There are approximately 26.9 million software developers in the world that are creating new and innovative products every day. So how do you stand out among them?
The answer is pretty simple: You develop quality software. Software tested thoroughly has minimum errors, runs smoothly, and provides an excellent user experience to the customers. On the other hand, software with poor quality will have numerous issues and become a bother for its users. So how do you ensure software quality?
To help increase the efficiency and quality of your products, we will be explaining ten excellent ways that will help improve software quality.
What Is Software Quality, And Why Is It Important?
Software quality can easily be defined as a practice describing a software product’s desirable attributes. It ensures that the quality of the software complies with the predetermined set of standards. The relevancy of software quality is increasing rapidly in these modern times as an average app loses 95% of users after 90 days due to poor quality. The critical aspects of software quality can include good design, reliability, durability, maintainability, and consistency.
Project managers should involve the QA team from the beginning of the development process to ensure that the software is on par with the quality standards. The QA team can help identify defects in the product and help create better software that is more reliable, easy to use, and provides a great user experience.
There are numerous benefits of software quality. Here is a list of a few:
Saves Time And Money- Maintaining software quality ensures that the developers find bugs and errors during the early stage of development, thus saving time and money. The early analysis of the product will mitigate risks that have the potential to affect the operations of the app in the future. Your testers can perform manual and automated testing to help detect bugs early on.
Ensures Security- Software quality helps developers create a secure, effective, and efficient product. When developing software, employ security testing techniques and complete penetration testing rounds on your product.
Ensures Customer Satisfaction- The primary purpose of your software product is to satisfy customers. With software quality processes in place, you can deliver a product that delights users. Companies with excellent QA departments have a positive customer satisfaction score (CSAT). Customer satisfaction can be very beneficial for your business as, according to statistics, 72% of the customers share positively with five or six other people who can help increase your clients.
10 Ways To Improve Software Quality
Now that we have learned about software quality, the question arises, how to improve the quality of your software products?
Here is a list of some approaches to improve software quality.
1. Test Early
Testing early and thoroughly is crucial to improve software quality. The primary purpose of testing is to catch issues early into the development phase before these minor issues become more significant problems for the development team. So as a developer, you should involve testers early in the software design process to ensure that they debug issues as they arise because a study has revealed that the cost to rectify a bug increases roughly ten times with each passing phase of development.
The testers should start by automating non-UI tests and slowly increase their coverage to UI-based tests once the product stabilizes. This tip will help improve your software product’s quality.
2. Implement Cross-Browser Testing
Implementing cross-browser testing is essential to develop quality software, as cross-browser testing checks if the product runs seamlessly across different web browsers and screen sizes. Recent statistics have revealed that globally across all devices, about 64% of people use Chrome, 19% use Safari, 3.69% use Firefox and 3.45% use Microsoft Edge as their preferred browser.
This testing technique has numerous benefits, as you can cut costs, optimize your product’s speed and performance, and ensure that the testing environments stay scalable. TestComplete, LambdaTest, and BitBar are some popular cross-browsing tools that can help you create dynamic products.
3. Test On Multiple Devices
Testing your software product on multiple devices is also crucial as it will help you make better decisions regarding quality improvement processes. There are many devices, screen sizes, processing capabilities, and OS configurations in the market, and all the customers will use different devices to access your product. According to statistics, about 53.74% of people access websites and apps using mobile phones, while 46.26% use desktops.
Therefore, you must create a product that works on every device, including laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Google Dev Tools, BrowserStack, and Responsinator are some popular tools you can use to test your product on multiple devices.
4. Optimize Automation Testing
According to a recent report, automation testing tools can save time, enhance coverage, minimize human errors, and improve testing capabilities. It can easily be described as a software testing technique that uses automated software testing tools to execute a test case suite on your product. Automated testing heavily depends on the context, size, budget, available technology experts, and project complexity.
The increasing adoption of agile methodologies and automated testing has led to improvements in software quality. Automation testing is one of the most effective approaches when done correctly, as statistics have revealed that test automation has replaced 50% of manual testing efforts. Some popular automation testing tools are Selenium, Cucumber, and Appium.
5. Try Context-Driven And Exploratory Testing
Context-driven and exploratory testing are the manual sides of testing. Exploratory testing allows testers to explore the app and learn its functionalities and usability. Context-driven testing is a model that enables testers to test the software in the context of its use in the real world. The testers consider how a customer can use the product and then do the same to learn more about the product and its users. These approaches push the boundaries of testing practices and enable developers to understand user behaviors.
According to statistics, only 29% of mobile developers do exploratory testing. The main idea of exploratory and context-driven testing is to think like customers using the product and improve the application so that customers can get their jobs done without trouble or frustration.
6. Implement Quality Controls
Implementing quality controls right from the beginning of the project can create a strong partnership between testers and developers and ensure that product standards are continually being met. Quality control can easily be defined as a procedure ensuring a manufactured product adheres to specified quality criteria. Implementing quality controls results in happy customers, better workflow, and reduced costs when creating quality software.
You can use QC processes like Taguchi, 100% inspection, and Xbox charts to create excellent software. These processes help improve software quality and ensure that coding errors are dealt with effectively, following a structured approach. To manage your quality controls, you can use different test management tools like Xray, Vansah Test Management For Jira, and Zephyr to manage your quality controls.
7. Document Project Requirements
Before starting any project, it is essential to document your project requirements as it can help organize your scattered thoughts and allow your team to take one step at a time instead of overwhelming them. Good documentation defines the project’s scope, milestones, deliverables, prototypes, wireframes, and technical specifications and ensures you stay on track and meet your deadline.
When creating a project requirement document, break down the software development process step-by-step, as it will help you keep track of the development and will also help improve software quality.
8. Create A Risk Register
Creating a risk register can be very helpful for your project and can be used to identify, track, and analyze potential risks. In a recent study, the surveyed CEOs agreed that risk information is critical to long-term success. Your team members can record different risks, assess them, and assign appropriate priority levels for effective mitigation. Some of the dangers logged in your register can be:
- Legal compliance risks
- Supply chain disruptions
- Data security and breach risks
- Unforeseen risks like a natural disaster, theft, and more
9. Employee Training
Tools, techniques, and technologies are evolving daily, and staying on track with the latest trends is essential. Employee training can help instill awareness of what the users want in software. It can help your team think from the point of view of a user and will enable them to create software that caters to the needs of a customer.
To foster a workplace learning culture, you can pay for special courses for your team and encourage them to take them to help sharpen their skills. You can also make it mandatory for teams to devote a certain percentage of their working hours to learning. This will help integrate the learning culture into your organization.
10. Early Feedback
Early feedback can act as a lifesaver for your product. It is crucial to keep your QA team involved from the beginning of the project. This will help the QA detect early bugs and enable developers to create quality software.
It would help if you involved your clients and users immediately. According to Forbes, early customer feedback can help improve quality software. They can help you find errors that you wouldn’t have noticed before. This practice can also help you foster a better user experience and get first-hand feedback from the users themselves.
How Genetech Does It
Software quality is of the utmost importance for our company. Genetech Solutions believes in providing the best services to its clients. Our team has always diligently created quality technology products on par with the predetermined standards and offers an excellent user experience.
At Genetech, QA and Dev teams work collaboratively under a Project Manager’s supervision. QA teams have check-ins with their designated mentor and are equipped with the right tools and training to ensure they can get the job done. QA is also involved in all client meetings and works as part of the team from kick-off until closure. Our preferred testing practices are exploratory and context-driven testing, and the QA team members work in pairs to ensure better collaboration and performance. For every single team member, we have a customized onboarding and learning plan, and over the years, we have also developed checklists and standards that we use to deliver quality work.
Over the years, we have worked with numerous offshore companies and have consistently delivered quality products. You can view our case studies. Our developers and QA team work efficiently together and have delivered multiple successful products. We believe in quality, have always strived to create innovative products, and have worked hard to satisfy our customers.
Conclusion
So this is it! These are the ten ways that can help you improve software quality. We hope you enjoyed our blog and it was helpful for you. Feel free to contact us if you have any queries!
