Quality assurance (QA) is an essential stage of any software development cycle. QA processes cuts costs, improve reliability. and reduce human error.

1. November 19, 2020
5 Essential Tools for a Successful QA Process in Your
Startup
process.st/qa-process
Leks Drakos
November 19, 2020
Quality Control, Software
Alex Zubkov is a technical writer at LITSLINK from Dnipro. Alex has 15 years experience
in sales, marketing, and product promotion for both local and international markets.
He’s also a techno geek and amateur photographer with a love of gadgets and the
Arsenal FC.
Quality assurance (QA) is an essential stage of any software development cycle. It helps
developers catch the lingering bugs and inconsistencies in the product’s functionality
before you deliver it to your customers.
According to Statista, companies spent 35% of their financial resources on software testing
in 2015. In 2019, this figure went down to just below a quarter of the company’s budget,
but it is still taxing in 2020 to balance financial expenditure and product performance.
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2. A sophisticated QA process can cut costs by reducing the number of errors that need fixing
and, subsequently, the amount of iterative testing required. It can also improve the
reliability of the testing process, further reducing expenses, which is crucial for startups
and low-budget, middle-size enterprises.
In this article, we’ll briefly run through the key stages of the QA process:
Let’s get started!
Key stages of the QA process
If you don’t have a dedicated quality assurance team, it will be challenging to establish one
from scratch. In this case, it might be good for you to delegate this task to professionals.
Outsourcing the QA process is incredibly effective in cutting down the expenses; it’s usually
more costly to fix the problems than to pay a third-party provider.
Overall, the quality assurance process consists of several steps, from determining your
needs to analyzing the results. Since QA is an iterative process, it will need to be tested
several times to ensure any new fixes or added features don’t break existing functionality.
After testing your processes thoroughly, it’s important to document the steps and
procedures you used so you can ensure best practices are executed again and again.
Process documentation increases efficiency, productivity, and consistency, not to mention
minimizes human error.
Conduct an assessment
The process of quality control often takes place before the software even exists.
QA professionals are involved in checking the documentation and requirements for the
final product to ensure they are clear, consistent, and testable.
This preliminary practice can help businesses significantly reduce their expenses, as fixing
errors during the testing stage is up to 15 times more costly than during the design and
development stages.
Define your testing goals
At this stage, you should identify the areas and functionalities that your testing will focus
on. Normally, QA specialists review the documentation for the software and draft a plan
indicating the scope of the testing and what elements will be under examination.
Generally, it is necessary to test your software for:
Consistency;
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3. Performance accuracy;
Stability;
Clarity;
Completeness;
Executability.
Your specific testing needs will depend on your product, how you’ll distribute it, your
target audience, and your software support plan post-launch.
Create a testing strategy
A testing strategy is one part of the more comprehensive testing plan that you will also
need to develop at this stage.
The testing plan provides a clear overview of your budget, deadlines for testing, types of
testing needed, bug handling procedures, and team member responsibilities. The testing
strategy is the point at which you’ll design your test cases and checklists covering your
software’s functionalities and purposes.
To create test cases, you need to take several factors into account:
Outline the data you will subject to testing. Make sure to specify testing
conditions, scope, purpose, and targets of each test case.
Identify the steps needed to execute each case. Each functionality will require
a different set of test cases, so it’s crucial to consider each feature individually as well
as in the context of the whole. Explore and interact with the software to experience it
from a user’s perspective.
Set up an appropriate test environment. This environment should closely
resemble what you will encounter in production, including databases, network
configurations, operating systems, and various other software and hardware
characteristics.
Consider automating parts of your testing process. Test automation can help
reduce time spent conducting QA, costs, and human error.
Test case execution
Once your testing strategy is in place, and the environment is ready, it’s time to start
executing your test cases.
The first stage of this process takes place at the unit level. During unit testing, QA
specialists or developers check isolated pieces of code and functionality to verify all
components of the software work as expected.
A “unit” is a single method, function, procedure, object, or module. This type of testing is
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4. called “white-box testing,” which means that the software’s code, infrastructure, and
hidden working mechanisms are visible to the QA team and should be used to make the
assessment.
Unit tests can be automated to limit human error and increase the efficiency of the process.
This type of testing verifies the validity of each feature’s performance, but it does not
consider how everything within the program interacts.
To make sure there are no bugs on the larger scope, you need to perform integration
testing. Test cases during this phase should evaluate the software’s performance overall.
Individual modules and features are no longer regarded in isolation; your team will
consider them as a group.
Integration testing is essential to ensure that all components in your application work
according to the requirements and specifications.
QA specialists also include test cases to check elements such as API interactions and UI
design. They also prepare validation cases to check the software’s performance after the
launch and determine whether it functions properly during the program’s whole lifecycle.
Find bugs and defects
Executing the test cases may reveal bugs and inconsistencies that need fixing. In order to
process them efficiently and accurately, you need to establish a system to track these
defects.
Keep track of all errors and update your logs when a bug is fixed. This will enable you to
pinpoint the issue if another feature breaks down after the fix is implemented.
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5. An additional benefit of a bug-tracking system is the ability to further automate the
process. With this infrastructure in place, you can use specialized software (such as
Selenium or Appium) to generate automatic test reports and execute specific scripts,
reducing the need to check something manually multiple times.
Results analysis
Once the testing results are obtained and the bugs are fixed, QA specialists run the same
test cases again to check whether the issues have been successfully resolved.
The QA process is regressive, meaning that the majority of tests are carried out more than
once. Always implement regression testing into your QA process to eliminate the possibility
of one fix interfering with the normal functioning of other features. It is also important to
recheck your program using the integration testing approach, as bug fixes sometimes
change the behavior of various functionalities instead of simply breaking them.
Once you get to the deployment stage, the QA team designs and carries out the tests in
accordance with the release documentation issued by the development team. The
documentation contains the description of all implemented functionalities, all the
conducted fixes, and software limitations. This stage is known as smoke testing. The test
case sets during smoke testing aim to ensure that the final build is functional, stable, and
ready for launch.
What tools should you use for QA testing?
Performing all QA procedures manually is not only time consuming, but vastly ineffective
and highly expensive. You should strive to automate test case execution and report
generation whenever possible.
Several tools discussed below represent the best available solutions to automate your QA
process, maintain it, and benefit from it.
Process Street
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6. Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/jtSUWKI6PNo
Process Street is a piece of software for effective, recurring workflow management.
In quality assurance, the overall process is similar for each new application you release, but
the complexity of testing doesn’t diminish. QA still requires the collaboration of several
departments, and conducting this process without capable management software can lead
to errors and resource waste.
Process Street uses super-powered checklists to make the workflow dynamic and effective
by letting you create QA process templates and integrate them with other apps you use.
The main features of Process Street include:
Stop tasks ✋
Conditional logic
Dynamic due dates ⏱
Task permissions
Task assignments
Role assignments
Embed widget
Webhooks
Approvals ✅
And much, much more!
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7. Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a system to keep track of all the bugs and defects. It is one of the best tools of its
kind on the market, and it enables both individual and collaborative work on a project.
Bugzilla is also open-source and free, which makes it perfect for startups and large
businesses alike.
The main features of Bugzilla include:
Search system to find bugs quickly;
Drop-down lists and auto-complete to simplify searches;
Query tool that memorizes each user’s searches;
Email notifications about any changes;
Automatic reporting according to query and date;
Automatic duplicate bug detection.
Selenium
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8. Selenium is one of the most popular tools to automate your testing procedures. It supports
a wide variety of platforms and can automate web application testing on Linux, Mac, and
Windows. Selenium is also an excellent tool to test your software’s compatibility with
various browsers.
The main features of Selenium include:
Ability to set up parallel test execution;
Available languages include: C#, Python, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, Ruby, Groovy,
and others;
Low demand on resources required for functioning;
Ability to create cross-platform test cases applicable on all operating systems.
TestComplete
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9. TestComplete is another tool for automated test management. You can use it to reduce
testing costs and increase the efficiency of the process. TestComplete is known for its
intuitive interface that allows any QA team to start using it in no time.
The main features of TestComplete include:
it enables and supports data-driven testing;
the ability to construct a highly effective automated test suite with little to no
scripting knowledge;
the support for multiple scripting languages;
the ability to create and customize specific plugins and extensions to your needs.
Ranorex
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10. Ranorex is a platform for test automation that lets you create and run your scripts. This
tool features a click-and-drag interface that doesn’t require any coding knowledge, so it is
incredibly beginner-friendly.
At the same time, Ranorex offers a fully functional integrated development environment
(IDE) for experienced developers and QA specialists. You can use Ranorex together with
other software for defect-tracking, source control, and many more aspects of test
automation management.
The main features of Ranorex include:
Graphical user interface (GUI) object recognition;
Dynamic web elements identification;
Page object mapping;
Automatic timeout handling;
Reusable code modules and a shareable object repository;
Cross-platform testing;
Ability to automate testing for legacy applications;
Auto report generation;
Parallel test runs.
The role of QA processes in your startup growth
Software companies regularly incur significant losses due to not investing in QA and,
consequently, being forced to fix issues in production. A well-established QA process
optimizes your company’s expenses and ensures that your customers get a stable and
functional product.
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11. Setting up a new QA team can be time-consuming and costly at first, but over time, QA
processes will ultimately result in more efficient production and resource management. If
you have the budget, it can be worthwhile to invest in a QA specialist to springboard your
program into action.
If you choose to create your team yourself, these steps and the software mentioned will
help you enhance and automate the testing process.
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