Nowadays, there is a lot of buzz around the term “QA vs. QE.”
In earlier days, developers used to rely on quality assurance analysts in order to know the quality of software prior to deployment. Considering the customary waterfall operational model—in which products are designed, employed, and verified in chronological order, that’s why the quality testing services company is usually the last phase to eradicate any bug/s in the code former to production release.
In this model, the first and most primary role of a QA engineer is to primarily detect defects, size the impact, and—when they consistently discover an issue—send the code back to the developers to start the cycle afresh. On the other hand, Quality engineering is basically about defect prevention versus defect measurement. QE is effectively an upstream event in which quality engineers work alongside cross-functional development teams to discover and decipher issues in real-time.
In this blog, we will try to identify the entire path of transformation from Quality Assurance to Quality Engineering while marking all the benchmarks related to a successful transition ensuring a smoother product development journey next time when you Hire QA testers. Let’s begin.
Difference Between Quality Engineering and Quality Assurance
Though QA and QE, both are made to improve product quality, the most significant difference between them is the moment software engineers intervene into the improvement process. Quality Assurance is a practice where testers are approached when the development phase is achieved and ready to be released to the market as per the requirements. However, Quality Engineering is is constantly fostered at every phase of development life cycle.
In other words, Quality Engineering and Quality Assurance are both part of a broader term Quality Engineering and Assurance. The practice aims to combine both the techniques to create a sustainable business process that involves a control on quality with rapid integration of checks into the product development procedures.
Why Quality Engineering?
Facilitated by an agile, iterative, incremental development model, the move to QE ensures quality is scorched into the software at the onset of development and remains in focus not only up to but also beyond Production deployment.
This process utilizes quality measurements at build time, allowing for continuous quality checks prior to code submission in production. The stretched feedback loop has gone, in which QA and the development team play hot potato with the codebase until a fix occurs. In an agile model, quality is simply engineered into the entire process as testing takes place parallel to development.
Although we cannot say that this is the only factor that leads to enriched product quality. While most CIOs who have expertise in a micro service-oriented architecture will emphasize the ease and pace of continuous deployment, the transition towards minor component-based releases, also brings focus to specific desired outcomes that are aimed by QA and Testing Services.
Break up of a massive application may create more moving chunks as components, however, it means development teams and quality engineers are running tests on smaller pieces of code, with discrete functions to analyze and assess—few variables which result in the simplified root-cause analysis. In addition to that, test strategies which include performance, security, and end-to-end integration, are driven into continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for all applications.
Moreover, the CI/CD pipelines are extensible and consistent, allowing for all applications to be delivered in a similar fashion while also removing the need for “manual” code delivery, which inherently degrades the customer experience.
QA to QE Transformation
Though QA to QE transformation has turned to be a highly trending term for the people who are involved in the QA processes, the ideal transformation to Quality Engineering needs the testing teams and the QA Service Provider to understand the process. Here we have a list of the six most important factors that can help foster the QA to QE transformation for maximum productivity on quality engineering operations.
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Workforce Transformation
The first step to Quality Engineering begins with the evaluation of the testing teams to have a measure of their skills. This might even need you to upgrade your skills, tools, and maybe the entire testing culture.
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Upstream Testing
The next step to QE transformation needs testers to work on Agile practices where the software is tested right from the beginning of the SDLC while taking account of continuous integration data and process feedback.
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Automation Framework
Another essential aspect of QA to QE transformation is adhering to the automation framework to improve the routine testing procedures. Moreover, the process even needs expansion on the automation part with adaptive use of automation testing tools like Selenium, QFTest, AI, and of course Machine Learning.
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Enterprise CI/CD
The notion of Quality Engineering is all about improving the testing procedures to save on time and resources. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment allow testers to the upstream testing process for preventing error-work and nurture quality.
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Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing platforms allow you to work with testing communities that can be public or private, certified or uncertified. However, the agenda behind crowdsourcing is expanding digital services to accelerate coding, testing, and compilation to yield desired outputs.
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Outcome-based model
Using an outcome-based model is all about driving efficiency in operations by tracking performance metrics. This is usually done by QA Service Provider in India, with the objective of creating managed capacity models that are outcome-based and more transparent when it comes to risk control and quality.
QA to QE Principles
One of the core principles of quality engineering in software testing is test automation, which creates predictable developments. Prominence on automation through component testing and end-to-end user experience testing allows for feedback loops within seconds of code merges. Test failures force design teams to think through challenges and be proactive in solving problems immediately, knowing that if they do not, and the code cannot move forward. Since Quality Engineering is more about the Agile approach, there are five major principles that QA teams need to consider when fostering Quality Engineering:
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Keep things simple when applying automation
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Adopt shorter iterations for testing as it allows faster responding
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Take time to choose the right tool and practices
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With Automation being a trial-and-error process, the testers should aim at learning while doing
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Last but not least, a whole team approach is vital for successful QA to QE transition.
Considering the acceptance of CI/CD, automated measurements and notifications have become innate to the agile process, that’s why if a build fails, development and QE teams are flagged instantly in order to deal with the issues on the spot. In an agile framework, everything from functionality and usability to API integration and deployment tests can be automated.
Even code style verification tools, known as a linter, can be preset, measured, and structured to avoid programmatic or stylistic errors at build time. This highlights the importance of consistency in transitioning to an agile model that can also facilitate the extensibility of the platform.
How Right Tools Add Value To QE Automation?
Selection of right automation tools is extremely important when you are working on some product development while establishing best practices to lead your team and internal operations. Right tools help you to meet your QE goals by creating automated test cases and meet all the guidelines that can create a sustainable development cycle.
Moreover, the selection of right tools is a part of QE automation procedures as they help to cut off any frustrating tasks and ensure great collaborations between all the components of development, QA, and QE.
More importantly, automation is a culture-building investment that helps developers and testers to dive deeper into the Quality Assurance process. Therefore, accessibility to the best tools enables users to enjoy more streamlined test suites and overcome any hidden defects or risks at a more rapid pace.
Pro Tips To Adapt To Quality Engineering
Though it is always a good idea to hire QA service providers, understanding the right approach to Quality Engineering could help you understand the end-to-end QE program while taking insights on right tools, advanced engineering practices, and obligatory test frameworks. Here are a few tips that you must keep in mind when you are on your way to be a Quality Engineering organization:
- Make sure you get over the old school, scarce, and inconsistent test strategies to advanced automation strategy that leads to effective QE.
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Make sure you understand all the basics of test automation in detail.
- Make sure you adopt well to agile principles I.e. keeping shorter iterations, have a whole team approach, and keep things easy.
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Make sure you never skip the process of determining right tools for every different project.
- Make sure you evaluate all the data from various SDLCs to use metrics on improving your QA and Testing Services.
Why Should Your Business Transform From QA To QE?
As quality improves, the delivery and support model also evolve. For instance, software updates can be moved directly into production and evade the weeks or even months’ time that new software releases would conventionally occupy in a test environment. On the other hand, rapid deployment only becomes possible when users trust the QE process care that strengthens the quality and resiliency of software.
The paradigm shift from QA to QE might seem like mere semantics, but quality engineering is the process that imparts and maintains quality in software delivery. As such, software QE not only provides a base for vendors adopting agile development models, it also helps end-users who get assistance from improved quality and faster time to value.
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When QA service providers work in collaboration with DevOps teams, it helps to yield quicker releases with improved automation initiatives and reduced consuming siloed efforts.
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Quality Engineering needs testers to practice the shift-left approach more often in order to reduce the development costs and locate defects that might disturb the customer experience and release time.
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QA is all about creating experiences, and testing the applications allows customers to have a pleasing application use.
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With the introduction of IoT devices and several other technologies, testers need to understand that real-time testing should be made a vital practice to locate defects that might bother the end-user experience.
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QA teams can leverage Quality Engineering practice to aim at more probable security risks that may arise while sharing data between a network of systems.
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Lastly, Quality Engineering could also help improve the automated processes to upgrade the software development lifecycle and achieve rapid releases without compromising on the quality.
All in all, Quality Assurance and Quality Engineering are approaches that help to attain all the goals associated with QAOps, I.e., simplifying the outlook of applications and product releases.
If you, too, are looking for some expert assistance on Quality Engineering or Quality Assurance Services, our experts at BugRaptors could help you get all the necessary aid you need to achieve sustainable results.
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