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When outsourcing software development, you want to get the whole picture of the project in progress in another part of the globe. How can you check software quality remotely? One efficient way is to include QA metrics in your service provider reports.
QA metrics help ensure better quality of the product, make development processes more effective and aligned with your business goals. Our Senior QA engineer, Oleg Khadyka, discusses the importance of collecting and analyzing QA metrics, along with interpreting results accurately.
A metric is an indicator used to evaluate a process, activity, or final product. It can improve product’s quality and show the effectiveness of QA team work, helping optimize quality assurance processes. However, collecting mere numbers can be misleading and a very pointless exercise, if you do it without the particular goal in mind.
There are dozens of QA metrics you can collect. Let’s discuss some and see how you can use them thoughtfully.
Software QA metrics bring you a clear vision on product quality, QA team performance, and can help tune QA processes according to the data received. Other aspects include the following activities:
QA metrics are essential for timely and quality features delivery. They provide insights about project advancements, help track milestones, estimate software’s stability and check whether the project is going at a sustainable pace.
QA metrics give the basis for the project management improvement. Measurements like test coverage, requirement traceability, and defect density, helps to better prioritize tasks, allocate resources, balance workloads, and optimize testing efforts.
Implementation of quality metrics allows to measure software quality aspects such as performance, security, and reliability. You can make an adjective assessment relying on data and identify issues and improvements and adjust the QA process.
Collecting QA metrics allows to quickly identify bottlenecks and testing gaps. Defect density, for example, helps to identify features with a high defect rate, which may require refactoring or additional resources.
By conducting various types of testing, the QA team ensures that the product meets the client's requirements: all features, integrations and processes work correctly. In this case, QA metrics reflect that the software works as it was intended.
Now, let’s uncover the main aspects you might be the most curious about.
Surely, you don’t need to collect all QA metrics. There may be some irrelevant information for the team or project. You should collect measurements based on the goal they serve. Do you want to identify bottlenecks in the QA process because you feel there are some? Or adjust team size for better resource allocation? Or evaluate product stability?
When choosing metrics you want to include in the reports, proceed from your business goals and development methodology. Use metrics that show business results and customer satisfaction, as well as those that show the team’s performance. Remember, that choosing too many metrics may not give you clear results, and there is no single approach.
You should understand the purpose of collecting QA metrics in Agile: know what kind of metrics you need and what result you want to achieve. Align metrics with business objectives to avoid wasting efforts and resources.
When analyzing metrics, stay objective, consider all data influencing the results, and interpret metrics in the context of the specific project's tasks and needs.
Alienating the QA team from the software development process decreases efficiency in collecting QA metrics. Quality assurance should be integrated throughout the entire development process, with QA involvement at every stage.
Gathering QA metrics includes foresight and planning, setting goals, and forecasting results. The key point here is that while choosing metrics you want to include in the test result report, rely on your goals, e.g., how this metric can solve a specific problem or task. Choosing random points from top-30 QA metrics lists might be ineffective. The measurements must align with business goals and be tailored to particular teams and products.
During the webinar, QA engineers enthusiastically shared experiences, asked questions, and sparked a lively discussion with the speaker. Inspired by the event’s energy, the NEKLO team decided to plan another webinar on related topics and set up regular meetups to chat about the latest software development.
US-based and operating globally, NEKLO spearheads digital transformation initiatives for businesses worldwide. We deliver software solutions complying with your market and legislation.
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