What Is Software Quality?

Before understanding software quality, let’s take a moment to define quality. A variety of definitions exist for quality. Quality can mean different things to different people. However, there should also be specific standards or rules.

Today we’ll look at software quality assurance, including what it is & why it’s essential. By the end of this article, you will most certainly agree that quality assurance is one of the most critical activities in the software development pipeline.

what is software quality assurance?

How will a Software Developer define Quality? – The Software meets customer requirements.
How will Customers define Quality? – The required functionality is provided in a user-friendly manner.

So, we can say software quality may include many different attributes and may be defined and perceived differently based on people’s different roles and responsibilities.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides a definition of software quality in the ISO/IEC 25010:2011 standard, which is a part of the SQuaRE (Software Product Quality Requirements and Evaluation) series. According to ISO/IEC 25010:2011, software quality is defined as follows:

“Software quality is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of software fulfills requirements.”

So we can understand that software quality assurance is the ongoing process that ensures the software product meets the organization’s established and standardized quality specifications. SQA is a set of activities that verifies that everyone involved with the project has correctly implemented all procedures and processes.

Software Quality Assurance works parallel to software development, an ongoing activity applied throughout the software development life cycle. Instead of making quality checks after completion, software quality assurance checks for quality issues in each development phase.

Why Software Quality Assurance IS Essential?

The importance of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in software engineering can be divided into the following:

1. Ensures a high-quality software product: Software quality assurance ensures that the software meets the specified quality standards and requirements. This results in software that is more reliable, efficient, and user-friendly.
2. Saves time and money: The process of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is designed to facilitate the early detection and resolution of bugs and errors in software development by developers. Consequently, they allocate a reduced amount of resources, both in terms of time and money, towards rectifying these issues.
3. Builds a stable and competitive software product: Software architects evaluate each software development block against industry standards. Granular testing for reliability, functionality, usability, portability, etc. ensures product quality.
4. Protects your company’s reputation: The implementation of software quality assurance practices enables organizations to verify the effectiveness, safety, and reliability of their software applications. Primarily, it assists organizations in fulfilling regulatory and industry-specific compliance obligations, particularly those pertaining to security and data privacy.
5. Ensures security and compliance: Software quality assurance helps organizations ensure that their application is efficient, secure, and trustworthy. Most importantly, it helps them meet regulatory and industry-specific compliance requirements, such as those related to security and data privacy.
6. Ensures customer satisfaction: The software application must meet all requirements in order to adequately meet customer satisfaction. The system must operate seamlessly without any functional disruptions. By implementing software quality assurance procedures, it is possible to guarantee that your product meets all the expectations of your target audience.

Conclusion

The role of software quality assurance in software engineering is to ensure that software products and systems are developed and maintained to meet the required quality attributes. Software quality assurance is an essential element of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It entails the ongoing monitoring and enhancement of software development processes to detect and eradicate defects and errors in the software product. Software quality assurance is an effective approach for enterprises to guarantee that they have comprehensively tested all aspects of their product to the utmost levels of quality prior to its launch into the marketplace.