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 Software Quality Engineering can help in achieving excellence

The rapid penetration of digital technology through devices and applications has transformed the lives of the end customers. Activities that were considered challenging, inconvenient, and time-consuming in the past are done in a jiffy now. Take, for example, the paying of utility bills, carrying out financial transactions, buying groceries, medicines, apparel, or the booking of tickets. However, there is a flip side to convenience, agility, and speed offered by digitization as well. With an increased level of sophistication of software applications driving the digital revolution, there are instances when things can go wrong. For example, a malfunctioning smoke detector at the house or office not picking up the smoke caused by a fire, the bank failing to notify the customer that his or her account has been compromised, or a digital pill miscalculating the level of blood sugar and administering more than the prescribed dosage of a drug.

All these can have severe ramifications for both the customer and the service provider. This brings into sharp focus the key role of quality assurance in ensuring technology to be an enabler and not a disaster. Further, to achieve success in the competitive business environment, enterprises should look beyond the customer experience, which can be a one-off thing. The challenge is to establish trust with the end-user by assuring the quality of products or services on a consistent basis.

However, this is easier said than done, for quality assurance can often miss a thing or two. This is due to the preponderance of devices, operating platforms, browsers, third-party applications, and networks. To ensure the smooth running of a software application, the same needs to be compatible with the above-mentioned elements. Moreover, in the Agile and DevOps led Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), where there is a requirement for continuous testing, integration, and delivery, QA should give way to software quality engineering.

What is software quality engineering?

As opposed to quality assurance, software quality engineering deals with identifying the causes of failures and implements a system to prevent them from occurring in the first place. It is focused more on analyzing the technical side of glitches such as their deviation and non-compliance, or the signing of quality prior to the delivery of a product. In most organizations, there is an overlap between the disciplines of enterprise quality engineering and quality assurance. It mainly deals with developing an environment where products or services are designed, developed, tested, and delivered according to the requirements of the customers. Independent quality engineering services take the cross-functional approach by combining multiple business disciplines.

So, with the advent of technologies like AI and ML, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Big Data, among others, the vulnerabilities have increased as well. Since the ramifications for application malfunction are immense, the need for a software quality engineer has become crucial. Let us find out how Quality Engineering or QE can help in achieving excellence in quality.

A quality engineering company offering QE services cover the following areas:

• Agile and DevOps testing
• Test data management
• Service virtualization
• Test automation
• Security testing
• Performance testing

How enterprise quality engineering can help driving excellence

The main focus of QE is to build a QA environment that preempts the presence of glitches and achieve the following outcomes.

Reduces or eliminates vulnerabilities: With the development and testing team working in close proximity, QE offers end-to-end transparency to everyone associated with the build process. This approach helps to detect vulnerabilities and inherent risks early in the SDLC and ensures the initiation of prompt remedial action.

Streamlines coordination among departments: The reasons for glitches to remain unidentified is that every department deals with its turf only. Even if glitches are identified by another department or process, the tendency is to overlook the same and pass the buck. However, with independent quality engineering services in command, the old ways of workflows are abandoned in favor of more coordination and cohesion. Since a commonality of interest is established among departments, the usual blame game is averted.

Enhanced productivity with automation: The flip-side of manual testing such as the lack of coverage area and errors in regression testing can be avoided with test automation. The iterative testing processes are executed quickly resulting in better identification of glitches. As the quality of code improves in the build, the overall delivery schedule becomes better and speedy.

Conclusion

With the level of sophistication increasing in the digital ecosystem, traditional Quality Assurance can come a cropper. It is only through the implementation of software quality engineering involving steps such as service virtualization, performance testing, and test data management, among others, that excellence in the quality of applications can be achieved.

Author Bio

Oliver has been associated with Cigniti Technologies Ltd as an Associate Manager - Content Marketing, with over 10 years of industry experience as a Content Writer in Software Testing & Quality Assurance industry.

This article is originally published on medium.com.

Why you need to take Application Security Testing seriously?

The rapid penetration of digital technology through devices and applications has transformed the lives of the end customers. Activities that were considered challenging, inconvenient, and time-consuming in the past are done in a jiffy now. Take, for example, the paying of utility bills, carrying out financial transactions, buying groceries, medicines, apparel, or the booking of tickets. However, there is a flip side to convenience, agility, and speed offered by digitization as well. With an increased level of sophistication of the software applications driving the digital revolution, there are instances when things can go wrong. For example, a malfunctioning smoke detector at the house or office not picking up the smoke caused by a fire, the bank failing to notify the customer that his or her account has been compromised, or a digital pill miscalculating the level of blood sugar and administering more than the prescribed dosage of a drug.

All these can have severe ramifications for both the customer and the service provider. This brings into sharp focus the key role of quality assurance in ensuring technology to be an enabler and not a disaster. Further, to achieve success in the competitive business environment, enterprises should look beyond the customer experience, which can be a one-off thing. The challenge is to establish trust with the end-user by assuring the quality of products or services on a consistent basis.

However, this is easier said than done, for quality assurance can often miss a thing or two. This is due to the preponderance of devices, operating platforms, browsers, third-party applications, and networks. To ensure the smooth running of a software application, the same needs to be compatible with the above-mentioned elements. Moreover, in the Agile and DevOps led Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), where there is a requirement for continuous testing, integration, and delivery, QA should give way to software quality engineering.

What is software quality engineering?

As opposed to quality assurance, software quality engineering deals with identifying the causes of failures and implements a system to prevent them from occurring in the first place. It is focused more on analyzing the technical side of glitches such as their deviation and non-compliance, or the signing of quality prior to the delivery of a product. In most organizations, there is an overlap between the disciplines of enterprise quality engineering and quality assurance. It mainly deals with developing an environment where products or services are designed, developed, tested, and delivered according to the requirements of the customers. Independent quality engineering services take the cross-functional approach by combining multiple business disciplines.

So, with the advent of technologies like AI and ML, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Big Data, among others, the vulnerabilities have increased as well. Since the ramifications for application malfunction are immense, the need for a software quality engineer has become crucial. Let us find out how Quality Engineering or QE can help in achieving excellence in quality.

A quality engineering company offering QE services cover the following areas:

• Agile and DevOps testing
• Test data management
• Service virtualization
• Test automation
• Security testing
• Performance testing

How enterprise quality engineering can help driving excellence

The main focus of QE is to build a QA environment that preempts the presence of glitches and achieve the following outcomes.

Reduces or eliminates vulnerabilities: With the development and testing team working in close proximity, QE offers end-to-end transparency to everyone associated with the build process. This approach helps to detect vulnerabilities and inherent risks early in the SDLC and ensures the initiation of prompt remedial action.

Streamlines coordination among departments: The reasons for glitches to remain unidentified is that every department deals with its turf only. Even if glitches are identified by another department or process, the tendency is to overlook the same and pass the buck. However, with independent quality engineering services in command, the old ways of workflows are abandoned in favor of more coordination and cohesion. Since a commonality of interest is established among departments, the usual blame game is averted.

Enhanced productivity with automation: The flip-side of manual testing such as the lack of coverage area and errors in regression testing can be avoided with test automation. The iterative testing processes are executed quickly resulting in better identification of glitches. As the quality of code improves in the build, the overall delivery schedule becomes better and speedy.

Conclusion

With the level of sophistication increasing in the digital ecosystem, traditional Quality Assurance can come a cropper. It is only through the implementation of software quality engineering involving steps such as service virtualization, performance testing, and test data management, among others, that excellence in the quality of applications can be achieved.

Author Bio

Oliver has been associated with Cigniti Technologies Ltd as an Associate Manager - Content Marketing, with over 10 years of industry experience as a Content Writer in Software Testing & Quality Assurance industry.

This article is originally published on medium.com.