SQA Costs and Benefits
Software Quality Assurance has been developed for years and it has been proven to be useful for some situations. We have to emphasize the word “some” since there are companies who have disputed the idea of SQA with so many reasons.
Taking a look at the reasons, it all goes down to the idea of getting your money’s worth. Companies have to work with SQA may have found the benefits against its costs. On the other hand, there are companies that have completely ignored the idea of SQA exactly because of its costs. The effort and tools that will be employed in SQA may only affirm what the developers have done in their testing stage.
In this article we take a look at the benefits of an SQA. Every business who wants to have a highly efficient application or any software company that wants to offer a good application has to use an SQA program. But just like any businesses, they have to ensure that any business movement will be beneficial.
The idea of employing SQA is no different. The cost of an SQA could be too much that the price could easily outweigh its benefits. Every company has to ensure that employing SQA in their software development will be beneficial and will work at their advantage.
The Other Side of SQA
The ideal scenario of implementing SQA is that the cost should have a direct effect on the software’s quality. The higher the cost of using SQA, the better the software should perform. There are tools in SQA that are known to be pricey and but it comes with a higher chance of providing better and complete metrics regarding the application.
The manpower used in this department will also have to receive financial compensation so it should also be considered. Again, the more experienced the company the higher will their cost be.
That should be considered when the application is expected to have more than usual errors. On the other hand, the company can also think twice of using SQA when they know the application is properly rendered. It is a gamble that everyone could employ if they know their application works well. SQA can also be disregarded when a testing tool is used by developers to gauge every line of the application.
Sometimes it really does not matter if the process of web development is good but as long as the application works well and according to plan, it should work – even without an SQA guiding it. Now that we have placed SQA on the negative, we take a look at the rationale how SQA will help businesses develop their application:
Better Customer Service
Businesses usually would sell their application or use it for customer service. Either way SQA will help the businesses achieve customer satisfaction by ensuring the application works as expected. When you are running a business and then application served as a tool for customer service, absolutely no error is admitted. The stability of the application should be ensured at all times.
The pressure for a quality application even doubles when the application is sold to the consumers. Like a product the software represents the company and any glitches will practically tell users the company does nt really care what they sell as long as they are able to sell it. When selling products businesses can just refund and change the defective product. On the other hand, software will always be a part of the businesses or personal life and will always affect the person’s productivity if it’s not working according to expectations. If the application has been checked line by line before its release, customer satisfaction is guaranteed.
Lesser Cost for Development
There are two ideas for this concept: first when the developers are working with the SQA team, they are most likely monitored in every way. From the planning to the implementing stage, every aspect of the application and its development is monitored. Because of this, there’s a lesser chance an error might come up. Software developers who are in contract don’t need to go back to the application and fix something all the time.
Second, SQA don’t just look for error, the SQA team practically looks at how the error was done and the reason for its defect. By looking at the reason for error, The SQA team should be able to give more information to the developers why was it defective. Through this, other problems could be determined if the practice was also done in other parts of the application.
Since everything is checked before the application is released; manpower, time and ultimately, cost will be reduced. In house developers do not have to stick to a single project most of the time and move on to other things. If the developers are on a contract, the application is implemented on time or even earlier.
Maintenance Cost Reduced
As soon as the application is released, it is going to be under fire from users all the time until it is discarded or upgraded. Everyone will always have beef against the application and the only thing the developers could do is to minimize the problem.
With SQA’s help, businesses could easily do that. Basically, the main reason why people complain about the application is not on its looks but on its errors. When an application is rigged by errors, everyone will start to complain. The time spent on maintenance will be bigger than expected.
In a worst case scenario, a new application or patch will be the only way to solve the general problem. Developing an update right after the release is not only bad for the customers but really bad for business. Not even counting the loss a company might have for refunds because of a buggy application, the company would then again focus their resources in fixing this problem.
SQA could easily look and identify these errors before a single application is released. The SQA team will scrutinize every part of the application and any bugs or errors will ultimately be remedied before the application is implemented or sold.
