10 Ways How QA Testing Accelerates Digital Transformation

Quality Assurance is a measure taken to ensure that applications are defect-free. Assuring quality in a digital world means resigning to the idea that quality extends beyond getting the product/service to the market. 

Here, we examine ten ways Quality Assurance (QA) testing can accelerate your business’s digital transformation. 

1. Transition of automation from application-level to lifecycle 

The automation of testing through QA is shifting more to life-cycle automation. The Internet of Things (IoT) is slowly addressing testing more from a life-cycle point of view rather than traditional testing. What this essentially translates to is the way customers use products, rather than just details pertaining to product design, is taken into account. This shift of QA results in testing of the customer experience, testing of the network, and testing of cross-platform compatibility of the application. Business management consultant McKinsey & Company forecasts that by 2025, automation technology innovations will assume control over tasks now performed by 250 million knowledge workers worldwide, freeing the remaining workforce to devote their time and energy to more creative pursuits. When testing IoT systems, QA automation requires adaptive techniques that traditional testing methods cannot provide. In this manner, advanced QA automation enables businesses to incorporate automation early on and throughout the lifecycle. 

1. Skilled resources 

QA is increasingly proving to play a central role as organizations strive for advancement in the digital revolution. QA empowers organizations, as implementing QA practices throughout all the stages of organizations’ products/services encourages process transparency and more attention to detail. QA teams are realizing the importance of being adept at testing embedded software and big data, among other emerging technologies. Resources skilled in the language of QA have a keen eye for foreseeing technical glitches and can help get the code right the first time. In addition, these resources also look for ways to effectively automate a majority of testing to improve the efficiency of the process. 

1. Decision Making through Advanced Analytics 

QA is witnessing a radical change in terms of data input. From feedback via satisfaction surveys, QA practices can now be improved by analyzing the various forms of widely available data through websites, predominantly social media. Direct input from end-users gives corporations a pretty good view of where they stand, and it aids tremendously in developing business strategies and going ahead. As QA practices are further strategized and improved, businesses can assess whether the implementation’s effect is reflected in the results. Based on the research on customer experiences with the product/service, QA teams can create actionable intelligence, which can further be used for predictive and prescriptive analysis. 

1. Assurance of reliable data from big data 

QA teams build frameworks that include security, data integrity, and privacy. These aspects result directly in next-generation data-integration platforms, which help decode the data for further analysis. Integration of QA with open-source platforms is also necessary to draw out all quality data. Identifying the right tools to help increase testing efficiencies or for effective test automation is essential for detail-oriented Quality Assurance over the long run. Quality data allows businesses to gain confidence to use the data and strategize going forward. A large pool of data that cannot be assured or confidently used will result in more business expenses, thus dragging down whatever progress they may have made toward digital transformation. 

1. Holding up the reputation of the brand  

QA practices would result in faster time-to-market of the applications, as testing would be embedded iteratively. Subsequently, customer feedback about the product/service would be reflected in online forums. The faster the applications make it to the market and the higher the quality, the more the brand’s reputation is upheld. Quality Assurance is not just a desired approach; ensuring that quality is embedded in the early stages of the lifecycle and even after the application has hit the market is mandatory. Since most customers value reviews over promotions, a word of quality products/services would most assuredly spread like fire, thus capturing a promising digital audience. Once businesses acquire an impressively large base of followers, there is a scope for the digital transformation of their products and services to occur faster. 

1. Performance and security guarantee 

QA best practices are aimed primarily at better quality. Apart from this, however, businesses looking to transform digitally must also shoulder the responsibility of guaranteeing the performance and security of the application. There is nothing more akin to virtual suicide than a lack of performance or a dip in performance at a critical time. Each time news headlines scream murder at how disappointing the recent e-commerce sale was due to a server issue, thousands of other corporations are breathing a sigh of relief that it was not them. Whether in e-commerce, gaming, or banking, applications that directly impact user experience can disappear overnight if enough care is taken to ensure such scenarios can be swiftly handled. This confidence and technical know-how to deal with crises can only be achieved through QA. 

1. Innovation through Engineering 

QA is a part of Quality Engineering, an approach that is quite a bit more elaborate than traditional testing. Today, the roles of QA Engineer and Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) are sought after much more than that of a tester. Addressing quality in the present day is more about ensuring that development is quality-centric rather than validating the software post-completion of the development stages. Once this is put into practice, there is a lot of room for QA professionals to critically and creatively assess the situation. This would lead to more innovation, furthering a business’s digital transformation. 

1. Implementation of DevOps 

Perhaps one of the most critical QA factors is implementing the DevOps concept. It encourages collaborative work and cross-functional teams. This approach ensures that issues are foreseen and dealt with in the early stages of the lifecycle and also that the modifications are made in quick iterations. In addition, understanding the product or service from various functional perspectives gives the application an edge and helps all teams get a more comprehensive view of the product. 

1. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) 

In an unending duel with the BDD, the QA team works hard to break down an application, while BDD aims to ensure that the application is unbreakable. In this back-and-forth process, the quality of the application improves as various types of testing are performed in order to ensure that the product/service is capable of handling load and can continue to perform its tasks efficiently. 

1. Profit maximization 

Ultimately, better quality through best QA practices would raise business standards. As long as businesses keep quality constant, they will continue to have an edge over competitors. As a result, they would be in a better position to invest in better digital initiatives and explore more innovatively. This would continue to hold the interests of their user base and would inevitably hit the bulls-eye of profit maximization. 

In Conclusion 

As a global leader in the independent software testing services domain, Cigniti Technologies strongly advocates Quality Assurance and its implementation right from the early stages of the software lifecycle. We take great measures to ensure that we are fully equipped with state-of-the-art services and have partnered with other experts who specialize in providing testing services. 

To know more about Cigniti Technologies, visit our website and contact our experts.