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A Templated Approach to Achieve QA Maturity

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IntroductionNowadays, organizations are looking out for smart

ways to be successful in the industry. Especially in

the software testing industry, IT companies need

to be swift and reliable to gain customer retention

and confidence. They are in a compulsion to build

more efficient and secured products that are both

user-friendly and much better than the competitors

in the market. Testing is indeed the buzzword in the

industry and organizations should have a team of

efficient testers and developers along with the best

practices and processes. This combination of people,

processes, and smart QA solutions make a successful

QA team and they are the key to building high-quality

software products.

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Quality is never an accident;

it is always the result of

intelligent effort.

– John Ruskin

A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY 3

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Role of QA team - If Quality Matters, Why Not Quality Assurance?

In any organization, QA teams are the backbone as they enhance the quality of the product through

multiple processes and practices. QA teams are now an inevitable part of IT and other business

operations. The purpose of an effective Quality Assurance team is to avoid poor quality products for the

end-users. The importance of QA is very well realized by organizations that want to be agile and deliver

the best of products to their customers at the right time. The QA team ensures that the right processes

are happening at the right time to maintain the quality of the product. In fact, quality and testing go hand

in hand. For instance, when particular software is launched in the market, the end-users expect it to work

as promised by the company. The bugs/errors should be identified and fixed then and there and ensure

that the product will not need to be fixed with later updates. The QA teams play a major role in such

scenarios.

Some of the major factors considered by QA teams for business growth are:

• To meet client and stakeholders’ expectations

• To reduce costs and increases market share

• To improve organization reputation

• To meet the industry standards

However, not many organizations understand the need for a QA team. Often, they assume that they have

a good set of developers and there is barely any need for a QA team or testers. But when the quality of

the product deteriorates because of reasons like functional complexity, integrations, testing huge data

sets, time, and resource constraints, that is when the reality strikes. Therefore, it is always best to have a

QA team involved in the process right from the beginning to avoid such last-minute chaos. Also, having a

QA team assures faster release time.

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Pain Points in Quality AssuranceDefective or broken software can impact a company’s

reputation in the market and lead to a loss in customers

and business. As an initiative to minimize cost and

increase efficiency, early detection of bugs is a key

factor in a successful development process. Mostly,

bugs occur in different instances and often impact

the user experience or stop users from accessing

the application or website. This is why a QA team is

needed to run the process seamlessly. No matter how

hard they try to fix certain issues, there are chances of

few issues that keep recurring if not taken proper care

of from the initial stages. There are several challenges

that the QA teams face on a daily basis while testing

the application in a different environment and platform.

While automating testing, environment-related issues

are the predominant ones. These are some of the

major challenges faced by testers frequently:

• Performance Issues – Applications are highly

prone to performance issues when there is a bad

network or an increased number of users. During

peak usage of the applications, the performance

of the application slows down and gradually

deteriorates.

• Security threats – Since the applications are

accessible by everyone everywhere, the security

measures handled in the application should be

given massive importance. Testing such security

breaches are always challenging with limited

security testing processes.

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Businesses who include QA

as an integral part of their

operations every year find

an increase in the revenue of

their business in no time.

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• Compatibility Testing – As applications are accessible by any device, testing applications through

various browsers, OS, devices, and platforms is highly essential. For every release, testing needs to

be performed on all the available versions and devices. This process is often time-consuming and

the test results mostly vary among them.

• CI/CD Challenges – In the Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment process, testing should

take place much faster to reach the market on time with good quality. During regression cycles, the

test suite providing critical path coverage of the application needs to be identified and executed

during each test run. Identifying these important test cases is vital and needs to be handled through

a process.

• SDET – Testers are required to have automation skills or expertise and possess basic algorithmic

application capabilities in order to build automated tests. The need to keep them updated in the test

automation industry is crucial.

• Testing Strategy – Identifying and implementing the right test strategy is often a challenge that

many organizations face these days. A team of testers alone is not enough but an effective strategy

should be in place to enable the testers to work productively. An ideal test strategy should comprise

testing of all layers of the application with the right tools and processes.

A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY 5

A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY

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Best Approaches to Overcome the ChallengesWith the right technology, tools, and best practices

in hand, it is much easier to deliver high-quality

products to the end-users in no time. Even simple yet

imperative practices make the job of the testers easier.

By implementing these solutions, we not only deliver

good quality products but also get higher levels of

customer satisfaction and retention.

• Understanding the requirements clearly

• Planning test strategy by following defined testing

process

• Perform health check-ups on third party web

services before QA Build

• Involve stakeholders in product walkthrough

• Inspect the testing artifacts

• Evaluate the product in functional and non-

functional aspects

• Multi-environment testing through test automation

• Measure quality metrics and perform cause and

effect analysis

• Monitor and control the testing process

• Shift-Left testing approach

• Continuous Testing through test Automation to

complement CI/CD

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A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY 7

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Optimization stage

1 2 3 4 5

Initial stage Managed stage Defined stage Measured stage

How to Achieve QA Maturity?

Performing software quality assurance activities require that QA and testing practices undergo a

change. Organizations should come up with innovative ideas to find unique techniques with QA testing

strategies and tools which would result in QA maturity that contributes to testing a product efficiently

and quickly. A mature QA process provides the best testing methods and patterns for handling possible

testing challenges. These robust set of testing process, procedures, and tools help QA teams to resolve

issues efficiently by reducing the time. In addition, it also helps organizations to ensure meeting market

demands with a high-quality end product. But how to implement these strategies to achieve QA maturity

is a question asked by many organizations in the market? In order to achieve QA maturity, organizations

should have a Quality Engineering mindset wherein they need to evaluate their existing testing teams and

improve their skillsets to make a successful leap to the next level. In short, this transformation involves

changing the team’s mindset, enhancing their skills and tools adoption, and transforming the culture

completely. By doing this, organizations will effectively achieve QA maturity.

As a part of QA maturity and the need to improvise the testing methods and process, we introduce our

promising integrated QE approach that helps software developing companies and enterprises to test

their apps effectively and deliver good quality, highly functional, and fit for use applications to end-users.

Hyper-Testing, widely known as the unique test automation strategy implemented with advanced AI/ML

components, is a home-grown Selenium-based testing approach. This intelligent automation strategy

focuses on building seamless software apps and sites by leveraging testing methods like ‘Shift-Left’.

This optimum solution addresses commonly faced pain points by identifying defects in the initial stages,

fixing them right away, and finally delivers the apps in the market in shorter timelines. Besides these,

Hyper-Testing can be easily integrated with the five different stages of QA maturity and results in the best

user-friendly and reliable apps.

Test Maturity Model Integration

A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY

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Mind map - A Blueprint for Achieving Quality Engineering

The mind map here answers all your testing queries to

not only meet your business goals but also achieve QA

maturity which will help you in the long run. A sturdy

testing strategy is your cornerstone and with the right

one in place, one can never afford to go wrong in

today’s competitive software industry. Hyper-Testing,

the end result of collective years of solving all kinds

of testing challenges and fulfilling customer needs is

the way to go forward. This carefully designed testing

strategy aims to accomplish the testing goals of

organizations by having the exact tools, best practices,

methodologies, and processes in the right place.

The mind map below illustrates in detail the entire

lifecycle of Hyper-Testing that covers end-to-end

testing of all application layers. It also helps in fulfilling

the non-functional requirements by leveraging the

best of breed tools that result in lower TCO and higher

ROI. Hyper-Testing augments promising testing

methods, tools, and technologies which make it very

much possible to boost business and meet customer

expectations.

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A TEMPLATED APPROACH TO ACHIEVE QA MATURITY 9

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Collaborative Development

Faster Deployment

Latest Methodologies & Tools Usage

Tool for Communication

Team Structure

Project Management

Project Life Cycle

Agile Development

Continuous Integration

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Feedback

Continuous Integration

TDD

ATDD

BDD

In-Sprint Automation

Continuous Monitoring

Automation

Quality Metrics

Audit

Internationali-zation

Testing

Omni Channel Assurance

Device Testing

Browser Testing

Security Testing

Tools Analysis

Greater Visibility

AI Based Report and Analysis

Release Health Index

CI - CT- CD

Early Automation

Page Object Model Creation

Jump Start Components Creation

Framework Development

AI based Reports

Self-healing Mechanism

AI-based Reports

Sauce Labs

Docker Grid

Functional Testing

Security Testing

Automation Testing

Performance Testing

RACI Chart

Communication Style

Define Score

Planning

Execution

Closing

Agile/Iterative Model

Monitoring and Control

Skype

Email

Slack

Hangout

Release Planning

Sprint Planning

Scrum Meeting

Sprint Review

Retrospection

Sprint Development and Testing

Unit Testing

Integration Testing

Functional Testing

Build Acceptance Testing

Deploy to Testing Environment

Code Review & Reports

Implementation of Coding Standards and

Best Practices

Jenkins

Team City

GitLab

VSTS

TFS

Cucumber

Specflow

Cucumber

TestNG

Cucumber

Specflow

EasyB

Cloud Integration for Automation Execution

Selenium Web Driver

Create WBS

Estimate and Schedule

Digital Testing

Release Report

Quality Audits

Quality Metrics

Inspection

Risk Identification & Control

Project Scope

Project Exclusion

Project Deliverables

Evaluate Schedule and Effort Deviations

Review and Rework Effort

Monitoring and Control

Causal Analysis and Resolution

Requirement Stability Index and Scope

Creep in Requirement

Defect Prevention by evaluating Defect

Validation / Leakage

Test Script Coverage and Reliability in

Automation

Ipad / Tablet

Mobile

Chrome book

Windows OS

Mac OS

Penetration Testing

Risk and Vulnerability Identification

Go and No Go Decision Making

Sharing Reports quickly to all Stakeholders

Project Health Index

Testing Health Index

Defect Prevention

Parallel Execution

Data Driven Integration

Continuous Integration

Composite Project Handling

In-built Libraries or Add-on or Plugin

Platform Support

IDE Integration

Reporting

Source Code Version Control for Automation

Test Scripts

Integrate Build Deployment Tools

with Automation Suite

Typical Test Run for Health Checks

High Modularity, Usability and E

xpandability

Portability of Test Data

Report Customization

Integration with other tools

Browser Agnostic

Maintenance

ConclusionRunning a software business without a good QA testing process and team in place is like being disabled.

It is best to have QA testing right from the onset of the development process and it can save you not just

time but also a lot of testing efforts and costs. Also, a sound QA team will make sure that there are no

possible errors in the software and deliver a high-quality product to the end-user. By following this Hyper-

Testing confirms that all your testing needs are taken good care of and helps your organization achieve

QA maturity. 

Would you like to know more about Hyper-Testing or how can we assist you to achieve QA maturity?

Click here.

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Janakiraman is the Head of Testing and Test Automation Service Line at Aspire Systems with an industry experience of about 18 years spanning across the SDLC. He also has a delivery experience of managing a 300+ people team with in-depth expertise in designing, testing, and implementing cloud-based SaaS products for various domains.

To know more about our testing services, please write us to: christina.sridhar@aspiresys.com

Christina is a Senior Content Writer in Aspire Systems with an experience of about 4 years. She is closely associated with the Independent Testing Services team. She writes research-driven content such as blogs, whitepapers, articles, and solution pages about recent market trends to increase company branding.

About the Author

Aspire Systems is a global technology services firm serving as a trusted technology partner for our customers.

We work with some of the world’s most innovative enterprises and independent software vendors, helping them

leverage technology and outsourcing in our specific areas of expertise. Our core philosophy of “Attention. Always.”

communicates our belief in lavishing care and attention on our customer and employees.

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About Aspire

Practice Head AuthorJanaki Jayachandran Vice President - Testing

Christina SridharResearch Consultant

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