Do you have a culture of quality? Here’s how to embed QA from the start

What is quality assurance in testing?

Quality assurance is essential for getting a product right. QA in testing is a process in which testers verify that their final product, service, or platform meets a high quality before being released to customers. Free of bugs, errors, and defects, QA testing ensures that not only does the product work as it was intended, but also that it passes all the relevant safety and regulatory standards.

But too often, QA is something of an afterthought, leading to bottlenecks before releases. The result? Delayed deliveries, and the customer tasked with updating to follow-up patches, taking the shine out of what was intended to be a high-quality product that meets their needs.

Embedding a quality culture from day one

To avoid this, quality assurance should be a part of the testing process from the very inception of a new product. To exceed customer, and investor expectations, businesses should consider embedding QA from day one. This means working proactively to identify defects before they occur, rather than detecting and correcting them at the last minute - or worse, following a long-anticipated release.

This is all essential to a robust QA process in testing, and yet for time-poor testing teams, QA can often fall to the wayside in the development and maintenance of a product.

Embedding quality assurance in testing from the start, and promoting a quality culture

It’s everyone’s responsibility to make a product right and ensure it’s of the highest quality before delivering to customers and during its use.

Businesses who want to incorporate quality assurance from the start should understand the importance of involving QA teams in all stages of the development process, from planning to deployment:

1. Create a dedicated team responsible for quality assurance with a clear set of roles and responsibilities. QA is a necessary resource to carry out the process effectively and should be recognized for its importance in helping a final product soar, or sink.

2. Support QA teams in working alongside testers to a schedule that both outlines the scope of the testing and understands the resources that will be required to achieve it. Having an understanding of the expectations, and the appropriate methods to achieve this in, is essential.

3. Training on the importance of QA should be available to all employees working on a product to ensure that they understand the importance of implementing it effectively from the start. Products excel when businesses take the time to implement a culture of learning for their teams and give them a chance to regularly improve their skill set.

4. Continuously monitor the quality assurance process, and make improvements as necessary to ensure testing is effective, efficient, and meets performance KPIs, resulting in a high-quality, final product that everyone can be proud of.

QA testing for startups

Poor QA testing can be a real barrier to the success of a product and can lead to customer dissatisfaction, lost revenue, and damage to the company's reputation. This can be particularly impactful to startups and a significant drain on resources due to the additional costs needed to fix defects and perform additional testing, impeding a company's ability to grow and expand.

Furthermore, poor quality assurance testing can also result in delays in the development and deployment of new products, services, or systems, which can hinder the ability of businesses to take advantage of new opportunities in such a competitive landscape.

QA isn’t just for big companies. In fact, poor quality assurance testing can be a significant barrier to growth for companies that are scaling up, and it is important for all companies to embed effective QA processes and testing from the very start to ensure that their output meets the highest standards.

Time poor? Not with Virtuoso!

With Virtuoso, QA is embedded throughout your CI/CD, delivering on our promise of codeless test automation. That means you can scale tests in the cloud, reduce execution time, increase test coverage, integrate with your existing tech stack, and do cross-browser/device testing with the speed of codeless but also with the power of scripted test steps with Natural Language Programming. This makes the development process more streamlined so that you don’t have to deal with long lead times, difficulties testing on different devices, and struggling to import data from third-party applications.

Testers, developers, and QA teams are all working to tight deadlines and demanding workloads, meaning the QA can be considered as a ‘nice-to-have’ option until release, rather than a key component of the development process. But it’s essential for all businesses and organizations, no matter what they do, and who they do it for.