Why QA Is Important For Your Business’ Success

To put it simply, quality assurance is the process of ensuring that your software product or service you develop works as it should. In order for your software to have all the boxes checked before being delivered to the end user, it must pass tests and meet quality, UX and security standards. In this article, we will dig deeper into why QA is important (very important!) for the success of your business.

What is QA and What’s the Deal With It?

In the world of software development, product quality is an absolute must. And to achieve this, it’s necessary to introduce a quality assurance process. What QA aims to achieve is to prevent bugs already in the first, early stages of development, and to bring your code into line with industry standards. The ultimate goal? A more reliable and functional product.

We should clarify that there’s a difference between the process of software testing that focuses on finding errors in the code during development, while quality assurance is a process that is preventive in nature. QA therefore optimises development processes and procedures at the very beginning of the development process and aligns the project with the best, well-established practices.

Benefits of QA in Software Development

Let’s talk more about the benefits of this process and why QA is important in a way that it goes beyond just the technical aspects of software development.

1) Greatly Increased Product Quality

So, what QA ensures is that the software in the making works without any errors, bugs or issues that could lead to problems with the user experience of the end user. High quality software products greatly increase user retention and loyalty to your product. Not to mention that higher quality means less chance of oftentimes expensive fixes after the final release.

2) Security Increase

As we mentioned, QA tries to identify weak points in the process right from the start and ensure that the process is compliant with security standards. Why is this extremely important nowadays? Because data security is a very sensitive and important issue, especially in some industries such as healthtech or fintech. QA is a ‘dam’ of prevention in these sensitive industries where data security and user privacy are extremely important.

3) Cost Reduction

If you detect errors early in the software development process, this almost always means much lower costs for fixing the errors. Because, if an error occurs at a later stage, it can be much more difficult, more complex, and therefore much more expensive to fix. QA here serves as a process that tries to bring those risks to a minimum with its proactive approach. Learn more about quality assurance as well as quality control in this article where we compared these two practices and explained how they complement each other.

4) Faster Development

Along with QA tests, we also associate the concept of automated testing. This type of testing speeds up the development process and detects bugs much faster than what would be possible with manual tests. Likewise, with automated tests, there’s no room for human error. All of this leads to faster communication and feedback among everyone involved in the project, and ultimately a higher return on investment (ROI).

5) Better UX

Is there such thing as mentioning the importance of user experience one too many times? No. After all, intuitive and responsive UX equals happier and more satisfied customers. In other words, this means greater loyalty to your end product and greater retention of existing users. If you have a larger base of existing users, it can indirectly mean a lower need to acquire new users. And this is another example why QA is important and where it ‘excels’, because through its practices it has the task of ensuring the best possible user experience.

QA as Key Factor in your Business’ Success

• It builds trust
  
  
  
  • Reliable software product or service? Bingo. What you get are loyal customers you’ve developed a long-term relationship with.
  
  
  
  


• It brings competitive advantage
  
  
  
  • QA is the cornerstone of high quality products. That’s why organisations that strictly adhere to well-established quality assurance practices stand out from their competition. And this gives them a greater reputation and a much greater probability for new investments.
  
  
  
  


• It encourages continuous improvement
  
  
  
  • With its approach to the development process, QA encourages continuous improvement. In what way exactly? By analysing existing practices and introducing new ones with the aim of increasing the quality of the end product.
  
  
  
  

How to Make Sure QA Is Efficient?

To make it as efficient as possible, QA needs to be integrated into every step of the software development life cycle, also known as SDLC.

When talking about quality assurance, we’ll focus on these three next phases — planning, development, and testing phase. In the planning phase, the quality assurance team identifies potential risks by assessing requirements. Then comes the development phase, where QA Engineers make sure that the code complies with the highest quality standards. The last phase, a.k.a. the testing phase involves a series of tests that aim to discover all potential issues in the product before it gets the final green light to be launched to users.

Automation tools like Postman or Jira, among many tools, the most commonly used ones, help with speeding up the entire process and ensure reliable and consistent results.

Conclusion

In short, quality assurance is a practice that in today’s world of software development helps you develop a better and more valuable product, and in the long term, increases your product and brand reputation. It does that by following its principles and taking a preventive approach, with the help of thorough testing and making sure the software meets all industry standards. Some of the most important benefits of implementing QA are higher reliability of your product, cost reduction, and better UX for your end customer.

With years of experience in the QA field, our skilled QA Engineers are here to help you with best practices in every development process. If you also need a QA team for your project, feel free to contact us! We are at your disposal.