Engaging a specialized QA tester adds an invaluable asset to your team! In 2022, the estimated worth of the software testing industry reached a substantial $45 billion, reflecting its significant importance. Quality assurance stands out as a concealed yet potent weapon, ensuring the flawless development of products within your company. The question arises: what specific contributions do these QA experts bring to your projects, and why is the presence of a dedicated team of QA engineers so vital?
Explore further to unravel the pivotal role that software testers play in project management and ensuring outstanding performance.
written by:
Anna Kotyak
Senior Software Testing Engineer
Contents
What Is Quality Assurance
Before we look at what exactly a dedicated QA team is, let's discuss what quality assurance means. The structured approach of evaluating how well a product or service fulfills the defined standards is referred to as quality assurance. QA sets and sustains standards for creating or producing trustworthy technologies. The aim of quality assurance is to do two specific things: to boost consumer satisfaction as well as the firm’s legitimacy. Consumer satisfaction goes up when their requirements are met and developed in a proper way; moreover, through effectiveness, the organization thrives in the marketplace.
A quality assurance specialist's entire job is to think outside the box and try to break down the application through manual testing together with 'polishing' existing features to make them perfectly user-friendly. This is done to prevent the software from failing once it has been launched.
All About Dedicated QA Teams
Anybody who works with software understands the critical relevance of software testing. In short, this is a certain approach to get control over product quality, quickly resolve any issues, and be completely satisfied with the reliability of the software you release Yet, establishing and maintaining an in-house QA team may be expensive and difficult for an organization. As a result, employing a dedicated QA team may be the best option for ensuring first-rate product quality.
This hiring model proposes the rapid adoption of a fully prepared dedicated QA specialists whose expertise and talents match your objectives exactly. These software testers are established under your supervision and focus solely on your project.
A complete software testing team can establish a quality assurance process from the ground up, work with the requirements, develop a testing approach, write test scripts, and perform the entire extent of tests. These tests include, but are not limited to: functionality and usability, testing, performance testing, vulnerability scanning, integration testing, automated testing, ease of access testing, API testing, and others, based on your requirements.
QA Engineers vs Developers Testing Their Own Work
You may believe that having the developers in your current dedicated team test their work as they go along is more than enough. They see the code every day, so they should know all the ins and outs of it, right? Wrong. Developers want their programs to function properly. This is fundamentally contradictory, given that the purpose of testing is to cause it to fail. On the contrary, a dedicated QA team will employ a distinct set of technologies to compensate for these limitations. A desire to discover all possible scenarios to fail is ingrained in the QA testers’ mindset. Compared to developers, who focus on getting things to function, QA engineers are much more eager to challenge software to its extremes. Because of these contrasts in perspective, QA testers are uniquely qualified to guarantee code works regardless of the conditions.
Let's imagine a scenario where there is a 'picture upload' option that supports several file formats and has a size restriction. The developer would at most just test the code via one or two files to see whether it was operating. A dedicated QA team, on the other hand, would extensively test the code across all potential variations. As a result, this approach is more end-user focused, providing quality throughout the entire product by covering user situations.
There's nothing wrong with developers checking their own work as they go, but quality assurance specialists are your one-way ticket to the perfect final product.
When Should I Hire a Dedicated QA Team?
Quality assurance enables a business to develop items and services that meet the interests, desires, and objectives of its users. It contributes to high-quality product offers that foster client confidence as well as commitment. The ideas and practices of a quality assurance program help in the avoidance of future quality concerns through automated and integrated testing. Let's examine a few scenarios where it would be in your best interest to hire a dedicated quality assurance team.
You need to quickly scale your core team
The need to grow an in-house or remote team might come unexpectedly for projects being built in a fiercely competitive and ever-evolving industry. In such cases, organizations do not have the sufficient resources or time to hire QA teams of their own, thus going with a ready-made dedicated team model provided by a QA experts supplier becomes the most cost-effective and time-saving alternative.
You want to cut down on expenses
Hiring a separate dedicated QA team allows for lower operating expenses. Additionally, it also helps to avoid increased tax and pay responsibilities. This is one of the key reasons behind outsourcing software development in general — you can save money on software creation by making the most of wage differences while still getting top programming and QA knowledge.
You currently do not have an in-house QA team
Although this may seem like the most obvious scenario, many businesses choose to manage their software development process in-house, owing to the increased control it provides. When working on a project, businesses can have full control to track and oversee their tech staff.
If you don't have any in-house testers and don't want to employ, train, onboard, or retain them, choosing a remote dedicated QA team model is a wiser choice. You are encouraged to utilize team member extension services in this situation, complementing your in-house development team with remote QA teams.
Benefits of a Dedicated QA Team
Cost Effective
When you recruit a highly skilled, dedicated QA team, you simply pay for the software testing services performed. There are no incremental charges associated with recruiting, training, maintenance, administrative assistance, payroll, equipment purchase, and so on as opposed to employing an in-house QA team. Therefore, not only do you save money, but you save yourself from dealing with any future problems.
Complete Control
When you hire dedicated quality assurance teams, you are not hiring an aloof group of people who will be working without any contact or management from your side. Instead, QA specialists are under your full control and your development priorities are set in place. You can reach any member of the team at any moment and participate in all conversations about software issues and testing services.
Customization
A dedicated QA team is created around your requirements. You get members of the team with the most appropriate speciality, experience, and professional skills. Should your business requirements change over time, the team size and framework will adjust accordingly.
Flawless Integration
Set your worries and fears aside about time-consuming recruitment procedures and, not to mention, the countless interviews you need to conduct. A dedicated QA team can be implemented within a single week! They become a member of your business processes and adjust to your workflows and corporate structure.
Fresh Outlook
A dedicated QA team keeps the emphasis on goals and consumers. Employing a person with a fresh point of view on the team expands the scope and allows others to look at the numerous elements and unavoidable obstacles from a new perspective. As a result, individuals are motivated to engage in more in-depth discussions about the development process and how to put user stories at the forefront.
FAQ: Quenching Your Questions
Why is a QA team important?
Quality assurance in software development is critical for two main reasons. They are your identity and your costs, both inextricably linked. Users who are dissatisfied with the app's technological limitations may abandon it soon, resulting in profit loss and compromising your brand image.
Furthermore, the later the critical bug is discovered in the development process, the more expensive it is to correct it. As a result, having a dedicated QA team at the earliest stage as one of your project objectives is always a good idea.
Do we need a dedicated QA engineer?
Yes, you do because it’s not just enough to have your current dedicated developers or in-house developers do the testing as they go along. Developers frequently focus on tiny pieces of a code base, they are at a disadvantage when analyzing their original code. They might comprehend the elements of the software they focused on, but not necessarily the other aspects and how automation engineers function together.
QA personnel are far more inclined to think like a genuine user of an operating system: they behave and act like consumers, taking into consideration various obstacles, such as: different devices, operating systems, etc. Because of this, their feedback during the testing process is an incredibly valuable asset to your company.
What value do you see a QA team brings to an organization?
The main role of a quality assurance engineer is to perform software testing on projects to ensure that everything is running smoothly, project goals are met exactly as they should be, and there are no unexpected bugs or kinks. Essentially, their main value and greatest contribution to your company are preventing any problems from arising in the future.
Should QA be a separate team?
Depending on your project requirements, there are two routes you can take. You can either opt for a completely separate QA team that will offer their valuable insight and thoroughly test everything. Or, you could choose to hire a few QA team members that would join your in-house team and work alongside them.
What is dedicated quality assurance?
Having a dedicated quality assurance team member means you have someone in charge of analyzing services and products to verify that quality requirements are fulfilled. They create, implement, and oversee test programs.
What does a QA team mean?
A QA team consists of quality assurance professionals who go through the procedure of creating and upholding standards of software development for the QA process. Having a QA team means you are guaranteeing that the products and software you produce will be meeting, and even exceeding, consumer expectations every single time. QA teams are the final stage of approval, assuring the highest quality products, in a sense, they give the greenlight for when the app can be released.
Quenching Your Hunger for QA Developers
Quality control is an essential component of security testing, error detection, and the overall software testing process. The fundamental purpose of QA in software engineering is to ensure that all applications meet all customer criteria, whether technical or client interaction oriented. We hope you agree that it is extremely difficult to deliver a faultless product if you do not have an established QA team on board.
When you need to hire a dedicated QA tester, contact us to get started and revel in the best quality we have to offer!
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