How We Handle Quality Assurance (QA) in Stormotion

In this article, we’ll try to get acquainted with Quality Assurance in general, its processes, challenges, participants, and also open the curtains of Stormotion’s inner QA flows along with sharing our best practices from our experience. Let’s get to the point!

 
 

🙋 Who Takes Part in QA at Stormotion and What are They Responsible For?

The main specialist in Quality Assurance in our team is without a doubt our QA engineer. However, there are people who usually also contribute to the process, leaving no place for bugs to escape 😼

So let's acquaint ourselves with everyone responsible for the Quality Assurance stage at Stormotion!

Developers. Our developers responsible for the project are the ones who start the “testing cycle”. Their task is to provide our QA engineer with a crash-free product version after conducting Smoke testing.

 
 

🔗 Steps of Quality Assurance Processes at Stormotion

A common misconception is to think that Quality Assurance (or it’s also called “Software Testing”) is a process described as a single activity. Vice versa, QA is a set of activities and methods that aim to complete the process of validating the product’s stability and verifying its usability. As Software Testing is a complex process, it’s usually referred to as Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) for specification.

In this section, we’re about to present Stormotion’s internal processes for STLC, taking our Norsk Guardian project as an example.

Norsk is an IoT companion app that our team managed to develop in about 30 weeks. Based in the USA, Norsk Lithium develops and sells batteries for outdoor activities including open-water fishing, ice fishing, and camping. In this project, the development itself along with the testing stage took about 18 weeks.

The Software Testing Life Cycle at Stormotion consists of 5 phases instead of the common 6, as in our team the Environment Setup Stage is not included as a separate one. Here are the phases of STLC our QA Engineer always goes through:

1. Requirement Analysis
2. Planning
3. Case Development
4. Execution
5. Cycle Closure.

_Although Quality Assurance is a parallel process with the project development itself, it doesn’t usually start right away. The best approach is to involve a QA engineer as early as possible to gather more useful information on the project’s planning stages. _

Let’s take a look at each of them separately!

 
 

Requirement Analysis

Requirement Analysis — also known as Requirement Phase Testing — is a stage when the project requirements are reviewed through the prism of testing. This phase helps our team to understand testable requirements as well as to determine automation feasibility for testing.

Common activities for Test Cycle Closure are:

• Evaluation of cycle completion. At this stage, we need to analyze the results and check whether the product meets our minimal expectations noted in a special document. So, after analyzing the Test Cycle, the Test Report is created containing:
  • The number of found bugs
  • The number of bugs with status Opened
  • The statistic of found bugs divided by severity
  • The percentage of bugs found/fixed
• **Preparing Test closure report and its analysis. **After creating the report QA Engineers prepare it to present to the development team to fix the bugs along with analyzing the outcome on their side.

 
 

🔒 What are the challenges in Quality Assurance?

Generally, customers that aren’t deeply aware of the inner flows of QA, tend to underestimate its importance and the amount of work threat the QA Engineer is facing. Such misconceptions usually lead to making it harder for the specialist to give their best results.

We'd like to share the main challenges a QA Engineer may face during Quality Assurance based on Stormotion’s experience:

The main challenge for a QA Engineer is to reach the closest point to the ideal product version after Quality Assurance. As the testing principle states that an absolutely bug-free project is utopian, QA’s task is to get it to the highest possible level.

 
 

⌛ How much time does QA usually take?

As every single project we build is a unique experience, there is no precise answer to this question. In general, the QA stage starts almost from the very beginning of development. And till the product release Quality Assurance becomes its inseparable part.

There are always risks that are not present in every single case that, however, should be considered. The time required for the QA stage depends on the unique methodology our QA engineer chooses before the conduction. This methodology includes an exclusive Testing Plan based on the project type, its risks, and the customer’s behavior as a stakeholder. If a client is constantly making changes in his requirements for the project, they are also making its life cycle significantly longer.

Based on our experience at Stormotion, the QA cycle usually takes up to 20-30% of the whole project’s lifecycle, making it quite a noticeable part of the whole development in the bigger picture.

 
 

📈 How can you make Quality Assurance more effective as a stakeholder?

We mentioned in previous sections that stakeholder behavior requires consideration while creating Testing Plans for the product. But what should a customer consider to make the QA effective and time-saving?

Obviously, the less risky and more productive QA is always when it is inseparable from the Tech Team. Therefore, we recommend not to reinvent the wheel, wasting time trying to make it efficient, and completely trust the Team you are hiring in every aspect.

 
 

💡 Takeaways

In conclusion, we’d like to emphasize one more time that the Quality Assurance stage, despite being assumed as an easy process, is quite complex and significant for the software quality. At Stormotion almost every team member takes part in Quality Assurance in one way or another. Developers, designers, project managers and of course QA engineers are the ones responsible for creating a defect-free product.

It’s also important to understand the inner flows of the Software Testing Life Cycle to take a deeper look at how the process of polishing is taking place. At Stormotion Quality Assurance supposes the conduction of such phases:

1. Requirement Analysis
2. Planning
3. Case Development
4. Execution
5. Cycle closure

It’s also possible for you as a customer to discuss the involvement of your own QA specialist, however, after the comparison of such scenarios we highly recommend letting the Team take care of it to avoid extra risks.