Quality Assurance Practices That Improve Your Code

Enterprise software development is often divided  into development, quality assurance, and production. Today, we will focus on quality assurance practices that improve your final product. 

We can summarize quality assurance practices in four simple ideas:

1. Types of testing;
2. The importance of automated testing;
3. Quality assurance best practices;
4. Tips for practical testing.

Let’s take a closer look at them below. 

1. Types of Testing Methodologies

To begin, you can break testing methodologies into four categories: unit testing, integration testing, regression testing, and performance testing.

Unit Testing 

Unit testing focuses on the most minor parts of an application. These are broken into “units” and scrutinized individually to ensure they work appropriately before integration.

Integration testing

It takes the next logical step by analyzing how units work together. Integration testing still focuses on units and small software for the tests, but it is expanding the tests beyond the behavior of isolated, individual units.

Regression testing

Regression testing operates on a larger scale than the previous two types of tests. This testing aims to ensure that updates don’t introduce any new bugs. While unit and integration tests are essential precursors, regression testing is now looking at more significant chunks of software.

Performance testing

It examines how entire software packages perform under specified workloads. You can test a software product’s speed, resilience, responsiveness, scalability, and stability.

2. Importance of Automated Testing

Automated testing offers general benefits similar to any other form of automation. They reduce labor needs to complete testing, lower cognitive demands on developers, and help to standardize tests to ensure specific metrics are met.

In addition, automated testing provides development teams with confidence to quickly evolve systems, reducing chances of user problems.

Specific to software development and engineering, automated testing is more thorough and accurate with particular aspects of testing.

For instance, automated testing can extensively cover memory contents and data tables to an extent impossible otherwise. These tests can reveal a range of problems or successes in software components.

Additionally, automated testing can repeat tests on a larger scale, producing more reliable results and outcomes. At the same time, it can systematically alter testing parameters to get a more comprehensive view of performance.

And it does not eliminate manual testing and human testing strategies but is an invaluable asset in software development.

3. Quality Assurance Practices: the best ones

Quality assurance (QA) exists between development and production, making it essential to guarantee the final product’s value.

You should follow a few best practices to extract maximum value from QA efforts.

First, set goals. Consider their requirements or metrics, but QA hinges on precise descriptions and tests. Metrics can shift over time, but start with clear, measurable goals.

Second, orient around industry standards and compliance. This action will vary according to the target of your software development. When incorporated into your QA process, hitting compliance and standards is easier.

Finally, spare no effort in communication and cooperation with the other teams. The development and production teams are both attached to QA. Communication and cooperation ensure that QA will hit its marks without inhibiting the other teams.

4. Tips for Effective Testing and Quality Assurance

With ideas for quality assurance, testing, and automation established, we can dig into tips to make quality assurance testing more effective. Let’s see a summary of these tips:

• Plan thoroughly for testing;
• Implement automated testing tools;
• Perform regular code reviews;
• Encourage cooperation between development and QA teams;
• Document and track test cases;
• Implement continuous integration and continuous testing.

Plan thoroughly for testing

The first point is straightforward. Without thorough planning, test cases quickly devolve into an ad hoc approach. Things fall through the cracks, and quality drops. Plan thoroughly.

Implement automated testing tools

Automated testing was discussed before, but it’s worth adding more points. Testing tools need to be integrated throughout development and QA. Enterprise Development Platforms (EDPs) can establish a testing standard in the company’s chosen tool.

Perform regular code reviews

Code reviews enhance the benefits of testing thoroughly. Peer developers review each others’ code to find issues or improvement areas. You do this before merging units.

Encourage cooperation between development and QA teams

Cooperation is another critical point. Development and QA teams sometimes need more alignment. Cooperation tools and culture can foster better communication between these teams to improve product quality.

In this culture, team relationships are highly valued. While working on delivering software or functionality, sometimes developers may feel frustrated with QA, as it may seem like they’re slowing down the process.

However, it is crucial for both parties to adopt a culture where they work together and assist each other in delivering the functionality responsibly to the user with the best possible user experience.

Document and track test cases

As is always the case in software development, documentation is essential and valid for quality assurance testing. Document tests to make it more accessible to review and repeat as needed.

Implement continuous integration and continuous testing

Lastly, continuous integration and testing automate and unburden developers and the QA team. These constant processes ensure that an entire checklist of tests is applied to every code unit before integration. This process streamlines QA while also eliminating common pitfalls in the process.

How an EDP Can Help With Your Testing Process

With clear goals for your quality assurance and testing processes, you’re ready to explore tools that aid from the ground up. Most of these tools fold into the general purview of EDPs.

For starters, EDPs can centralize your tech standards and reduce variability in application production. It minimizes conflicts in integration and raises the quality of each iterative cycle.

A Development Platform with Gen AI solutions brings even more advantages to day-to-day software development and testing.

For example, StackSpot AI can provide quick commands that automate tests quickly and efficiently. It expands the scope of your automated testing, amplifying those benefits.

A good AI tool can also assist with code production. Modern AI tools can accelerate development, testing, and production. On top of that, AI can analyze testing methods and outputs to suggest new tests and pursue a more efficient testing methodology.

Testing and quality assurance require careful thought, consistent cooperation, powerful tools, and repetitive effort. Feel free to tag someone who you think could benefit from these ideas.

Conclusion

We reunite tips, ideas, and insights that can help you improve your code and ensure the quality of your final product.

With the alliance of EDP and AI code assistant, you can centralize your tech standards, which reduces variability in application production, and create better codes with suggestions hiper-contextualized.

If you want to learn more about StackSpot, book a demo.