Skip to main content

What is Quality

Image
By

 

✨ What is Quality?

Quality means different things to different people. For some, the brand Apple 🍏 is synonymous with quality. For others, it’s difficult to define quality, but surprisingly easy to recognize based on their experiences.

A quality product or service is one that satisfies customer needs and meets (or even exceeds!) their expectations. When you receive quality, in whatever form, you're eager to get more. You want to return for another purchase, refer the product to friends, and talk about it publicly. Quality is what we should aim for to ensure returning customers and a strong brand as a company.

According to IEEE, quality is defined as “The degree to which a component, system, or process meets specified requirements and/or user/customer needs and expectations.” 📈



👥 Who is Responsible for Software Quality?

 

Everyone involved in a software project—including the Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer, Tester, and other stakeholders such as the Business Team, Security Team, and Architecture Team—can contribute to Software Quality in several ways.

Quality should be everyone's responsibility! Working together to assure quality is essential—doing things right from the beginning. Quality can only be achieved if everybody cares about it! 🌟

🛠️ Three Aspects of Software Quality

Software quality can be broken down into three essential aspects: Functional Quality, Structural Quality, and Process Quality. Each of these plays a crucial role in delivering a reliable and user-friendly product.

1. Functional Quality 🧑‍💻

Functional quality ensures the software does what it’s meant to do. Key attributes include:

  • Meeting Requirements: Software must satisfy business and user needs, as well as compliance standards.
  • Bug-Free Performance: Fewer bugs mean a smoother user experience.
  • Efficiency: The software should be fast and responsive.
  • User Experience: The design should be intuitive, easy to use, and visually appealing.

Why it matters: High functional quality ensures user satisfaction and builds brand loyalty. 🗣️

2. Structural Quality 🏗️

Structural quality focuses on the internal code architecture. Key aspects include:

  • Testability: Clean, modular code is easier to test.
  • Maintainability: Code should allow for easy updates without causing bugs.
  • Security: Strong structural quality ensures resistance to vulnerabilities like hacks.
  • Efficiency: Well-structured code leads to better performance and resource use.

Why it matters: Good structural quality makes the software scalable, secure, and cost-efficient to maintain. 🔐

3. Process Quality 🔄

Process quality ensures that software development is efficient and well-managed. Important attributes include:

  • On-Time Delivery: Meeting deadlines and staying on budget.
  • Consistency: Reliable processes deliver high-quality software every time.
  • Collaboration: Strong teamwork and communication enhance project success.
  • Agility: Iterative approaches, like Agile, enable continuous improvement.

Why it matters: Effective processes reduce rework, ensure timely delivery, and promote team harmony. 🤝

Balancing Functional, Structural, and Process Quality helps ensure you deliver a product that is reliable, scalable, and user-friendly.


📊 Software Quality Metrics




Software Testing Metrics are indicators that help you understand the attributes of a product, the process, and the project—commonly referred to as the three P’s.

Categories of Software Quality Metrics

  1. Product Quality Metrics

    • Mean Time to Failure: Time between failures in critical systems.
    • Defect Density: Defects relative to software size (e.g., lines of code).
    • Customer Problems: Problems encountered by users.
    • Customer Satisfaction: Measured through surveys using a five-point scale. 📋

  2. In-process Quality Metrics

    • Defect Density During Machine Testing: Defects confirmed during testing.
    • Defect Arrival Pattern: Analyzes the timing and patterns of defects.
    • Phase-based Defect Removal Pattern: Summarizes relationships among defect metrics.
    • Defect Removal Effectiveness: Measures the effectiveness of the defect removal process.

  3. Maintenance Quality Metrics

    • Fix Backlog and Backlog Management Index: Counts defects that require repair post-release.
    • Fix Response Time: Average time taken to resolve issues.
    • Fix Quality: Percentage of fixes that successfully resolve the issue without introducing new defects.

🌟 Software Quality Attributes

Software Quality Attributes (also known as non-functional requirements) help evaluate the performance of a software application. These attributes can lead to increased technical debt and quality problems if ignored.

Key Quality Attributes:

  • Reliability: Measures consistent performance under various conditions.
  • Maintainability: Ease of making changes and upgrades.
  • Usability: User-friendliness and ease of navigation.
  • Portability: Cost and technical considerations when moving software.
  • Correctness: Adherence to functional requirements.
  • Efficiency: Resource utilization for optimal performance.
  • Integrity/Security: Protecting against unauthorized access and data loss.
  • Testability: Ease of testing and defect identification.
  • Flexibility: Adaptability to changes.
  • Reusability: Designing code that can be reused across projects.


By understanding and implementing these principles, teams can strive for high-quality software that meets user needs and expectations! 🚀

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Software Testing Heuristics and mnemonics.

By
Software Testing Heuristics Heuristics are simply experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery. Where an exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense. When you face a problem, you try some solutions that may work. For instance, if you suddenly find your mobile hang, what do you do? You may restart your mobile first. If that doesn’t work, then you may check & update the latest software and uninstall suspicious apps.if that also doesn’t work, then you reset your phone setting ( Factory reset). Most of us try a number of steps to solve our problems. These steps may not always work but we try them because we know that they may work. Following heuristics can apply to absolutely any kind of system with any kind of interface.  1.Abstract  Remove details in a model. S...
2 comments
Read more

A Beginner's Guide to Playwright Testing with JavaScript: 4- A Deep Dive into Playwright Assertions

By
  Ever spent hours debugging a test only to realize you forgot to check if a button was actually clickable? In web testing, the devil's in the details—and that's where assertions become your best friend. Let's explore how Playwright's assertion library can transform your testing strategy, using the popular The Internet testing playground. Why Assertions Matter Assertions are the backbone of any meaningful test. They're the checkpoints that scream, "This works!" or "Something's broken here!" Playwright's built-in expect library shines when testing real-world scenarios like authentication flows and dynamic content. Let's Start Testing: A Real-World Scenario We'll be testing key features of The Internet playground. Here's our foundation: Now let's add powerful assertions. Validating Content: Is What You See What You Get? 1. Page Titles: Your First Line of Defense Verify you're on the correct page immediately after na...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog # 9: Say Hello to Alerts! Handling Dialog Boxes in Playwright

By
Alerts and dialogs are common elements in web applications that can interrupt automated test flows if not handled properly. Playwright provides straightforward methods to manage these interruptions, ensuring your tests run smoothly. In this guide, I’ll share how I learned handling three types of dialogs—simple alerts, confirmation boxes, and prompts—using Playwright’s built-in features. Why Handle Dialogs? Dialogs often appear during critical user interactions, such as form submissions, error notifications, or data input requests. If ignored, they can cause tests to freeze or fail. Playwright’s dialog-handling capabilities allow you to: Validate dialog messages. Accept, dismiss, or respond to prompts programmatically. Keep tests resilient and predictable. Let’s explore how to tackle each type of dialog. 1.  Simple Alerts: The One-Way Notification A simple alert is a basic pop-up with an "OK" button. Example Scenario : A basic alert appears, shouting, "I am an alert box!...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Agile?

By
                              Recently I did a presentation after almost 20 years at a Bootcamp showcase on Agile. As Agile celebrated its 20th anniversary this year I decided to talk on what Agile is? Below are the few drops from Agile's ocean which I managed to pour during my showcase. What is Agile Software Development? Agile is a time boxed, iterative approach to software delivery that builds software incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver it all at once near the end. It works by breaking projects down into little bits of user functionality called user stories, prioritizing them, and then continuously delivering them in short time cycles called iterations.                In iterative development, feature code is designed, developed and tested in repeated cycles. With each iteration, additional features can...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 15 Name five different online payment methods.

By
Most modern online payment services offer easy-to-use, fast and secure ways to pay Here’s a list of some of the most popular online payment services: Digital Wallet ( E wallet) A digital wallet refers to software, an electronic device, or an online service that enables individuals or businesses to make transactions electronically. It stores the payment information of users for different payment modes on various websites.                           PayPal PayPal is one of the most dominant payment methods available today. over 20 million UK shoppers use PayPal each year in the UK and  7 million businesses worldwide use their platform to accept payments. PayPal is an eCommerce payment processing company that allows users to set up a PayPal account and pay a fee for each cash transaction. Many customers prefer to checkout with PayPal because it’s so simple and quick to use. Amazon Pay Amazon Pay is another ...
2 comments
Read more

Risk Storming for Vending Machine

By
  In the 4th session of Testing Bootcamp Beth Marshall introduced us to a very interesting game of Risk Storming. It's a  collaborative and visual technique for identifying risk and planning the Test Strategy accordingly .You can  use a Test Sphere card deck from Ministry of Testing or go to https://riskstormingonline.com/   Risk Storming takes you through three phases to get the answers. Which quality aspects matter most for your product? What risks could impact these important aspects? How can you test to make sure those risks don’t happen?     Our task was to risk storming to test the Vending Machine . And here is my take on it.                               Quality Aspect Functionality  Does it accept and return both coin and cash correctly? BOUNDARY VALUE TESTING Does it drop the selected product correctly? INTEGRATION TESTING , BUSINESS SCENARIOS , PURPOSE Is the k...
Post a Comment
Read more