How can Quality Assurance help you in developing an unbreakable business App?

Software Quality Assurance

Information technology has changed the dynamics of global business and customer interaction. The myriad software applications developed at breakneck speed in arguably every possible domain have turned the world into a virtual global village. The online medium has come as a blessing for business enterprises wherein they are coming with better quality applications to deliver the best customer experience. Thus, we have business applications delivering a never seen before user experience through state of the art technologies. For example, the online gaming genre has undergone a transformation of sorts with technologies such as virtual and augmented reality blurring the difference between virtual and real. The Internet of Things (IoT) has seen devices communicating with each other through APIs. Furthermore, enterprises are leveraging the power of ERP and CRM software to run various functions such as managing inventories, conducting sales promotion, handling customer queries, and running operations among others with increased efficiency and speed.

However, with applications running the entire business ecosystem and the growing threat of cybercrime, the question of quality has become critical. To beat the competition, businesses often resort to taking shortcuts. These include delivering applications in quick succession without following the rigmarole of quality assurance. Moreover, the quality of application is given a short shift to reduce the cost and time of development. Does this benefit the business in the short or long run? The answer is NO, for hidden glitches can mar the customer experience leading the latter to discard the app and brand altogether. The only way businesses can drive sales and achieve ROI is by making software quality assurance as an integral part of the SDLC. Let us find out how quality assurance can help a business app become robust and secure.

Achieving robustness through software quality assurance testing

A business application can be considered to be unbreakable if it is able to perform the various functionalities on expected lines. Also, the application should be secured enough to prevent the occurrence of cyber theft.

#1. Making the software bug free: A business application can fall short of meeting customer expectations if it is loaded with bugs. The coding errors can leave the application vulnerable to virus attacks and impair its functioning. The bugs can infuse issues like latency, downtime, and giving erratic results etc. However, an elaborate QA software testing exercise can validate the software against such issues and turn it robust, functional and secure.

#2. Scalable: A robust business application should be able to handle loads even beyond its threshold should the need arise. There can be times when businesses experience situations involving the processing of humongous quantum of data. For example, during certain times of the year such as the Black Friday sales, the customer count for a business can go through the roof. Here, if the business application is not scalable, it runs the risk of facing a breakdown. Needless to say, the customer experience in such cases can take a beating from which the business can find it really difficult to recover. To prevent such a situation, a robust performance software quality assurance testing should be carried out.

#3. Strengthening the structural quality of application: The software quality assurance services are often under pressure to release an application within the constraints of budget and time. However, this approach can render the application vulnerable to breakdown thereby not meeting the business specifications. Therefore, software quality assurance ensures the business application meets the non-functional requisites such as accessibility, security, and usability.

#4. Delivers the objectives of Agile-DevOps: With raging competition, businesses are aiming to deliver the best customer experience to achieve ROI. To ensure the same, the Agile-DevOps model of conducting software quality assurance testing early and continuously during as well as beyond the SDLC has become imperative. The QA exercise in the DevOps mode creates a quality culture wherein each and every department of the enterprise becomes responsible for addressing the demands of Quality Assurance. So, the enterprise should not restrict its role to creating and delivering the application to the market alone but even go beyond. In other words, should the customer(s) face difficulty in running the application, the enterprise should correct the anomaly including releasing a new version of the application, if the need arises.

Conclusion

The growing complexity of business applications and the demand to achieve faster time to market and cost effectiveness have made the role of QA critical. In the Agile-DevOps environment where both development and operations have to work in synchrony to ensure the success of a business application, it is the steadfast perusal of QA that turns an application unbreakable.

This Article is originally published at Medium.com, 4 Ways Quality Assurance makes your business App unbreakable.