What is Quality Assurance?
With everything available at a click, swipe or tap, it is of utmost importance to have a website that functions as it is supposed to with as little problem as possible. There is a number of factors that come into play when we evaluate a web project. Some of those factors being functionality, manageability, user interface, marketing, and content management systems.
Quality Assurance (hereon referred to as QA) on web designs is a review on the finished product i.e. the website developed to test for any bugs or exceptions and to check if the product meets all the requirements mentioned earlier. QA doesn’t depend on either the design used by the developer or any specific methodologies used by the developer during the development of the website. The product is tested for its functionality through the perspective of the end-user who has absolutely no idea about the technical part of web development.
Web QA can never be concluded to be absolutely full proof with no potential errors or possible uncertainties because web development is based on numerous testing factors like internet connection speed, operating system, and technology literacy of the user. The best one can hope to attain from QA is a >90% successful filtering of errors and bugs before the launch of the software. In order to maintain a well-functioning software, thorough quality assurance needs to be concluded by the specifically formed quality assurance team.
QA Conduction Essence
For a QA to be conducted properly, the analyst needs to be well aware of the quality management system. Quality management is a set of policies, processes, and procedures required for planning and executing production, development, and service at the core of an effective product area. A quality management system requires the product to meet the external requirements specified in the licenses to trade, guidelines established and customer requirements set before development. It is important to ensure that all the staff that is being assigned to conduct quality assurance are indeed well studied upon the subject and have received applicable training when it comes to quality system requirements on the web.
QA vs Software Testing
Contrary to popular beliefs Software Testing and quality assurance is not the same thing although they come almost simultaneously in the Software Development Life Cycle. Software testing is the process of executing programs or applications with the intention of finding any Bugs or Exceptions that the software might throw upon execution. This process of constant validation and verification to check whether the software program meets the business, as well as technical requirements based on the guide set by the design, is software testing.
Quality assurance needs to be conducted through multiple platforms and multiple browsers to make sure that it is as effective and as functional as intended when built. There are VMs (Virtual Machines) and simulators where software testing can be done in backdated versions of browsers and operating systems to ensure that they work effectively.
Testing Types
There are three main types of testing that needs to be conducted whilst running a web quality assurance: requirement testing, design testing, and functional testing.
- Requirement testing is done to ensure that the final product meets all the requirements listed by the clients when the design documentations and software requirement specifications were agreed upon. Anything done after this is to be tested against the standards set by this test based on the rules fabricated through its conclusion. This ensures that the product being developed is indeed the required product.
- Design testing is the testing conducted on the website to ensure that the design and layout of the website is functional on all the browsers that are usually used as well as different devices.
- Is he testing that is done to ensure that the website has all its functionalities working as it’s supposed to (button to links, certain trigger input to start a certain action, etc.)
Quality Assurance is an important process in any kind of product development, however, when the said products in question are web applications or websites it is important to consider the fact that once released the websites will quickly be used by numerous people and might run into new set of problems that no one predicted would occur. In order to ensure there won’t be huge problem when something like that happens it is crucial to have a proper quality management system. If there is a properly established quality assurance team that strictly follows the rules set by quality management system, then the problems when arise can be dealt with immediately and according to the standard set earlier whilst conducting the software testing and establishing risk as well as uncertainties management measures.
