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We all know common software development methodologies: Waterfall, Agile, Extreme programming and others. But what’s the role of QA in them? Read this article to find out. Make sure you stay till the end to learn our QA team’s checklist of best practices shared just for you.
What is Quality Assurance?
In fact, QA means optimizing the development and testing processes, selecting approaches to minimize the number of errors.
Are Testing and QA the same?
Although QA and testing constantly cooperate, they are not the same. QA teams define product requirements, set up deliverables and automate processes. They are not actually looking for bugs.
Software Development Methodologies from QA perspective
#1 Waterfall
It is a standard strategy where the project is broken down by stages and the teams move to the next phase only after the previous one has been finalized.
What position QA holds at different stages of the Waterfall project?
- Stage one is requirements gathering and specification. Here the quality assurance team describes the ideal version of the product.
- At the design stage, QA keeps the team in check by always prioritizing the code quality.
- During the coding stage, the QA team oversees the development process, detects architectural issues and fundamental problems with the development approach.
- At the next stage, the QA team checks if testing and development processes were done on time if the promised results were met and seeks ways for improvement.
- The last stage is release and support. QA teams analyze feedback from users and seek a long-term way to remove development and testing issues.
#2 Agile
It is focused on maintaining a flexible process. Agile quality assurance prioritizes a user-driven approach and code quality over the strict organization. The EZtek QA team values the main advantage of Agile: if the quality requirements change in previous stages, the team can easily come back to it.
The most important aspects of Agile QA
- Planning: It is crucial to define acceptance criteria right away to find balance between quality and cost efficiency.
- Documentation and communication: It is important to document the processes and task results.
- Automation: Even if it takes a lot of time at initial stages, Agile welcomes it as it allows achieving better quality in the long run.
- Metrics
- Continuous improvement It means that iterations are always brought to the end users who provide feedback.
#3 Iterative Testing
This is a mix of Agile and Waterfall. On the other hand, the test methodology takes a flexible approach. But on the other hand, the project organization still follows the Waterfall logic. Teams check features one by one and release frequent updates to shorten the feedback loop.
The stages are the same in Waterfall, once you are done with one stage, you don’t come back to it. However, the duration of each stage is a lot smaller than in Waterfall.
#4 Extreme Programming
It is a combination of Agile and Iterative development. Although Extreme programming is focused on quality, efficiency is even more important. Developers start from building essential functionality and getting it to the working mode. Extreme programming takes Agile practices and Iterative testing and takes them to the extreme.
Principles
- All code must have unit tests
- XP encourages early and frequent testing
- XP demands that all code have associated tests
- XP promotes test automation
- The team sets refactoring goals along with design and development objectives.
Are you ready for our QA best practices?
- Clear Release
- Criteria: Be sure to update them after every published iteration.
- Fixing is a priority: Schedule days for code cleanup and tech debt removal.
- Early Automation: The earlier you start, the more time and effort you’ll save.
- A dedicated security team: You need experts here.
- Assign responsibilities for performance quality: Have at least several QA experts to oversee speed, scalability and stability.
- Short feedback loops: Analyze the work and communicate quickly, obtain feedback from users.
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