionally, having a testing and staging environment ensures that the software product performs as intended in the real world.
Conduct Test Cases and Tests Coverage Review Sessions
Quality assurance is a proactive process focused on prevention and furnishing assurance that quality needs will be achieved. Quality control is a reactive method that focuses on the detection of problems. To ensure a robust QA process and consistently meet the standards you strive for, it is crucial to prioritize both aspects.
Boris Beizer, in his book Software Testing Techniques, coined the term pesticide paradox. The term refers to the phenomenon wherein software becomes increasingly resistant to testing as testing efforts are intensified. This implies that when the same set of test cases are repeatedly conducted, they become incapable of pinpointing new defects.
To effectively address the pesticide paradox, it is crucial to consistently review and update your set of test cases. This means adding a new set of test cases, identifying gaps, and deleting existing ones.
Conducting Manual Regression Testing
Regression testing is a method of testing that entangles checking for any new bugs or issues in previously developed and tested software. The task can be performed manually, wherein an individual systematically navigates through the software, carefully examining for any potential errors or inconsistencies. Manual regression testing is essential because it authorizes us to catch any new issues that may have arisen due to changes or updates in the software. By reviewing our own or others’ work through manual regression testing, we can ensure that the software is working adequately and fulfills the desired standards of quality.
Utilizing Checklists and Guidelines
One adequate approach to reviewing work for quality assurance is by utilizing checklists and guidelines. These tools serve as a roadmap, directing us through the vital steps and guaranteeing that all critical aspects are addressed. Checklists help to stay organized and focused, diminishing the chances of overlooking important details. They furnish a systematic approach to review work, making it easier to pinpoint any errors or areas that need improvement.
By adhering to a comprehensive checklist, QA professionals can effectively verify the presence of all essential components and confirm that the work meets the designated standards. On the other hand, guidelines furnish specific instructions and criteria for evaluating the quality of work. They outline the expectations and requirements, authorizing the QA professionals to compare the work against these benchmarks. By utilizing checklists and guidelines, they can approach their review process in a structured and consistent manner, facilitating accuracy and thoroughness in their assessments.
Define Quality Assurance for your Team
Before making any alterations in the quality assurance process, ask your team about it. Your team should be comfortable in following the new set of rules. This step plays a vital role in ensuring that the process works correctly before and after product release.
Generally, the product owner or development team lead is responsible for ensuring that QA takes place. These days, in many organizations, there is no separate QA department. This is the reason why it is paramount to have a robust QA process in place. Having clear expectations and approaches across a development team will ensure quality assurance is executed throughout the development process.
It is vital for the quality assurance professional to emphasize the importance of QA in the software development lifecycle. An adequate and robust QA process improves software quality, reduces engineering costs, and increases customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Quality assurance plays a vital role in every software project, regardless of whether it is our own or someone else’s. By adhering to a methodical approach and conducting comprehensive reviews, quality assurance professionals can guarantee that the final product conforms to the highest quality standards. Communication and collaboration with team members also play a significant role in successful quality assurance. By continuously reviewing and improving the processes, QA professionals can strive for excellence in their work and deliver the best possible results for their clients or customers.
