We share software QA (quality assurance) best practices that you can use to enhance your software product. Read some helpful tips and explore our quality assurance outsourcing services for in-depth quality assurance support.
Competition is forcing companies to grow and innovate faster. In response, companies – from mature startups to established software vendors – are trying to release new features faster to meet customer demand and win new markets. A common problem in this competition is that the software testing processes that companies previously relied on no longer support the newly growth strategies. And because of inefficient testing practices, internal software test teams or software QA vendors are failing to ensure product quality in rapidly evolving environments.
So how can you, as a product company, win customers by providing the necessary features while maintaining high product quality? Our experience in software testing suggests that you start implementing a systematic testing process that fits the specifics of your software and project.
Software product testing
Create a Software Product Testing Process
By a testing process, we mean a set of quality assurance activities that are systematically performed that lay the foundation for improving product quality and increasing the effectiveness of testing teams. A typical testing process includes the following steps and can be modified according to your unique product design and specifications:
- Analyze software requirements.
- Test planning (including planning for non-functional testing activities such as performance, usability, compatibility testing).
- Test design.
- Run tests and report bugs.
- Backtest and regression testing.
- Release and user acceptance testing.
A model testing process with the above steps can significantly improve the quality of your product. For example, the structured testing process implemented by Trustify Technology for a QA consultancy helped the client reduce software product testing time by 25% and ensure that any defects in production were not significant.
However, there are startups and product startups that seek to delay software testing until later stages of the software development life cycle. We strongly believe that this option is not realistic if testing is postponed until the first version of the product is released and the project team starts working on improving the product. Therefore, it is important not only to develop your product faster, but also to find and fix errors that appear early in the early stages of product development.
In terms of product quality and project costs, it is more efficient to start testing earlier. And once the first version of your product is released, you will be able to grow faster because you have a quality foundation to build on.
Increasing testing process efficiency further
To support product development and growth as well as accelerate testing, consider the followings:
Introducing an appropriate share of test automation
Our practice shows that just test automation at the UI level can help reduce testing time by 25% without affecting the quality of the software. However, to ensure that your test automation initiative is successful, you need to carefully assess the feasibility of test automation for your project, distinguishing between test cases that need to be automated and the test levels at which it is necessary to decide which test to run a script (API, UI). Also, choose the right test automation framework and design a test automation architecture that delivers ROI. So if you feel that you lack these skills, we recommend finding a vendor that specializes in test automation to help with your project.
Optimize the time required to perform testing activities by ensuring that critical software modules are properly reviewed.
To do this, analyze the functional modules of the software based on the probability and impact of errors and classify the software modules accordingly. Focus on testing high-risk software modules and optimize the effort required to test low-risk modules – these can only be done through unit testing or indirect testing.
Increasing the share of tests executed at the unit and API levels
If your goal is to shorten release cycles with frequent software updates, choose unit tests and APIs level tests as the primary means of validating changes made to application logic. While tests at the UI level are quite difficult and expensive to maintain, tests implemented at the unit and API levels are relatively easy to write and do not take much time to run. They help you understand the quality of changes made to the application and prevent bugs from occurring later in the delivery cycle.
Integrating incremental, automatically triggered testing activities throughout a unit and API levels
Integrate test automation frameworks with automation servers such as Jenkins, Bamboo, etc. will enable automated testing executions and run tests in parallel.
Fast delivery of a quality product
Software product companies must ensure the development of quality products to outperform the competition. A well-designed testing process will lay the foundation for continuous product development while maintaining high quality. For over 15 years, Trustify Technology, a top software development company in Vietnam, has helped companies deliver quality products that quickly win over customers. If you need help designing your ideal testing process or implementing testing activities for your software product, don’t hesitate to ask us.
Trustify technology’s test automation engineers will help you assess the feasibility of a test automation initiative for your project and design the optimal test automation strategy.