Software Quality Assurance – Software Engineering

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is simply a way to assure quality in the software. It is the set of activities which ensure processes, procedures as well as standards are suitable for the project and implemented correctly. 

Software Quality Assurance is a process which works parallel to Software Development. It focuses on improving the process of development of software so that problems can be prevented before they become a major issue. Software Quality Assurance is a kind of Umbrella activity that is applied throughout the software process. 

Generally, the quality of the software is verified by the third-party organization like international standard organizations.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) encompasses

SQA process Specific quality assurance and quality control tasks (including technical reviews and a multitiered testing strategy) Effective software engineering practice (methods and tools) Control of all software work products and the changes made to them a procedure to ensure compliance with software development standards (when applicable) measurement and reporting mechanisms

Elements of Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

1. Standards: The IEEE, ISO, and other standards organizations have produced a broad array of software engineering standards and related documents. The job of SQA is to ensure that standards that have been adopted are followed, and all work products conform to them.
2. Reviews and audits: Technical reviews are a quality control activity performed by software engineers for software engineers. Their intent is to uncover errors. Audits are a type of review performed by SQA personnel (people employed in an organization) with the intent of ensuring that quality guidelines are being followed for software engineering work.
3. Testing: Software testing is a quality control function that has one primary goal—to find errors. The job of SQA is to ensure that testing is properly planned and efficiently conducted for primary goal of software.
4. Error/defect collection and analysis: SQA collects and analyzes error and defect data to better understand how errors are introduced and what software engineering activities are best suited to eliminating them.
5. Change management: SQA ensures that adequate change management practices have been instituted.
6. Education: Every software organization wants to improve its software engineering practices. A key contributor to improvement is education of software engineers, their managers, and other stakeholders. The SQA organization takes the lead in software process improvement which is key proponent and sponsor of educational programs.
7. Security management: SQA ensures that appropriate process and technology are used to achieve software security.
8. Safety: SQA may be responsible for assessing the impact of software failure and for initiating those steps required to reduce risk.
9. Risk management: The SQA organization ensures that risk management activities are properly conducted and that risk-related contingency plans have been established.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) focuses on

• software’s portability
• software’s usability
• software’s reusability
• software’s correctness
• software’s maintainability
• software’s error control

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) has

1. A quality management approach.
2. Formal technical reviews.
3. Multi testing strategy. 
4. Effective software engineering technology. 
5. Measurement and reporting mechanism.  

Major Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Activities

1. SQA Management Plan: Make a plan for how you will carry out the SQA throughout the project. Think about which set of software engineering activities are the best for project. check level of SQA team skills. 
2. Set The Check Points: SQA team should set checkpoints. Evaluate the performance of the project on the basis of collected data on different check points. 
3. Measure Change Impact: The changes for making the correction of an error sometimes re introduces more errors keep the measure of impact of change on project. Reset the new change to check the compatibility of this fix with whole project. 
4. Multi testing Strategy: Do not depend on a single testing approach. When you have a lot of testing approaches available use them. 
5. Manage Good Relations: In the working environment managing good relations with other teams involved in the project development is mandatory. Bad relation of SQA team with programmers team will impact directly and badly on project. Don’t play politics. 
6. Maintaining records and reports : Comprehensively document and share all QA records, including test cases, defects, changes, and cycles, for stakeholder awareness and future reference.
7. Reviews software engineering activities : The SQA group identifies and documents the processes. The group also verifies the correctness of software product.
8. Formalize deviation handling : Track and document software deviations meticulously. Follow established procedures for handling variances.

Benefits of Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

1. SQA produces high quality software. 
2. High quality application saves time and cost. 
3. SQA is beneficial for better reliability. 
4. SQA is beneficial in the condition of no maintenance for a long time. 
5. High quality commercial software increase market share of company. 
6. Improving the process of creating software. 
7. Improves the quality of the software. 
8. It cuts maintenance costs. Get the release right the first time, and your company can forget about it and move on to the next big thing. Release a product with chronic issues, and your business bogs down in a costly, time-consuming, never-ending cycle of repairs.

Disadvantage of Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

There are a number of disadvantages of quality assurance.

• Cost: Some of them include adding more resources, which cause the more budget its not, Addition of more resources For betterment of the product.
• Time Consuming: Testing and Deployment of the project taking more time which cause delay in the project.
• Overhead: Software Quality Assurance (SQA) will create depends on the administrator it will make slow the speed of the project.

Conclusion

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) maintain a most important role in the ensuring the quality, reliability and efficiency of the product. By implementation of these control process which cause the improvement of the software engineering process. SQA gives a higher quality product which help to meet user expectations, its having some drawback also like Cost, time-consuming process, after maintaining the process of the SQA its improved the reliability and maintain the maintenance cost which affect in a future.

Overall, Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is important for the success in the project development in Software Engineering

FAQs on Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

What Does Do Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in software Development?

Ans:

SQA makes sure that the software is made according to the need and checking its build.

How does Software Quality Assurance (SQA) help software work better?

Ans:

SQA Finds the faults in the Software before its use, it will help to make software more trustable.

What parts are important in Software Quality Assurance (SQA)?

Ans:

SQA Checks the software follows rules, it will learn from example, manage changes, check working well, educate teams, ensure security, and handle the risk