Software Engineering | Software Quality Assurance

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 development of software. 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 focuses on:

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

Software Quality Assurance 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 Activities: 
 

1. SQA Management Plan: 
   Make a plan for how you will carry out the sqa through out 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. Multi testing Strategy: 
   Do not depend on a single testing approach. When you have a lot of testing approaches available use them. 
    
4. 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 change check the compatibility of this fix with whole project. 
    
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. 
    

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 SQA: 
There are a number of disadvantages of quality assurance. Some of them include adding more resources, employing more workers to help maintain quality and so much more.