Page 185 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Software Testing and Quality Assurance

To gain the maximum benefit of quality control system, it is very important that skilled software staff
conduct the audit. If the audit report indicates that the software product quality is not up to the mark,
then corrective management action is taken accordingly. This helps in maintaining the delivery
schedule for the supply of a product to the customer or end-user.

Consider a software project with a requirement of user interface design and a

SQL database execution.
The Software Quality Assurance team would develop a quality plan that
contains specified standards, methods and procedures that have to be applied
to the software project. They would then involve themselves in identifying and
preparing the quality plan that needs to be followed.
When these requirements are produced, the Software Quality Control team
ensures that the development team has in fact followed the set standards and
presents the audit report to the management.

12.2 Testing and Quality Assurance at Workplace
While developing software, the team members must be aware of terms like software testing, software
quality assurance, software quality control, software verification and validation, and software
integration and testing. Teams based on these projects and the clients should be made aware of the
standards being set for quality of the software being developed. The team members should be made
aware of common practices that are being followed at the workplace to accomplish software quality
assurance. We will start the same by understanding the difference between software testing and quality
assurance.
12.2.1 Differences between Software Testing and Quality Assurance
Quality assurances and testing are two overlapping and confusing terminologies. Though they are
closely related, yet they are different. Both quality assurance and testing are necessary to effectively
manage the risks of creating and maintaining software products.
Software Testing

Software testing is an essential part of software quality assurance, which denotes a review of
specification, design and coding related to software products. In simple words, software testing can be
described as an assessment, report, and follow-up-task for accomplishing quality goals. Software testing
involves the operation of a system under specified conditions and includes continuous evaluation of the
output. These specified conditions include both normal and abnormal conditions. Software testing is
mainly detection-oriented and is performed by a software tester.
Following are the tasks performed under software testing:
1. Recognizing the most appropriate implementation approach for a given test.
2. Setting up and executing the tests with the intention of finding bugs.
3. Preparing the verification and validation reports of the test plans, test procedures, and test
reports.
4. Involving in customer meetings to know the status of projects and design reviews.
The role of a software tester is to assess, report, and follow-up by tracking down the bugs in the
software product and also by ensuring that they are fixed. The main aim of the software tester is to find
bugs and ensure that they are fixed as soon as possible.

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