QA Process Management - QA Process Activities

The activities and implications of the QA Phase can vary based on the various software development paradigms in the industry. These are depicted in the table below:

1. Software Product Development - A software product release is preceded by an internal QA cycle wherein Test Engineers from the product development group verify the product functionality against the feature specifications gathered from market sources/sales partners. This is followed by Beta Testing of the product by external users - customers, partners, patrons or volunteering testers.
2. Software Application Development or Software Servicing - In this case three levels of testing may be carried out. The party involved in software servicing or application development carries out the first level of testing at the end of the development phase. At this level the developed application’s functionality is verified strictly against client’s specific requirements. This is typically followed by System Integration and testing of the service or application at the client site, either by test engineers from the servicing project or by test engineers hired by the client. If the client is servicing a customer in turn, testing may be done at the end-customer site also by test engineers hired at the customer end.
3. Software Testing Services - This is a category of software services in which the development partner outsources the complete testing of its product, application or service to a third party. Dedicated teams of Test Engineers at the third party site solely perform testing of the developed software.

The example elucidated in this paper falls in the third category but the challenges that are faced and the solution that has been presented are applicable to the other two categories also.