Testing is one of the most important elements of the development cycle. By testing early and continuously, you can save time and money that can be spent on fixing bugs later. The best modern QA practices contribute to the optimization and improvement of testing processes, improve quality and productivity. But testers still face common problems, which we will analyze below.
Conducting software quality assurance consulting for more than one year, we were able to highlight such difficulties.
Difficulties
- Unclear requirements and goals
Although it is not recommended to change requirements in the middle of a sprint in Agile, this sometimes happens. This is stressful for the whole team, including testers. After all, the scope of testing is also changing.
The test script must match the end goal of the project. Therefore, it is important to clearly formulate them and convey them in advance. Otherwise, it may turn out not at all the product that was expected.
- High cost and incomprehensible quality assessment
A competent agile team can help reduce QA costs by starting testing early in a project and continuing it throughout the development cycle. Problems found at this stage are much easier and cheaper to fix. And studies show that outsourcing can reduce the cost of software testing by 25-45%. True, you need to select a qualified QA team.
Often agile teams don’t have a quantitative way to measure the overall quality of a product. There are separate indicators, such as test coverage and code complexity, but these elements do not give a complete picture of the quality. Therefore, testers cannot proactively identify specific areas where the result leaves much to be desired.
- Lack of communication and downtime
The lack of interaction between developers and testers leads to constant downtime as each team tries to match what the other has done. For example, during regression testing, a number of problems are found due to changes in the code. Therefore, QA engineers have to rewrite test cases to make them consistent with the new code.
All this time, developers have to wait, because if you continue to work until the test results, you can break even more firewood. As a result, one team is idle while the other is working, and then everyone works overtime. As a result, time, money, and joy from work are wasted.
Solution
- QA Culture
If the team immediately focuses on the quality of the product, there will be no need to use QA as an anti-crisis tool. The culture of quality is built on understanding and acceptance by all participants of the process of the goal of making a good product. This promotes understanding within the team and helps to quickly implement new QA methods, as well as consistently deliver a quality product.
- Earlier testing
We have already mentioned above how important early testing is for software quality assurance. This is easier said than done, but the benefits of early testing far outweigh the difficulties.
Frequent regression testing can also mitigate some of the problems associated with early and frequent testing. The QA team will identify specific areas where regression may occur, which will help minimize testing time without sacrificing coverage. Automation is also a great way to test frequently and can be implemented gradually.
- Education
In addition to properly screening and evaluating new hires, QA team leaders also need to ensure that effective training programs are in place and perform regular performance reviews. As team members progress through training, team leads may give them various tasks to assess progress and competency.
- Agile and continuous testing
With the development of Agile and DevOps, the myth that “testers are not needed” has become popular. Of course, it isn’t. Testing, like development, is changing, and new techniques help improve the quality of the final product.
We at Savarian practice Agile and QAOps – a combination of QA and DevOps. Our team members are able to work remotely, collaborate with customer teams, and avoid the main problems of QA outsourcing. If you need software test services – feel free to write to us.
