Introduction
Just imagine — you have developed your software, app, or website and you are ready to launch. The product looks great with a polished user interface and rich functionalities. You launch it, thousands of users flood in, and in a flash — the app crashes. All the money invested, all the energy from your developers, everything fails in one moment. This scenario is entirely avoidable by understanding and incorporating the immense importance of maintaining Software Quality.
Most Apparent Reasons for App Crashes
- Generation of bugs during the time of coding
- Memory management issues
- Incorrect execution of Software lifecycle
- Lack of importance given to Software Quality & Testing
- Network management issues
- Scalability issues
- Poor integration of the software with back-end or server
What Is Software Quality?
Software Quality (SQ) is meeting the needs, expectations, and requirements of someone who is demanding software or an app. The whole motive of SQ is that the end product should be free from all possible defects, errors, or bugs. To achieve software quality, there are specific and predefined standards which need to be followed during the development process.
Loss of time and cost is directly proportional to the poor quality of software. In 2016, research found that software failures cost the U.S. economy USD $1.1 trillion in assets, affecting 4.4 billion customers and causing more than 315 years of lost time.
Software Quality Assurance (SQA)
SQA is a set of activities to ensure desired quality in the software engineering process. It is a procedure of monitoring all the methods and activities of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). SQA acts as a supportive process that provides independent assurance related to all activities and processes of SDLC.
It focuses on preventing defects or flaws in the wholesome software development process. SQA also ensures whether all approaches, techniques, methods, and processes are implemented correctly during SDLC execution. It is done by continuously comparing current procedures with appropriate, well-defined standards.
SQA executes from the pre-development stage through the ongoing development stage, working simultaneously along with SDLC. SQA is proactive and preventive in nature.
Software Quality Control (SQC)
SQC is a method of maintaining and achieving quality standards in software products with the assistance of testing against predefined standard specifications. SQC is a reactive and corrective procedure through which an undeveloped product grows into the end product.
Testing is a subset of SQC. Testing is carried out to identify bugs present in the software product. The bugs are passed to the developers, who then fix them. After debugging, the product is verified once again to meet client expectations.
The activities carried out by SQC include tracing, identifying, removing, and correcting the maximum number of possible bugs or defects. SQC is not restricted to testing only — it also includes reviews and analysis of requirements, planning, design, and test cases.
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Key Roles and Responsibilities
The roles involved in SQA and SQC differ significantly. Quality Assurance is usually managed by QA Managers and Process Engineers who focus on defining standard operating procedures (SOPs), conducting audits, and ensuring compliance. Quality Control, on the other hand, is executed by Software Testers and Test Automation Engineers who actively interact with the software to uncover bugs.
The Role of Automation
Automation bridges the gap between SQA and SQC. While SQC utilizes automated test scripts (like Selenium or Cypress) to rapidly verify software functionality, SQA utilizes automation in CI/CD pipelines to enforce code quality checks (like SonarQube) before code is even allowed to merge, effectively preventing defects proactively.
Conclusion
Software plays an essential role in ensuring sustainability in today's growing market. Businesses are progressively investing in software quality, software assurance, and testing as a way to assure return on investment. For sustainable growth of any organization, it is imperative to have Software Quality (both SQA and SQC) right from the beginning of SDLC.
