quality assurance

Articles

These Challenges Should Not Be an Issue for QA Teams Anymore These Challenges Should Not Be an Issue for QA Teams Anymore

QA teams play a vital role in ensuring software quality, customer satisfaction, and efficient development. However, challenges such as limited testing talent, poor documentation, and lack of automation persist. AI-powered tools can address these issues by automating repetitive tasks, generating documentation, and improving test efficiency. By leveraging AI, QA teams can enhance their effectiveness and contribute to the success of software development projects.

Norbert Wede's picture Norbert Wede
Rethinking Our Job as Software Testers: We Should Try to Test as Little as Possible Rethinking Our Job as Software Testers: We Should Try to Test as Little as Possible

DevOps transforms testing from finding all bugs to prioritizing critical ones. Risk assessment helps testers focus on high-impact areas. Testing can be pre-release (critical issues), post-release (resolvable issues), or out-of-scope (low-impact). Testing should align with business goals and user stories. Data science helps measure and improve software quality.

Joel Montvelisky's picture Joel Montvelisky
Embracing Quality: The Integral Role of Software Testing in Development Embracing Quality: The Integral Role of Software Testing in Development

Software testing is a critical phase in software development that ensures high-quality, reliable software. It involves a comprehensive range of activities to evaluate every aspect of a software product, from unit testing to continuous testing. By identifying and addressing issues early on, software testing helps to deliver software that meets user expectations and functions seamlessly. This not only benefits users but also fosters innovation and trust in technology.

Deepika Kale's picture Deepika Kale
Don’t Let Load Testing Lead You Astray Don’t Let Load Testing Lead You Astray

While traditional, "closed system" models might seem familiar, they miss the unpredictable nature of real user arrivals. This article highlights how open system models, which mimic real-world user behavior, expose performance bottlenecks at high load that closed models can't catch. Remember, arrival rates, not virtual user counts, are the key to unlocking accurate load testing results.

Roger Durham's picture Roger Durham

Better Software Magazine Articles

QA Is More Than Being a Tester QA Is More Than Being a Tester

QA testers often take on more of a role than just testing software code. When the team needs help, QA should lend a hand in assisting with business analysis, customer communication, user experience, and user advocacy.

Amanda Perkins's picture Amanda Perkins
Achieving Continuous Improvement and Innovation in Software

There is tremendous pressure on software development teams to deliver software faster, better, and cheaper. Quality engineering with a focus on innovation is the answer

Michael Sowers's picture Michael Sowers
veggies and gems Alternate Testing Models: A Tale of Veggies and Precious Gems

As if working at Lego isn’t fun enough, Sherri Sobanski delights in finding new ways to test. Faced with a situation requiring a complete product redesign, she shares the route her team took to overhaul testing.

Sherri Sobanski's picture Sherri Sobanski
Quality Assurance Is a Process, Not a Department

QA is often considered that lonely department of testers whose job is to find defects before the customer does. It's not always glamorous, but QA deserves to be recognized as a key cog in the testing  machine. To achieve business goals, it is Susan Bradley's view that the QA process needs to be embraced throughout the entire software development lifecycle.

Susan Bradley's picture Susan Bradley

Interviews

Melissa Benua Whole Team Quality: A Conversation with Melissa Benua
Video

Melissa Benua, director of engineering at mParticle, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the importance of whole team quality, how to get started using the test pyramid, and how developers can start writing testable code.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Dan McFall Sponsored Interview: DevOps Trends in Enterprise Mobility
Video

Dan McFall, president and CEO at Mobile Labs, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about trends in enterprise mobility, the role DevOps and the cloud play in mobile application testing, and the transition to working from home.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Davar Ardalan From NPR to AI: An Interview with Davar Ardalan

Davar Ardalan, founder and storyteller-in-chief of IVOW, talks about how her experience working at NPR helped her launch an AI and storytelling startup. She also discusses how testers, QA analysts, and software engineers are on the front lines of working with users and understanding user engagement, and she explains the importance of finding ways to collaborate with them.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Greg Paskal Data Visualization in Test Automation: A Conversation with Greg Paskal
Video

Greg Paskal, test automation lead at Ramsey Solutions, talks about data lakes and how to effectively use data visualization. Done well, data visualization should help practitioners, managers, and stakeholders easily consume, understand, and act on the information the visual displays.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer

Conference Presentations

STARCANADA 2019 Taming Your Dragon: From No QA to Fully Integrated QA
Slideshow

Many companies struggle with their QA processes and think of them as bottlenecks to their releases. Join Priyanka on her journey of transforming QA and improving its reputation and reliability.

Priyanka Halder
STARCANADA 2019 3 Steps to QA Success from a VP of Quality Assurance
Slideshow

Are you a leader with a quality problem? Every organization struggles with quality at some point in their product lifecycle. Knowing what to measure and how to build a culture of quality with specific and actionable methods is key.

Karen Holliday
STARCANADA 2019 Enabling Enterprise Quality
Slideshow

Too often quality is identified as solely owned by the quality assurance team. By taking a broader approach to roles, tools, and ideology, you can restructure your vision of how to provide rapid, frequent releases that empower all delivery team members.

Mike Cullen
Scaling Quality through Community Leadership
Slideshow

Modern software development organizations often build teams around features. Unfortunately, these teams tend to become siloed, building tools and processes without being aware of how other teams have solved the same problems.

Philip Daye

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