The Six Keys of Quality Assurance
No matter how good your software development team is, every software build comes with bugs. Whether it’s an error in the code or an overlooked redirect, each mistake leads to frustrations for both developers and users.
That’s why Quality Assurance (QA) is so important. QA, the process of rigorously testing, fixing, and enhancing your software, gives you the confidence that you’re releasing the best possible product. In today’s competitive market, QA helps you deliver software that exceeds user expectations from the get-go.
At Grio, we firmly believe in the importance of QA for every piece of software we produce. Our QA and DevOps teams identify issues, implement improvements, and deploy software using our Six Keys of Quality Assurance.
Functional Testing
Functional testing examines whether a website, app, or software functions as it is meant to. For example, if a user enters their login credentials, are they successfully granted access to their profile? If they fill out the website’s contact form, is their message successfully directed to the appropriate inbox?
Functional QA is paramount for user experience because it allows users to interact successfully with your software. Functional testing doesn’t analyze performance or security; instead, it’s focus is on expectation versus reality. Does the reality of the software match the guidelines of the software documentation and the expectations of the users?
Functional testing is, therefore, successful if it can answer two big questions:
- Does the software work?
- Does it work as expected?
Usability Testing
Picture a time when you sat looking at a website or app, grumbling, “Who created this? It’s so confusing!” Unfortunately, there are a lot of platforms out there that were not created with accessibility and efficiency in mind. These platforms probably overlooked usability testing.
Usability testing connects real users with your software before it launches, helping you guarantee that your product is intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible. With usability testing, users are recorded completing specific tasks, such as logging in, completing a purchase, or finding specific information. The results of their tests, such as the route they took through the platform, their completion speed, and the obstacles they encountered, are all analyzed and turned into actionable software improvements.
Usability testing is important because it confirms that your software isn’t just intuitive for your team but also for your target users. QA experts can help you identify usability issues and suggest improvements to enhance the overall user experience.
Security Testing
Nothing can kill a new piece of software more quickly than a cybersecurity breach, especially if your software collects important user data. That’s where our security QA comes in.
Who would you prefer to find vulnerabilities in your software: our security experts or a cybercriminal? Security QA analysts identify vulnerabilities in your software and suggest measures to strengthen your security to protect both you and your end users.
Security QA is an important tool that must be regularly used to ensure your software remains secure. At Grio, we not only provide security QA; we can also help ensure your system meets specific standards. Whether you’re creating software for healthcare or banking, or collecting valuable user data, our experts can help you ensure that your software maintains regulatory compliance.
Performance Testing
Do you ever wonder how we survived the dial-up years? Today, if a website takes more than a few seconds to load, we reload the page or find a different page with the information. Performance issues, even small ones, can dramatically impact your user experience and overall user conversions.
Performance QA testing analyzes the performance of your software to help you optimize your system and deliver fast and responsive software. Performance QA looks at numerous performance factors, such as speed, responsiveness, and stability, under different workloads to identify bottlenecks within your system.
Grio’s performance engineers can help you identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks, optimize response time, and improve your software’s scalability, giving you excellent performance long term.
Manual Testing
To guarantee a comprehensive QA test plan, it’s important to include both manual and automated testing. Manual testing refers to tests that are completed by a QA analyst. The QA analyst will physically go through individual black box tests to analyze the performance of the software from an end user’s perspective. If there are points where the software’s actual performance does not meet the expected behavior, it is reported as a bug that developers can address.
Black box manual testing is ideal for identifying bugs, usability issues, and other impacts that will directly impact user experience. Our black-box QA analysts work tirelessly to help you deliver high-quality software that exceeds user expectations.
Automated Testing
The final key to a strong QA testing program is automatic testing. Where manual testing provides the human touch, automated testing improves test coverage and testing time. With automated testing, our QA engineers design and implement automated test scripts that quickly and efficiently identify errors within the backend of your software.
Automated testing can also be integrated into your continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, giving you continued testing confidence as you release updates and new features.
Gaining Confidence with Quality Assurance
When you want your software on the market as quickly as possible, it can be tempting to skip your QA. However, QA is an essential part of the software development and deployment pipeline. QA gives you confidence that the product you’re releasing will run smoothly and efficiently, providing your users with the ultimate user experience. To find out how our QA experts can help you optimize your software, contact us today for a free consultation.
