One of the first things that every project manager that is running a software project should do is to create a plan which will manage the way in which quality activities are conducted. These quality activities are needed for the website, application or system to meet specific objectives and goals. During a process like this, they will probably have to document the objectives, goals, responsibilities, duties, roles and other similar things in a written quality management plan.
According to experts, there are three basic stages or kinds of testing needed during the construction/build stage of the software project. The first one is called developer testing. As the name suggests, this is an activity conducted by professional developers and usually involves things like function testing, unit testing, integration testing, thread testing and system testing. In many cases, you will find this stage as a white box.
The other stage is known as QA (Quality Assurance) testing. There are situations when this testing is conducted by an independent QA team, but in other cases, it is conducted by the development team. In both cases, we are talking about so-called black box testing. The reason is simple – the team doesn’t know how this software was built to work and they are performing tests against the requirements of the business for this software. Finally, UAT or User Acceptance testing is conducted by the users. They will conduct their work directly on the new product.
Without any doubt, this is a complex process and a good software tool is necessary in these modern times if you want to stay ahead of the competition. QA tools are a must in case you want to meet specific quality goals. This is true no matter if you are trying to develop a system, a platform, a website or a software app. Today, developers and testers can select one of the many tools available in the market. These tools will automate tests which mean that they will save the team some time that can be used in a more productive way. Keep in mind that not all QA tools are working with every platform, so make sure that you know whether the tool you are interested in is compatible with the software you are trying to develop and the selected platform.
In addition, it’s worth mentioning that these tools are different in other ways too. For instance, they support different kinds of testing. So, automated unit testing QA tools are used in the beginning of the development stage. On the other hand, the QA stage requires the use of automated stress test, load test, performance test and regression test tools. QA tools are here to automate regression testing, load, performance and stress testing. All these tools need specific hardware so they can run properly. Modern tools like this come with different features. It is highly recommended to use one that measures code coverage for example.
Now that you know why quality management is important and why you need Quality Assurance tools, it’s time to pick one.
