Ways to formulate a Quality Engineering strategy

 

Today, enterprises are facing a multitude of challenges such as a rapidly changing technology landscape, a plethora of customer touchpoints in an omnichannel environment, rising customer expectations, and budget constraints, among others. To meet these challenges as well as to create value and deliver quality software, enterprises need to follow a robust software quality assurance strategy. However, these would entail using scalable and reusable assets to test and integrate the software modules in the SDLC.

Shift-left testing in the Agile model of development allows for testing alongside development and has the ability to detect glitches before the code goes into production. In a day and age where enterprises are required to deliver top-notch quality products in quick succession and provide periodic updates to let them function in an omnichannel environment, quality engineering is the way ahead.

By taking a quality engineering approach, enterprises can ensure the software product aligns with the business objectives and meets the quality standards. It ensures the product is designed in such a way that glitches or vulnerabilities are eliminated, and the final product emerges sans any performance issues.

Quality engineering has assumed increased salience due to the rising incidences of cybercrime. It is common knowledge that cybercrime is able to spread its tentacles due to the prevalence of glitch-prone software applications, not to speak of a user base indifferent to the requirement of stringently following the security guidelines. QE services can integrate various checks and balances in the software hierarchically to minimize the impact of cybercrime. Any software quality engineering services would involve the following (and more).

• Uphold the quality of the product or service as per the project specifications, quality standards, and business requirements
• Plan the quality assurance strategy
• Data collection and analysis
• Detection of defects
• Identification of risks in the value chain
• Analysis of the end-user feedback to enhance the quality of the product

Reasons to implement quality engineering

To further add to the points mentioned above, enterprise quality engineering needs to be implemented in the SDLC for the following reasons:

• To achieve the highest quality for the software product
• To ensure that all business requirements are met
• To minimize the chances of software failure due to the presence of glitches, bugs, or vulnerabilities
• To avoid expenses on implementing changes on the product after its release
• To deliver superior customer experiences and increase customer satisfaction

Core service offerings of digital quality engineering

Quality engineering is comprehensive in its scope and touches every aspect of software development. The core offerings may include

Agile/DevOps testing: Testing of the code is conducted simultaneously with development and includes the operations as well.

Service virtualization: Since various test variables are not always available in real-time, their absence may impact the quality of testing negatively. Thus, using service virtualization, the required assets can be generated virtually and used in the testing process to deliver better outcomes.

Security testing: An essential part of DevOps, security testing is about identifying the vulnerabilities in the product/system and fixing them to prevent the ingress of malware.

Test automation: Manual testing can be exhaustive for testers and may allow the inherent glitches in the software application to escape their attention. However, by automating the testing process, certain repetitive tests like regression testing can be conducted non-stop leading to better identification of glitches.

How to formulate a result-oriented strategy for quality engineering

To empower the digital transformation journey, enterprises need to re-engineer their QA and testing processes and implement software quality engineering in the following ways:

Integrate quality at the top: Any quality engineering company would entail buy-in from its management to implement changes in its workflows, tools, teams, and methodologies. At the same time, the management can let the workforce know about the benefits of implementing quality engineering and adopting the new system.

Make test automation an integral part: QE services have to run continuous testing on the software application to validate its quality against various metrics. Continuous testing shall involve people, processes, technologies, and tools. Here, test automation can be a handful while checking repetitive processes like regressions when a new change is introduced to the code. Further, writing the right test script to execute automated testing would require the selection and usage of the right tools.

Collaborate with teams: As digital quality engineering may need developers to function as testers and vice-versa, there should be a synergy among cross-functional teams. QE is also about driving accountability across processes to ensure quality by using the right technologies and tools.

Use of AI and ML: The implementation of the QE process may include the integration of AI and ML technologies for better analysis of real-time data, metrics, reports, and logs leading to the prediction of glitches.

Conclusion

Quality engineering has become a critical part of the software development process given its myriad benefits and the capability to eliminate glitches beforehand. It ought to be adopted by enterprises to develop and deliver quality products.

Article Source:

https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/

Why it is important to transition from Quality Assurance to Quality Engineering?

 

The inscrutable march of technology continues taking convenience, quality, capability, scalability, and user experiences to a whole new level. Enterprises are looking at implementing new technological paradigms and tools to develop quality products and services, generate new revenue models, and stay competitive. As the technology landscape transforms at a rapid pace with the advent of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, the Internet of Things, Predictive Analysis, Big Data, and many more, traditional models are no longer adequate. When the stakes are so high with driverless cars and IoT devices on their way to become the new normal, traditional software quality assurance services need to give way to quality engineering. 

The quality engineering approach is about driving quality into the core of any software development process rather than following it along the way. This helps to reduce the possibility of errors/bugs to get into the system. Thus, quality engineering is more of a pre-emptive way of reducing glitches and ensuring the applications running the IT ecosystems of tomorrow are of proven quality. Further, the below-mentioned developments or observations highlight the predicament of following traditional software quality assurance services –

• About 30 percent of glitches or defects are due to wrongly configured test environments (Souce: an IBM study)
• Poor quality software leads to a loss of $60 billion annually in the USA
• Enterprises can save costs by optimizing the use of tools (Source: Gartner)
• Software testing comprises more than 50 percent of the development cost. This calls for automating the QA process and improving its effectiveness (Source: Journal of Systems and Software)
• Actual resource utilization for testing is about 57 percent instead of the expected 75 percent (Source: NIST Journal)

Why transform from quality assurance to digital quality engineering?

The benefits of switching to a robust, all-encompassing, and qualitatively superior QE services are as follows:

Driving the DevOps pipeline: DevOps envisions the marriage of development and operations to improve the quality of products and customer experiences on a continuous basis. Software quality engineering envelops DevOps by bringing the management, ideation, design, systems, product management, and operations together. It is a holistic approach to develop and deliver software applications that are safe, reliable, robust, secure, and scalable.

Maximum test coverage: In enterprise quality engineering, the entire span of the value chain (requirement to delivery) is covered in testing. It includes both shift-left and shift-right approaches of QA wherein the former testing is incorporated in the build phase itself. While in shift-right, quality is built into the delivery phase with continuous releases to ensure user satisfaction. Thus, software QE services cover the entire span of the SDLC including aspects like setting up and managing the test environments.

Powering CI/CD: DevOps is about developing and delivering software involving phases like build, test, and deployment. Here, every code change based on feedback from the QA team leads to faster integration and delivery in a transparent manner. The endless loop of feedback, code change, integration, and delivery ensures a better quality of products for the customer. Also, with the blurring of lines among departments and the initiation of a change in culture, quality is not merely the responsibility of the QA team alone but every stakeholder in the SDLC.

Better planning: There may be times when QA specialists identify an issue in the code requiring significant rework. This would lead to cost escalation and stretch the turnaround time. On the other hand, quality engineering services help in better planning at the initial stage of ideation and product development. They provide better insights to recognize limitations surrounding product implementation early on. Thus, identifying the potential glitches early in the development process can add to significant savings on cost and time. 

Better communication: Digital quality engineering specialists can test a product like the end-users and draw traceability into the systems should some glitches be identified. Their knowledge about the whole span of product development, testing, and delivery, helps in understanding issues from the perspectives of the system and users. They can contribute to enhancing the processes within the SDLC for churning out top quality products at every stage and iteration.

Conclusion

With quality becoming the cornerstone of product development and ensuring competitiveness for an enterprise, the thrust is towards eliminating glitches during the planning stage only. This is why it is important to transition from QA to QE to facilitate quicker releases through the CI/CD pipeline and ensure superior customer experiences.

Article Source:

https://community.nasscom.in/

What role does Quality Engineering play in your Digital Transformation Journey?

Digital technology has emerged as a disruptor for enterprises, governments, organizations, and entities the world over. It is no longer the ‘add on’ but the much needed ‘core’ to remain visible, responsive, successful, and competitive. If earlier, customers used to be at the wrong end of the stick for businesses, today, digital has given them a user-friendly interface to get their point across. Further, with digital technologies giving customers the power to be choosy with their brands, products, or services, businesses are in a bind. They can no longer ignore the voice of the customer and have to design their products or services as per their customers’ preferences. In the whole scheme of things, quality has become the differentiator for businesses to remain competitive. It is the quality of products or services that ultimately determines whether customers stick with the specific product or service or move onto others. 

Digital technologies have led businesses to go for a paradigm shift in their strategies. So, they not only have to deliver superior quality products at a faster rate but need to keep them updated as per the changing times and/or technologies. No wonder, they rely on Agile and DevOps methodologies to deliver superior quality products in double-quick time. To meet the fast-changing customer expectations, businesses adopt digital transformation with digital quality engineering at the core. To understand more about software quality engineering, one needs to know about customers’ changing preferences. Yes, today’s customers are no longer satisfied with a particular brand or product unlike the ones in the earlier generation. Armed with a plethora of choices, the customers of today want high-quality apps that can be used across devices and platforms. Here high-quality apps would mean fast-loading, feature-rich, secure, scalable, responsive, functional, and navigable. Thus, instead of testing apps or builds on a range of devices and platforms post-development, it makes sense to incorporate quality in the app development lifecycle.

If digital transformation is about optimizing the value chain, improving productivity, reducing defects, enhancing efficiency and security, and ensuring the quick release of builds, then digital quality engineering is the enabler. It allows organizations to streamline their value chain and ensure the development of a functional product.

Role of quality engineering in advancing the cause of digital transformation

With quality no longer remaining an ‘afterthought’ in the production cycle, it needs to be integrated with every phase of development. This ensures early identification and fixing of glitches in the build before passing it to the next stage.

# Better integration: QE services call for better collaboration and integration between teams, especially development and operations, in releasing quality builds within faster turnarounds.

# Better test automation: A quality engineering approach involves the use of test automation to validate voluminous lines of code as per their expectations. The QE specialists should be able to write pieces of code for better integration with tools and frameworks. However, QE driven test automation is not a silver bullet to ‘correct’ every flaw in the code but needs a better choice of test cases and test areas. These include the following:

·        Repetitive tests that are susceptible to manual errors

·        Optimizing test cases and improving test automation by incorporating AI

·        Tests that need virtualization of data sets due to the latter’s unavailability. The unavailability could be due to the challenges of geography, demography, or complexity

·        Tests to be conducted across multiple devices, platforms, and networks

·        Frequently used features or functionalities that may be risky

·        Tests that are difficult to be performed manually

# Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD): The two approaches envisage the conduct of unit test for the code before initiating any further tests. Both TDD and BDD approaches call for better collaboration among quality engineering services, developers, and business stakeholders. This commonality of approach is to ensure the final outcome is in line with the avowed business objectives. The software quality engineering team ensures quality through API validation when pitted against UI-driven test cases.

# Performance metrics aligned to customer experience: Digital quality engineering ensures the customer experience to be top-notch across device platforms. It does so by setting up and measuring the performance metrics as per expectations. This enforces trust, increases accessibility and responsiveness, improves the omnichannel experience, and enhances brand image. 

Conclusion

The highly competitive world of online business requires enterprises to come up with quality products delivering great customer experiences in short turnarounds. It is only through a quality engineering approach that glitches can be fixed early, testing can be conducted across device platforms and the final deliverable is made to align with customer preferences and business objectives.

How Digital Transformation can be enabled by Quality Engineering

Organizations are embracing digital technologies to give customers omnichannel experiences and scale up their business volumes. The disruptive nature of these technologies has allowed companies to shore up their capabilities for storage, processing, and analytics. Developments such as social media, mobility, analytics, IoT, and smart devices are enabling digital transformation and determining how users engage with businesses. The production demand in companies has gone through the roof thanks to the changing market dynamics and growing competition. This demand for scale has necessitated the expansion of the legacy systems and inclusion of the user ecosystem. The latter encompassing social media, personal devices, and cloud, among others expects a superior customer experience.

With shortening time to market and the need to ensure Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI and CD), the role of QA has changed. It has moved from the earlier waterfall model of ‘testing after development’ to ‘testing alongside development’ of Agile/DevOps. As customer experience has become the determining factor in the adoption of digital products, the role of QA has become critical. This is more so due to the need to validate software across interfaces, platforms, devices, browsers, and networks. With the demand for continuous builds gaining ground, the development and QA teams should go beyond the status quo. They should aim at preventing defects rather than taking the usual reactive approach. Thus, QA assumes the role of digital quality engineering. This involves the management, maintenance, and development of IT systems with enhanced quality standard.

Today, quality assurance goes beyond functional testing and covers non-functional parameters as well. These include security, usability, performance, accessibility, and compatibility. Thus, digital quality engineering is a nimble model underpinned on parameters such as being agile, intelligent, automated, and on cloud. It goes into assessing, optimizing, and ensuring customer experience (CX), every time.

How quality engineering services impact digital transformation

As digital transformation helps enterprises to reorient strategies, streamline workflows, optimize the cost of operations, and enhance quality, the software quality engineering services make the below-mentioned impact.

·         Analyzing user behavior to optimize CX quality: Analytics solutions run through user data patterns to derive business intelligence. The use of AI through automated algorithms helps in analyzing the user data on bounce rates, average time spent, or user inflow, to determine the trends. For example, webpages with high bounce rates or loading speeds can mean performance issues. Also, AI-driven QE services can analyze the user behaviour pattern and give fresh insights to developers about incorporating new features or functionalities.

·         Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD): The two popular approaches to software development require unit testing of the code before conducting other tests. The enterprise quality engineering team needs to ensure the testing process is quick. It does so by pitting quality via API validation versus UI-driven test cases. The BDD approach is geared towards ensuring acceptance outcomes. Here, the software quality engineering services implement the QA steps using automation scripts as defined by the user story. These two development approaches require better collaboration among various stakeholders - teams representing digital quality engineering, development, and management.

·         Enable ‘on demand’ usage with ‘on cloud’ model: Delivering customer experience can be a costly affair with upfront investments on infrastructure, devices, and tools. Further, add maintenance cost to the updation of browser or device variants, and you are staring at huge CapEx. This calls for moving to the cloud platform where tools and infrastructure can be dynamically provisioned based on demand. For example, the experts at any quality engineering company can execute compatibility testing by hosting automated scripts on the cloud. Thereafter, virtual machines can be provisioned with myriad OS-browser combinations to conduct the tests. Thus, QA teams can maintain a dynamic testing ecosystem that can address the changing requirements. The ecosystem can eliminate the need for infrastructure setup or license procurement.

Conclusion

Software applications are primed to provide enhanced customer experiences. They do so by interacting with the accompanying digital ecosystem - devices, browsers, operating systems, and networks, among others. The applications need to be glitch-free and overcome hurdles like evolving technologies, diverse market demands, and cost pressures, among others. QE services are increasingly being sought to deliver great customer experiences by harnessing agile, intelligent, and automated processes. They can help enterprises to stay up the competitive curve, deliver value for money, and optimize the customer experience.

This article is originally published on it.toolbox.com.

Key Reasons to consider Quality Engineering Services.

Quality Engineering Services

If the changing customer expectations are anything to go by then the way IT solutions are created and tested has undergone a paradigm shift. This is in addition to the business dynamics that has seen mergers and acquisitions, quick product rollouts, and technology changes such as mobility, big data & analytics, IoT, and artificial intelligence among others. The impact of such tectonic shifts – in customer expectations, business dynamics and technological changes - has redefined the role of development and testing teams.

Apparently, the task is cut out for the IT teams – either come out with quality applications in double quick time or just cool your heels and see customers lap up competing products or services. The demand to deploy quick applications for the consumers and provide an elaborate backup have transformed the Quality Assurance process. Currently, the shift has moved away from the traditional Quality Assurance to the new Quality Engineering Solutions.  

What is quality engineering?

The integration of IT related processes and workflows across devices, platforms, frameworks, networks, and organizations has meant that quality does not remain a standalone attribute. In fact, quality has embraced multiple dimensions that range across the end to end application lifecycle. With Agile and DevOps models being the new game changers, quality has moved from mere testing of applications post their development into a more comprehensive scheme of things.

Consequently, quality assurance services have given way to quality engineering services. The services encompass the design, development, management, administration and maintenance of IT systems to a high quality standard as mandated by international quality regulations.

Why is digital quality engineering important?

In the Agile and DevOps model of software development, testing and deployment, quality is optimized by making every stakeholder responsible. In other words, if the development and testing teams are entrusted with ensuring the application’s quality, the operations team needs to see the same runs properly throughout its lifecycle, and customer feedbacks are taken seriously. The main thrust of quality engineering services is to prevent the development of glitch ridden applications in the first place. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional QA model where the focus is more on identifying glitches.

The quality engineering strategy involves a robust collaboration between the developers and testers. The testers, on their part, build the testing framework and write the automated scripts at the beginning of the SDLC. The framework is maintained for the whole SDLC and is made an intrinsic part of all future development and test sprints. Digital quality engineering optimizes quality and brings speed in the SDLC. It is not only about executing functional or non-functional testing, but also ensuring that every sinew of the SDLC is validated. It brings about a change amongst the stakeholders, tools, and processes to collaborate and work towards a common goal – of delivering quality products.

Key reasons for considering quality engineering services

Move towards Shift-left testing: The increased use of technologies viz., AI/machine learning, IoT, predictive analysis and the adoption of social, cloud and mobile means a move towards shift-left testing. In the Agile and DevOps model, testing is more aligned with development through common sprints. Moreover, there is a need to create analytics driven QA, API testing, and execute performance engineering while focusing on continuous automation. A robust shift-left testing when integrated in the SDLC leads to better test outcomes.

Rapid deployment: When the demand is geared towards the rapid deployment of quality products, a software quality engineer instead of detecting glitches in successive iterations of a sprint should aim at preventing the glitches from becoming a part of the code. This requires optimizing the processes, tools, technologies and techniques in the SDLC.

Business value: The key to meet customer expectations is by creating an end to end value proposition for the product. This calls for adopting a number of desirable and feasible options to drive innovation. The innovation should enhance the customer experience. QE services help execute continuous automation and virtualization leading to a significant increase in the test coverage area.

Business goals: The main objective of building a quality application is to meet the business goals. This requires the processes to be designed and set up in accordance with the business goals. Thus, a software quality engineer comes handy for he or she is a part of the project management team that decides the processes, tools and techniques to be incorporated in the SDLC.

Conclusion

The requirement of quality products to meet the imperatives of digital transformation initiatives has led to incorporation of quality engineering as an enabler. It is a move towards eliminating quality issues at the beginning of the SDLC leading to customer delight.

This Article is originally published at Medium.com, Key reasons for considering Quality Engineering services.