To say that, “ideally, the quality should be better”, would be too orthodox, obvious, and naturally comprehensive. Yet, some developers just stepped towards the quantitative approach and have left the quality factor far behind where they are now.
Thinking that quantity could ever beat the quality, would never work.
According to my perception, quality and quantity are the two main business factors that build reputation and revenue simultaneously. If one builds the reputation, the other helps in leveraging the business revenue. Don’t forget that supply has a very big role to play in revenue generation and market dominance.
Let us consider the case in which two IT services providers own an enterprise software development company each. Both are in the same profession, with exact similar ownership but differing from each other because of the distinct business approaches they both individually believed in.
What makes an organization popular, successful, and client retaining in nature is what we are going to talk here about, by describing various aspects of the business, and covering the most influential one i.e., ‘Software quality’.
Why Software Quality Is The Most Influential Aspect ‘Here’ Especially?
Here, in this technology-dominant world, to understand why the quality of the software is considered as the most influential, we can assume for software quality to be quite synonymous with the reliability of the food we eat.
To keep our bodies running all day, we deliver quality and nutritious edibles to our bodies (The consumers). And we hope that the body would work and last till longer or at least until we want it to.
If the quality is really up to the mark, it could let the human body work for the whole day with minimum pauses required. Otherwise, the body might itself demand to feed it again, which is quite a comprehensible matter to understand.
Let us get a bit more technical and know what software quality could convert in an IT business if managed wisely and what wrong could be expected if the quality concern isn’t emphasized as it has to be?
The ways to improve the software quality from the very beginning or even amidst the operations are altogether mentioned below-
- Do not Delay in Bringing The Testers
The testing process seems normal to hear but is a complex and most required thing in the entire process of software development. The reason being, they are to resolve things that are uninvited and caused due to the mistakes of developers, which means, they have to clear the mistakes of others.
Therefore, it is beneficial to bring the testers on board at the very early stage so that the mistakes that occurred due to any reason do not stay for longer, foster themselves, and become difficult enough to fight against.
Software testers have to adopt a specific testing discipline for every specific technology, which could be easy if the testers are involved as early as possible.
Experts suggest that with each passing stage of development, the cost of resolving bugs enhances exponentially. Knowing all this, you could better think of this point from now onwards.
- Create standards and awareness regarding them
It is advisable to have some standards maintained for the use of tools & technologies that are going to be required for software production and managed qa services. If there would be a clear disclaimer for the use of standard things for the entire production, it would mitigate a lot of re-work for the entire crew.
Although, keeping only standard things for the production could be a bit costlier and also would limit the liberty to work, but would help in producing a reliable and quality product.
Coding standards help in mitigating the mistakes that are usually otherwise. EDI standards like edi 834, edi 837, etc. for transactions make data exchange easy, quick, safe, and secure.
- Maintain a Risk Register
Experts suggest that keeping a list prepared for the probable risks could help in risk management meanwhile software development.
We could keep the following sections in the risk register to go through every time before beginning with a new project or for a new product-
- A list mentioning the overall probable risks that could hamper the pace of development
- Space to fill in the details of risk when it was recognized
- The possibility of the risk occurrence
- The degree column for the severity of the risk; how risky it could be?
- To have it mentioned for who would manage the risk at what time duration
- A column for the response that the product has given after the risk has been mitigated or resolved. Sometimes, the response helps a lot in visualizing things for the longer term.
- A column for the status of each risk for every day
- A space to add the negative impact that risk has already put in.
However, there can be much more than just these here, but the point is to just aware of the ways to control and improve software quality.
- Mutual Requirement Analysis
Things get complicated when one-sided analysis and implementation are done without discussing with the client the requirements. If the requirements are discussed and agreed upon at the very beginning, things could be quite clear and well-managed. The software quality in such cases would invite fewer arguments and minimum re-work because of mutually agreed requirements.
Note that, the quality sometimes is defined by the requirements and their fulfillment also. Even if the quality that you provided to your client is better, your client might not recognize it unless one finds all the requirements fulfilled.
- Let the Testing Team Engage More
Make sure to hire a mature and experienced QA software testing services that keeps the client first and always consults before a modification is required in the software.
The more the testing team takes part in discussions/meetings with the client, the better the quality results would be.
The approach plays a more important role sometimes than expensive and advanced tools.
Conclusively, these are some of the many proven ways that could be helpful at every pace and phase of enterprise software development because the ways are general and do not require specific tools and machines.
Author’s Bio: Alicia works with the editorial team of A3logics, a leading company offering professional IT services. Exploring the latest technologies, reading about them, and writing her views have always been her passion. She seeks new opportunities to express her opinions, explore technological advancements, and document the details. You can always find her enjoying books or articles about varied topics or jotting down her ideas in a notebook.