“What is quality control?“, “What are the 4 types of quality control?”, “How to apply quality control method?”, etc. are the common questions a new quality control inspector would face.
Regardless of any field, the quality of the end-user product always takes priority. Especially with software development, a minor bug can lead to the whole program crash and terrible financial problems like the loss of millions of dollars.
Hence, if you want to be an excellent software quality control inspector in the future, let’s start with the most basic terms and essential information before going into a deeper understanding.
Keep reading and discover this seems-to-simple about quality control meaning and other relevant topics in this article.
What Is Quality Control?
In the dynamic environment of manufacturing and service delivery, there is a question that seems to arise from time to time, what is Quality Control? Quality Control is also known as QC which is an important step that is taken to guarantee that the final product or service is of a specific standard. This is a set of inspections, reviews, and tests that are employed to ensure that a product or service conforms to the required standards.
1. Definition of quality control
Quality control or QC as it is commonly referred to is a critical process in manufacturing and service industries. It entails a planned and structured process for the purpose of ascertaining that goods or services being produced conform to a given set of quality standards. The main goal of the quality control is to detect such inconsistencies and eliminate them.
Quality control is not a single activity that is performed once but a sequence of activities. It involves inspection, testing and monitoring at different intervals of the process. For instance, it may include inspection of raw materials on receipt, inspection during the manufacturing process, and inspection of the final product.
Quality control is not an idea that stands still. It has developed over a period depending on the complexity and size of the production systems. Starting with the craftsmanship period where quality was upheld by the individual craftsmen, through the industrial revolution where factory supervisors were held accountable for quality, the concept has evolved. Today, there are more complex methods like the statistical process control (SPC) that enable the manufacturer to control the production processes with the help of statistics.
Today, quality control is also going digital through the use of AI, ML, and IoT in the current world. These technologies are helping in the real-time tracking of production processes, real-time identification of deviations, and predictive quality insights.
Quality control is important in many industries including manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, healthcare, medical, pharmaceuticals and food and beverage industries.
2. Importance of software quality control
SQC is an important component of the software development life cycle. It encompasses the coordination of testing activities to find defects, control potential problems, and enhance the program’s performance. Quality control as a beacon of hope helps the developers to steer through the vast area of software development while producing quality products to meet the market’s competitiveness in the digital world.
Let’s look at some key aspects that highlight the importance of software quality control:
- Minimizing Costs and Risks: High test coverage means that there are fewer chances of having bugs that are not discovered and hence, your software is always expected to behave in a certain way. It offers assurance each time there is a change or the development of new features, thus leading to quality software.
- Compliance with Standards and Regulations: Software quality assurance (SQA) is a process that checks if the quality of the software product meets the laid down standards.
- Continuous Improvement: In fact, quality control is not a step in the development process but rather a process that runs concurrently with the software development life cycle. Companies need to be sure that every aspect of the software, be it internal or external, meets the set standard.
For further information, one can turn to the State of Software Quality Report 2023 and the 2021 Quality Management Trends Report. Both these reports offer a good insight into the current status of software quality control and contain a lot of useful data.
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3. Classification
Quality control commonly referred to as QC is a vital component in the overall process of ensuring product quality. When we delve into the classification within quality control, we find three main categories. It is divided into three categories which are minor, major, and critical.
- Minor Defects: These are minor variations from the standard but do not have an impact on the marketability of the product. For example, a computer monitor that had a very faint scratch on its back.
- Major Defects: These are the types of defects that prevent the product from performing its designed function. An example could be a variation in the size of a product that a company deals with.
- Critical Defects: These are critical problems that may lead to the user’s injury or the violation of the law.
- Classification of defects is very important in quality control since it assists in understanding the results of inspection and improves the quality control strategies. For example, a variance of 0.7 cm in a product’s measurement could be classified differently depending on the company’s quality standard.
As for the development of new trends in the sphere of quality control, it should be mentioned that they are appearing due to the progress in technologies. Machine learning helps in predictive quality analytics, and IoT helps in real-time monitoring of the production process. These technologies assist in minimizing wastage of resources and at the same time enhancing the satisfaction of the customers.
Software Quality Control’s Responsibilities
- Inspect software quality at every phase by using industry-appropriate methods, such as checking tech specifications, complying with standard production/development processes
- Review customers’ requirements and design
- Review test plans and cases during the whole process
- Record test results and analyze quality database through detailed reports and summaries
- Propose software quality improvements
- Monitor and use the quality control tools efficiently
- Find solutions to quality-related problems promptly
Specificities of software quality control
We can state that quality control is a complex process. It entails checking the quality of the software at all stages with the right methods in the industry. This includes reviewing technical requirements and verifying that all the standard production and development procedures are being followed.
One of the key activities of software quality control is the examination of customer requirements and design. This helps in ensuring that the software developed is fit for the purpose of the end-user and as planned in the design phase.
Another important activity is the examination of the test plans and cases at any stage of the process. This continuous review ensures that there is early detection of any problem that may be experienced so that it can be solved.
Another aspect is the recording of test results and analysis of the quality database using detailed reports and summaries. Such records are useful in understanding how the software is functioning and where there could be problems.
Software quality control also entails making recommendations for change. These suggestions are based on the analysis of test results and can result in vast improvements in the quality of the software.
Another important area is the effective application of quality control tools. These tools assist in the assessment of the performance of the software and guarantee that it complies with the set quality.
Finally, it is crucial to identify the solutions to the quality-related issues and address them as soon as possible. Early resolution of such problems is important as it can keep the software quality intact and customers happy.
Software Quality Control Activities/Strategies
1. PDCA cycle
PDCA Cycle consists of 4 steps: Plan, Do, Check, and Act. Generally, software quality control procedures follow these steps to monitor the process.
Plan: With the first step, it is time to define what you need to do to control the software quality (including objectives, quality control method, strategies, detailed activities, etc.). Your duties are to review the testing documentation, testing plan, and case creation. Gather and analyze quality-related data.
Do: This step allows you to implement your plans and activities, in order to evaluate the effect of these changes later.
Check: To carry out the third step, you need to collect, record, and analyze the results you achieve. Make a comparison between what you planned to get and what you really got. Are there any flaws in the testing plan? Or are there any unpredictable errors in software quality you haven’t realized? Summarize what is done correctly and what needs to be improved.
Act: Based on the lessons learned from the previous step, you can continue to apply the valuable activities and correct what went wrong (or create a different plan). Repeat the PDCA Cycle several times until you get the expected results.
2. Software quality control review
To control the quality of software, what you need to do is to verify all quality-related requirements of the clients, the testing plans, test cases, code, and design. Your software development process requires reviewing at each phase.
The purposes of software quality control review are:
- To make sure the testing process is going smoothly and effectively
- To minimize the bugs and defects in the final products
- To allocate the available resources in a well-organized way with minimum wasted effort or expense
- To completely remove the lack of the quality required
Along with ensuring the software’s quality, the review steps also help to reduce maintenance costs (with fewer defects) and production time and cost (with effective allocation).
3. Software quality control testing
As the subset of software quality control, testing plays an essential role in identifying any hidden bugs in software. There are 2 main types of software testing, including manual testing and automated testing.
With manual testing, the tester doesn’t use any automated tools. They experience and test the software as an end-user at different levels (unit testing, integration testing, and system testing).
Whereas, automated testing makes use of scripts and other programs to check a large testing coverage with quick and repeated performance. Compared with manual testing, automated testing saves time, cost, and human resources, and makes better accuracy.
However, this type of testing is usually used for the areas that need to be tested frequently with little variation in requirements.
Software quality control at Designveloper
Compatibility testing is an important factor of our quality control process. This is to guarantee that our applications have a smooth UI/UX across the different devices and platforms. This process of testing is very effective in making sure that the applications that we develop are not only effective but also easy to use.
This is where performance testing comes into play as it is part of the quality control measures. The performance of our applications is tested under different scenarios including low network connection, low battery, and limited memory. This guarantees that our applications run to the best of their capacity irrespective of the environment.
At Designveloper, we think that quality control is a continuous process. Once our applications are live on the different app stores such as the App Store or Google Play Store, we listen to the users’ feedback. This makes it possible to update the existing applications, enhance the existing features, and add new features based on the users’ feedback.
To achieve the best quality of the applications, we employ several testing tools. In the case of unit testing in JavaScript, we use Jest. For end to end testing of mobile applications, we use Appium, Maestro and Detox. For API testing, we have Postman.
Conclusion
There is no shortcut to success.
If you want to create high-quality software and become a skilled quality control inspector, you need to learn from the most fundamental lessons to the professional technicals. We hope that our article is the first step towards your dream when it gives you a basic understanding of what is quality control, a QC’s responsibility, and quality control procedures.
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