Importance of Software Quality Assurance in Software Development | Examples and Advantages
You must have used applications frequently and noticed that some work well and have good designs while others do not. What is the source of these variations? This is where Software Quality Assurance comes into play. In essence, Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is a procedure that occurs concurrently with the software development process in order to preserve product quality. Software Quality Assurance is concerned with ensuring that the software has a low defect rate and meets the essential criteria for maintenance, reliability, portability, and so on. SQA processes include those for the effective application of methods and tools, monitoring of quality control activities (such as testing), change management procedures, procedures to assure standard compliance, and measurement and reporting mechanisms.
What We Do to Assure Software Quality
Some main activities in Software Quality Assurance include:
- SQA management plan Determining a plan for performing SQA during software development. Activities that will be tested in SQA can be considered.
- Determining Checkpoints The SQA team determines checkpoints in the project and evaluates software performance based on those checkpoints.
- Multi-testing Strategy Certainly, testing is not only done with one approach/method, but must be done from several different approaches, such as positive testing (when users use the application properly) and negative testing (when users use the application improperly causing errors).
- Measuring the impact of changes When we fix a part of the application, it is possible that other parts are affected and cause errors in those other parts. The impact of the changes made must be monitored so as not to damage other parts.
- Maintaining team relationships The relationship between the SQA and developer teams must be good so that SQA can run smoothly.
Tools for Software QA
There are many tools that can be used for Software Quality Assurance (SQA), and the one I often use is Sonarqube. Sonarqube is an open source tool that is useful for automatically reviewing our code to identify code smells, coverage, bugs, and weaknesses in security. We only need to connect our project to Sonarqube and run certain commands that will be provided once we have successfully connected the project, then an analysis of our code will appear. There are several aspects of our code that are reviewed by Sonarqube, namely:
- Reliability (Bugs)
This section will show if there are parts of the code that could cause bugs in our code. - Security
This section will show if there are parts of our code that are vulnerable to security (for example, if there is a part of our code that writes a credential or token in hard code, it will appear in the security hotspot section). - Maintainability
This section will show technical debt and code smells. Code smells are parts of the code that do not comply with programming conventions and can cause problems or difficulties for future developers. Technical debt is the “debt” or time required for developers to eliminate (refactor) existing code smells in the program. - Coverage
Coverage is the percentage of code that has been covered by tests. Coverage not only counts lines but also counts branch situations or alternative situations of the code (for example, in the else if part). This section is very useful for TDD. But even if the coverage is 100%, it does not rule out the possibility of bugs that exist outside all test cases. - Duplication
This section shows the percentage of code that has duplication (usually the result of copy and paste). Duplication can increase the length of source code and even sometimes unnecessarily burden the software.
Advantages of Applying Software QA
The following are the benefits and advantages of applying software QA (Quality Assurance) in software development:
Product quality assurance: QA guarantees that the product fulfills specified quality criteria. This decreases the likelihood of product faults and problems and boosts user confidence.
Improving efficiency: Quality assurance can assist enhance software development efficiency by discovering and resolving issues before the product is tested.
Saving money: Correcting errors and faults after the product has been released will involve more time and money than assuring quality from the start. QA can aid in the early detection of problems and the reduction of costs associated with error correction.
Increasing customer satisfaction: High-quality software products are more gratifying for consumers, which can lead to increased trust and loyalty.
Improving corporate reputation: Companies that are regarded for creating high-quality software solutions have a higher industry reputation.
Avoiding legal risks: Defective software products can lead to legal issues for businesses. QA can aid in the early detection of problems and lessen the legal risks connected with defective products.
Real Implementation of Software Quality Assurance in My Team Using SonarQube
To deliver reliable and robust software solutions in today’s fast-paced software development landscape, ensuring the quality of our codebase is critical. Our team has adopted SonarQube as a powerful tool for Software Quality Assurance (SQA) to accomplish this. We successfully raised the bar for quality assurance in both backend and frontend development by incorporating SonarQube into our development workflow. This essay aims to shed light on our experiences with SonarQube and the benefits we’ve gained from using it.
One of the key advantages of SonarQube is its ability to analyze and provide insights into the quality of our codebase. With SonarQube seamlessly integrated into our development environment, we receive real-time feedback on the quality of our code each time we commit and push changes to our GitLab repository. This instant feedback mechanism has transformed our development process, enabling us to identify and address code issues promptly.
SonarQube empowers our team to maintain and enhance code quality throughout the development lifecycle. By leveraging SonarQube’s comprehensive set of code analysis rules, we ensure that our code adheres to industry best practices, coding standards, and known security vulnerabilities. SonarQube performs static code analysis and flags any issues such as potential bugs, code smells, and security vulnerabilities. This enables us to proactively rectify these issues before they manifest as critical problems in production.
The automation capabilities of SonarQube are a game-changer for our team. Gone are the days of manual code reviews and time-consuming bug hunting. SonarQube automatically analyzes our codebase and generates detailed reports, highlighting areas that require attention. By automating these processes, we can focus our energy on more complex and creative problem-solving tasks, knowing that the code quality is being continuously monitored.
SonarQube acts as a centralized platform for tracking code quality metrics. With each code commit, SonarQube provides updated information on various quality metrics, such as code coverage, maintainability, and duplication. This unified view allows our team to maintain consistency in our codebase, ensuring that quality standards are met across all our backend and frontend projects. We can also track the progress of our code quality improvements over time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is an essential process to ensure the quality of software development. By using tools like Sonarqube, developers can identify code smells, coverage, bugs, and security vulnerabilities automatically. Sonarqube can analyze various aspects of the code, including reliability, security, maintainability, coverage, and duplication. These features help the developers to improve their coding practices and reduce technical debt. The use of Sonarqube in SQA can increase the efficiency of testing and ensure that the software is reliable, maintainable, and secure. It is important to note that Sonarqube is just one tool among many that can be used in SQA, but its comprehensive features make it a popular choice for many developers. Therefore, the implementation of Sonarqube in SQA can be highly beneficial for software development teams to improve their software’s overall quality and reduce the risk of errors and security breaches.
References:
Journal:
1. Tian, J. (2005). Software quality engineering: testing, quality assurance, and quantifiable improvement. John Wiley & Sons
2. Lee, M. C. (2014). Software quality factors and software quality metrics to enhance software quality assurance. British Journal of Applied Science & Technology, 4(21), 3069–3095. Chicago
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