10 Ways QA Testing can Really Accelerate Digital Transformation

Quality Assurance is a measure taken to ensure that a applications are defect-free. Assuring quality in a digital world means resigning to the idea that quality extends beyond getting the product/service to the market.

Here we take a look at 10 different ways Quality Assurance (QA) testing can really help accelerate the digital transformation of your business.

1. Transition of automation from application-level to lifecycle: The automation of testing through QA is shifting more to life-cycle automation. The internet of things (IoT) is slowly addressing testing more from a life-cycle point of view, rather than traditional testing. What this essentially translates to, is that the way customers use products is taken into account, rather than just details pertaining to product design. This shift of QA results in testing of the customer experience, testing of network and testing of cross-platform compatibility of the application. Business management consultant McKinsey & Company forecasts that by 2025, automation technology innovations will assume control over tasks that are now performed by 250 million knowledge workers worldwide, freeing the remaining work force to devote their time and energy to more creative pursuits. QA automation when testing IoT systems, requires use of adaptive techniques that cannot be provided by traditional testing methods. In this manner, advanced QA automation enables businesses to incorporate automation early on, and throughout, the lifecycle.

2. Skilled resources: QA is increasingly proving to play a central role as organizations strive for advancement into digital revolution. QA empowers organizations, as implementing QA practices throughout all the stages of products/services of organizations encourages process transparency and more attention-to-detail. QA teams are realizing the importance of being adept at testing embedded software and big data, among other emerging technology. Resources skilled in the language of QA have a keen eye for being able to foresee technical glitches, and can help get the code right the first time. In addition, these resources also look for ways to effectively automate a majority of testing, so as to improve the efficiency of the process.

3. Decision Making through Advanced Analytics: QA is witnessing a radical change in terms of data input. From feedback via satisfaction surveys, QA practices can now be improved by analyzing the various forms of widely available data through websites, predominantly, social-media. Direct feedback from end-users gives a fairly good view for corporations to see where they stand, and it aids tremendously for developing business strategies, going ahead. As QA practices are further strategized and improved, businesses can assess whether the effect of the implementation is being reflected in the results. Based on the research pertaining to customer experiences with the product/service, QA teams can then create actionable intelligence, which can further be used for predictive and prescriptive analysis.

4. Assurance of reliable data from big data: QA teams are building frameworks that consist of security, data integrity and privacy. These aspects result directly in next-generation data-integration platforms, which then help decode the data for further analysis. Integration of QA with open-source platforms is also necessary to draw out all of the quality data. Identifying the right tools to help increase testing efficiencies or for effective test automation is essential for detail-oriented Quality Assurance, over the long run. Quality data helps businesses gain confidence to use the data and strategize, going forward. Having a large pool of data that cannot be assured or confidently used will result in more expenses for businesses, thus dragging down whatever progress they may have made towards digital transformation.

5. Holding up the reputation of the brand: QA practices would result in faster time-to-market of the applications, as testing would be embedded iteratively. Subsequently, customer feedback about the product/service would reflect in online forums. The faster the applications make it to the market, and more the quality, the more the reputation of the brand is upheld. Quality Assurance is not just a desired approach; it is mandatory in order to assure that quality is embedded in the early stages of the lifecycle, and even after the application has hit the market. Since most customers value reviews over promotions, a word of quality products/services would most assuredly spread like fire, thus capturing a promising digital audience. Once businesses acquire an impressively large base of followers, there is a scope for digital transformation of their products and services to take place at a faster rate.

6. Performance and security guarantee: QA best practices are aimed primarily at better quality, surely. Apart from this, however, businesses looking to transform digitally must also shoulder the responsibility of guaranteeing performance and security of the application. There is nothing more akin to virtual suicide than lack of performance or a dip in performance at a critical time. Each time news headlines scream murder at how disappointing the recent e-commerce sale was due to a server issue, there are thousands of other corporations breathing a sigh of relief that it was not them. Whether in the area of e-commerce, gaming or banking, applications that directly impact user experience can disappear overnight if enough care is not taken to assure that such scenarios can be swiftly handled. This confidence and technical know-how to deal with crisis situation can only be achieved through QA.

7. Innovation through Engineering: QA is a part of Quality Engineering, an approach that is quite a bit more elaborate than traditional testing. Today, the roles of QA Engineer and Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) are sought-after much more than that of a tester. Addressing quality in present day is more about ensuring that development itself is quality centric, rather than validating the software post completion of the development stages. Once this is put into practice, there is a lot of room for QA professionals to critically and creatively assess the situation. This would lead to more innovation, therefore furthering the digital transformation of a business.

8. Implementation of DevOps: Perhaps one of the most important factors of QA is implementation of the DevOps concept. It encourages collaborative work and cross-functional teams. This approach ensures that issues are foreseen and dealt with in the early stages of the lifecycle, and also that the modifications are made in quick iterations. In addition, to understand the product or service from various functional perspectives gives the application an edge, and helps all teams get a more comprehensive view of the product.

9. Behavior Driven Development (BDD): In a form of an unending duel with the BDD, the QA team works hard to break down an application, while BDD is aimed at ensuring that the application is unbreakable. In this back-and-forth process, the quality of the application improves, as various types of testing is performed in order to ensure that the product/service is capable of handling load and can continue to perform its tasks efficiently.

10. Profit maximization: Ultimately, better quality through best QA practices would resulting in raising business standards. As long as businesses keep the quality constant, they will continue to have an edge over competitors. As a result, they would be in a better position to invest in better digital initiatives, exploring more innovatively. This would continue to hold the interests of their user-base and would inevitably hit the bulls-eye of profit maximization.

In Conclusion

Being a global leader in the independent software testing services domain, Cigniti Technologies is a strong advocate of Quality Assurance and its implementation right from the early stages of the software lifecycle. We take great measures to ensure that we are fully equipped with state-of-the-art services, and have partnered with other experts that specialize in providing testing services.

To know more about Cigniti Technologies, visit our website and reach out to our experts.