Quality assurance isn’t just testing, or analysis, or wishful thinking. Although it can be boring, difficult, and tedious, QA is nonetheless essential. Ensuring that a system will work when delivered requires much planning and discipline. Convincing others that the system will function properly requires even more careful and thoughtful effort. QA is performed through all stages of the project, not just slapped on at the end. It is a way of life.
Quality Assurance: Much More than Testing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I have been involved in Software Quality Assurance 3 times before in 3 different companies, and it ranged from making sure you write pretty and readable C and C++ etc. to accounting for what code was written by who.
The three projects I was involved in certainly did no testing or security checking. Its good pay but its terrible boring, couldn’t hack it for long, it drained my brain power.
This is an important article for every open source project to read because 99% of OSS projects do NOT do QA, they simply do testing. And as the article conveys, these are different things. QA is equally important as user testing IMHO.
QA – Quality Assurance
QC – Quality Control
I&T – Integration & Testing
None of these are the same, no matter how badly they are mishmashed together to attempt sort of workable product outcome.
I don’t think open source projects are obliged to provide QA, especially the small ones. If you are paying thousands of dollars for a piece of very complex and vital software, then certainly, some form of QA is expected.
I think for open source projects, testing is a lot more feasible and pragmatic than QA is.
Yes, it surely is. However, if open source projects end up being more buggy than their commercial counterparts (and they usually are), I see no reason why I would want to run OSS software. As a normal Joe User, I am interested in solid software, not in ideologies.
The point is no one is begging you to run free software. I have more unreliable proprietary junk running on my Windows partition, not including adware, spyware and God knows what, than I have buggy software on my Linux partition. I still maintain QA is needless for many open source projects.
>The point is no one is begging you to run free software
Actually, they are. There is a lot of crazy FSF/OSS evangelism out there and at the end of the day, no one wants to pay for software. So, yeah, I do want to run Free Software (as in speech or as in beer, don’t care).
>I have more unreliable proprietary junk running on my Windows partition
You are mentioning adaware and spyware, not real applications. Commercial apps do not mean that it’s “windows crap”, it might well mean IBM software for Unix or many commercial apps for MacOS X. So, don’t take the easy exit to refute my point by mentioning windows’ security problems, cause it’s not related. We are talking about good commercial software here. Photoshop for example or 3D Studio Max or AutoCAD (not mentioning smaller products like CuteFTP or WinAMP that work well).
>I still maintain QA is needless for many open source projects.
And I still maintain the fact that ALL software must be properly tested & QA’ed. Anything that’s not, it should be considered junk. Similar to adware and spyware you mentioned.
They probably go through more QA then anyone. Staying silent and backgrounded while spreading to as many computers as possible takes a lot of work
I’m only kidding of course..
The customer doesn’t buy based on quality in this industry, it’s all about advertising.
“You are mentioning adaware and spyware, not real applications.”
Oh right! Because I voluntarily decide to install adware and spyware on my system.
“Commercial apps do not mean that it’s “windows crap”, it might well mean IBM software for Unix or many commercial apps for MacOS X. So, don’t take the easy exit to refute my point by mentioning windows’ security problems, cause it’s not related.”
Of course not. I pay for supposedly well QA’ed software, it decides to advertise all sorts of junk, forces me to register the silly product, and install spyware crap behind my back. God knows what else it does. Some of these well QA’ed proprietary software have even rendered my legal collection of mp3s useless (Windows Media Player).
“We are talking about good commercial software here. Photoshop for example or 3D Studio Max or AutoCAD (not mentioning smaller products like CuteFTP or WinAMP that work well).”
Yes, but for every good commercial software, how many bad proprietary software have I got burnt by? To many to recount.
“And I still maintain the fact that ALL software must be properly tested & QA’ed. Anything that’s not, it should be considered junk. Similar to adware and spyware you mentioned.”
I think you need to read the article to give you a glimpse of what QA is all about. It does not appear to me you understand the process at all.
Yes, it surely is. However, if open source projects end up being more buggy than their commercial counterparts (and they usually are), I see no reason why I would want to run OSS software. As a normal Joe User, I am interested in solid software, not in ideologies.
You’re conflating proprietary with commercial. There are plenty of commercial packages based on software that was developed as OSS. When you pay a vendor for one of these, you are paying them for their QA and release management.
The OSS methodology usually produces better designed software. If you are concerned about a particular release not causing regression headaches, pay a vendor to do it. The point here is that you have the option whether to do the QA yourself or leave it up to competing 3rd parties. With proprietary software you don’t have that choice.
Hey! Were’s Deming in all this?
QA is making sure your factory doesn’t make too many unusable widgets and wotsits.
QC is doing something about broken widgets and wotsits detected on the conveyor belt in that factory.
what is I&T?
“The independent QA people are typically responsible for defining the process and monitoring the details of execution”
If there is one line to read, this is it. Too many companies think QA should be a monkeys job so to speak, when its not. They think a tester should just follow a bunch of steps in a test plan and click pass/fail. A good QA/tester needs just aa much thinking as a developer, especially to develop the testplan, and understanding the product and its goals.
My company just redesigned their QA system…and did the exact opposite. Trying to dumb down the QA team to a monkeys job. No thinking needed…just rerun the same tests a developer has run.
I think this article only uses a lot of terms and blah blah. If you write an article like this, come with concrete steps or examples. The only conclusion that is made is “do QA, and you rule”.
Some companies, usually non-software development industrial companies, seem to think that QA is completely unnecessary and unimportant. Software should just work right the first time it is written, they think. Try working with these expectations, I probably need another job.