Many mistakenly believe that the concept of Quality Assurance in a project only concerns tests of applications created by developers or maintaining the quality of services offered. In reality, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. What exactly does quality assurance mean?
I will try to answer this seemingly simple question based on the practices used at Apptension
IT and remote work
As a software house, Apptension works in the spirit of the Agile Manifesto, and each employee chooses an optimal form of cooperation, guaranteeing quality across all approaches and time zones. This means that a QA engineer participates in the software development process starting from the planning phase and looks after the project throughout its duration from development to maintenance.
Our QA specialists share their knowledge and experience with the client at the workshop stage, which significantly improves the development process.
During the first meetings with the client, remotely or in an office, an optimal and effective test strategy is prepared. During the project, we are monitoring this strategy, constantly looking for test optimization so that their details and performance are best tailored for the client.
By agreeing to the quality assurance process recommended by us, the customer gets the guarantee that the software will not have errors. By agreeing to the QA in the project, the client also receives a widely understood process of documenting the entire project. Everyone who decides to partner with us receives:
· testing strategy
· appropriate technical documentation
· relevant business documentation
· detailed documentation-based tests
· test reports on each test run
· interpretation of test data based on our quality metrics
Proprietary quality metrics at Apptension
Nowadays, we have access to a very large amount of data, but until we learn how to interpret them, we will not receive anything but terabytes of no value-adding information.
At Apptension, after each sprint, we collect, process, and interpret data. Thanks to this approach, we constantly control and improve the level of our services.
The Quality Assurance department uses its own quality metrics, the main goal of which is to keep increasing the application’s quality as well as customer satisfaction. In the final stages of projects, we confirm the latter via customer satisfaction surveys.
A healthy approach to Automation
The machine can’t completely replace a man (yet). Well-described and performed manual tests can catch more bugs than the best-written automatic test, let's not be afraid to say it! Automation is not a cure for everything. The most important thing is to check if and when we really need the automated tests. Full documentation and record of performed tests enable us to set a point in a project where manual tests are no longer profitable. At this stage, we contact the customer and recommend switching to automated tests. This approach guarantees an increase in the quality of the tested product and a relative reduction in the cost of testing-no more "burning" resources on repetitive activities.