Errors are unavoidable. After all, we’re only human. When it comes to providing software or websites to our clients, however, we aim to do so as quickly as we can. It sounds like a fantastic aim but how do you go about achieving it?
The key to minimizing errors is to design an effective and dependable quality assurance methodology. Whether your firm is huge or tiny, or whether you’re a one-man show, we’ll be looking into ways to achieve it in this article.
It will be wonderful to keep the QA workflow simple for a small/medium-sized web development organization. Every decision should be based on the basic truth that we are simply human. Even the most meticulous person will be more productive if they follow a clear and consistent system rather than relying solely on their ability.
The quality assurance workflow is broken down into a few parts as shown below. It has proven to be effective for a variety of businesses, and it may also be effective for you. To have a more robust understanding of creating QA workflow, you can enroll in a project-based online QA certification course.
Selecting the Best Candidate for the Job
Choosing who will undertake quality assurance reviews is the first hurdle in building a suitable QA routine. Every individual in their various departments would’ve just mend their own mistakes if they were easy to spot in their work. But it’s ideal to have a pair of fresh eyes check the project given that it’s not easy to do.
If your firm has the resources, hiring a QA specialist is the best solution. Naturally, they will not be so engrossed in the project that they fail to notice flaws. Furthermore, a specialist will usually become faster and better at their job than someone who only checks for faults regularly.
However, engaging a QA expert may not always be feasible for a small organization. Even in a smaller business, you can maintain the notion of “fresh eyes” by having developers or team leaders review the work of other developers.
What if you’re a self-employed person? In this instance, the most effective method is to schedule a few days before a review to set a project aside. For a while, work on something different. When you return, you’ll be able to look at the work with a fresh perspective.
Creating a Checklist for Quality Assurance
Quite literally, checklists save lives. Checklists have proven to be essential in hospitals and airlines, for example.
When it comes to websites the stakes are not life and death. The premise, however, remains the same: checklists operate because humans are incapable of remembering a long list of chores with 100% precision.
Depending on the type of work you conduct, you should write your checklist differently. Making a QA checklist template will be handy if your projects are relatively standardized, such as website development. Every project should use this template to cover the aspects that should be tested or assessed for accuracy.
The checklists should be as specific and concrete as possible. QA experts should concentrate on both visual and functional accuracy. The following is an example of a thorough checklist:
- The Home page should have a logo (Check behavior when you hover over the link)
- The target=” blank” attribute should be used for all external links.
- Check the behavior of all clickable items on the site (all buttons, all forms) regardless of the format.
- Make sure that the relevant recipient is emailed, the FROM address and SUBJECT lines are correct per directions, and the user is taken to a confirmation page (Thank you page) if required.
- Examine the search engine’s operation as well as the presentation of the search results.
If you work in software development, you’ll notice that most projects have some components in common, as well as some that are unique to each one. You can still start with a template, but to account for the unique features, it’s a good idea to build up a list of additional items to check based on the project description before getting started on development.
Workflow Setup
You now have the essential ingredients: Yes, a quality assurance reviewer, and a checklist of issues to be aware of. It’s crucial to think about how you’ll put them together and construct your quality assurance workflow.
Whichever tools or system you use, must have two features:
1. It must have centralized checklists and additional tasks so that they are all visible in one spot. Note-: Humans are terrible at memorizing extensive lists of activities, as evidenced by this study.
2. Identifying who is in charge of moving the project forward. When everyone is managing many projects at the same time, this keeps everything on schedule.
This is done with the help of Trello and Usersnap.
When the reviewer provides comments, the Trello interface with Usersnap makes the process easier by automatically uploading cards to Trello. It also contains other developer-friendly information, such as the browser and device type.
Whether you use Trello or another task organizer, this combination of graphically tracking who should be working on their part of the process and exactly what they’ve done will allow you to scale up while keeping errors to a minimum.
Improvement Over Time
We’ve discussed how to set up a quality assurance workflow to reduce project faults before submitting them to clients for feedback. But how can the number of bugs that make it to internal QA, let alone the client, be reduced?
Patterns of problems appear from time to time (albeit not always). You’ll need to collect metrics to discover these patterns. This may entail delegating the task of categorizing the types of issues that arise when they are discovered to your organization’s QA professional. This data can then be compiled for a specific developer to provide ongoing feedback and testing for improvement. If you want to learn step by step, how to do this, join an online QA training of good reputation.
Conclusion
The actions outlined above are real steps you can take to design a successful quality assurance workflow, which begins with recognizing how errors might seep into the process.
When trying to increase the quality of your company’s work, it’s not always possible to do everything at once. You can focus on one step at a time to attain the benefits indicated above by breaking it down. Hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.
