The one where sir Qamelot explains QA
Part I...
When a colleague candidly asked "so what exactly is QA?", this triggered various emotions from wanting to educate, then wanting to defend and to just wanting to simplify and share.
Well this first of many entries, will try to help educate you on what QA is all about. And perhaps by sharing it, will even further educate me on what QA really means to me.
Spoiler alert: We will only talk about software QA, Quality Assurance in the world of software development.
Q for quality. According to the dictionary, it refers to a standard of measurement against other things of a similar kind. It refers to the degree of excellence of something.
A for assurance and does not refer to the French word which literally means Insurance. Assurance conveys a promise or gives confidence to something. QA, therefore, is a standard or degree of excellence that gives confidence to the software under test.
Q for quality. According to the dictionary, it refers to a standard of measurement against other things of a similar kind. It refers to the degree of excellence of something.
A for assurance and does not refer to the French word which literally means Insurance. Assurance conveys a promise or gives confidence to something. QA, therefore, is a standard or degree of excellence that gives confidence to the software under test.
A good QA process leads to two positive results, trust and confidence. Trust from customers, clients, and/or users because the software behaves according to what they expect the application should behave. And confidence from the development team because they know what kind of software they are delivering to the customer. A quote from John Ruskin that had always hit me regarding quality is that "Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort"
Well then, in the software context, Quality Assurance is a way or process to maintain the desired level of quality in a service or product. It is through a well planned and well-executed process to every stage in the software development cycle until the delivery of the product to production.
And you then start to think... well that sounds incredibly boring, isn't it? Perhaps like you, I was also one of those developers who thought that working as a software QA engineer will eventually bore you to death. On the contrary, it is a very exciting branch of software engineering. As I mentioned in my previous article ( if you have been one of those following my articles .. from which I counted at the time of this writing is reaching to a 100 --- coming mostly from my supportive facebook friends... ), that a QA engineer has a mindset of anticipating where the weakness of the application or platform in test would possibly be. And mind you, we just don't guess... we science this through! Et voila!
The first thing to clarify --- is QA only testing? Well, it's both yes and no. QA is mainly testing, with a mindset to find weak points and anticipate possible issues in a given application. But it is not only testing. It also involves strategy, planning, implementing and writing code in automation, even activities that involve interaction with people from different departments, and even monitoring pre and post-production. QA is not just about testing but is a means to ensure, attain, and maintain certain standards of quality through many varied approaches.
Well then, in the software context, Quality Assurance is a way or process to maintain the desired level of quality in a service or product. It is through a well planned and well-executed process to every stage in the software development cycle until the delivery of the product to production.
And you then start to think... well that sounds incredibly boring, isn't it? Perhaps like you, I was also one of those developers who thought that working as a software QA engineer will eventually bore you to death. On the contrary, it is a very exciting branch of software engineering. As I mentioned in my previous article ( if you have been one of those following my articles .. from which I counted at the time of this writing is reaching to a 100 --- coming mostly from my supportive facebook friends... ), that a QA engineer has a mindset of anticipating where the weakness of the application or platform in test would possibly be. And mind you, we just don't guess... we science this through! Et voila!
The first thing to clarify --- is QA only testing? Well, it's both yes and no. QA is mainly testing, with a mindset to find weak points and anticipate possible issues in a given application. But it is not only testing. It also involves strategy, planning, implementing and writing code in automation, even activities that involve interaction with people from different departments, and even monitoring pre and post-production. QA is not just about testing but is a means to ensure, attain, and maintain certain standards of quality through many varied approaches.
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