Today, more than ever, companies engaged in software application development are facing increased competitive pressures in a global arena. Tolerance for product failure is virtually zero.

Software Quality Assurance Testing involves the entire software development process - monitoring and improving the process, making sure that any agreed-upon standards and procedures are followed, and ensuring that problems are found and dealt with. It’s clearly oriented to “prevention.”

Testing involves operation of a system or application under controlled conditions and evaluating the results. In other words, if the user is in interface A of the application while using hardware B, and that user does C, then D should happen. These controlled conditions should include both normal and abnormal conditions. Testing should intentionally attempt to make things go wrong to determine if things happen when they shouldn't or things don't happen when they should. This is the aspect of quality testing that’s oriented to “detection.”

Organizations vary considerably in how they assign responsibility for Quality assurance and testing. Sometimes they're the combined responsibility of one group or individual within the company. Also common are project teams that include a mix of testers and developers who work closely together, with overall QA processes monitored by project managers. It will depend on what best fits an organization's size and business structure.

Why Do Things Go Wrong in Your Software Development Environment?
There are several common problems in the software development process:

• Poor requirements - If requirements are unclear, incomplete, too general, and not testable, there will be problems.
• Unrealistic schedule - If too much work is crammed in too little time, problems are inevitable.
• Inadequate testing - No one will know whether or not the program is any good until the customer complains or systems crash.
• “Featuritis” - Requests to pile on new features after development is underway; this is extremely common.
• Miscommunication - If developers don't know what's needed or customer's have erroneous expectations, problems can be expected.

What are some recent major computer system failures caused by software bugs?

• In August of 2008 it was reported that more than 600 U.S. airline flights were significantly delayed due to a software glitch in the U.S. FAA air traffic control system. The problem was claimed to be a 'packet switch' that 'failed due to a database mismatch', and occurred in the part of the system that handles required flight plans.
• Software system problems at a large health insurance company in August 2008 were the cause of a privacy breach of personal health information for several hundred thousand customers, according to news reports. It was claimed that the problem was due to software that 'was not comprehensively tested'.
• A major clothing retailer was reportedly hit with significant software and system problems when attempting to upgrade their online retailing systems in June 2008. Problems remained ongoing for some time. When the company made their public quarterly financial report, the software and system problems were claimed as the cause of the poor financial results.
• Software problems in the automated baggage sorting system of a major airport in February 2008 prevented thousands of passengers from checking baggage for their flights. It was reported that the breakdown occurred during a software upgrade, despite pre-testing of the software. The system continued to have problems in subsequent months.

In some cases an IT organization may be too small or new to have its own in-house testing staff even if the situation calls for it. In these circumstances it may be appropriate to instead use contractors or outsourcing, or adjust the project management and development approach (by switching to a licensed or hosted QA/Testing solution.

What Quality Assurance Testing Solution is Best for You?
If you’ve determined that it’s appropriate to investigate the next steps to bring a QA Test solution to your organization, here are some key considerations to keep in mind:

• A lot depends on the size of the organization and the risks involved. For large organizations with high-risk (in terms of lives or property) projects, serious management buy-in is required and a formalized QA/Test process is necessary.
• Where the risk is lower, management and organizational buy-in and QA/Test implementation may be a slower, step-at-a-time process. QA processes should be balanced with productivity so as to keep bureaucracy from getting out of hand.
• For small groups or projects, a more ad-hoc process may be appropriate, depending on the type of customers and projects. A lot will depend on team leads or managers, feedback to developers, and ensuring adequate communications among customers, managers, developers, and testers.
• The most value for effort will often be in (a) requirements management processes, with a goal of clear, complete, testable requirement specifications embodied in requirements or design documentation, or in 'agile'-type environments extensive continuous coordination with end-users, (b) design inspections and code inspections, and (c) post-mortems/retrospectives.
• Other possibilities include incremental self-managed team approaches such as 'Kaizen' methods of continuous process improvement, the Deming-Shewhart Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, and others.

Common Features of Software Quality Assurance Testing Solutions

• The newest on-demand solutions deliver an expanded test platform, eliminating up-front license fees and protracted implementation periods of traditional QA and proprietary test solutions. On-Demand QA Solutions leverage open source frameworks and are delivered in a software-as- a-service (SaaS) model, enabling web development operations of all sizes to benefit from them.
• Quality Assurance solutions address the challenges posed by today's web applications, which increasingly depend on aggregating third-party functionality at the point of delivery - the browser. The implementation of new client-side delivery tools and the proliferation of alternative browsers have given rise to a host of variables - including operating system, geography and connection speed - that can affect the performance of an application.

The proliferation of browser and operating system platforms, accompanied by the explosion in web-based applications, is driving the need for enhanced quality assurance tools. Web application developers need the tools to perform complex QA tasks in parallel across multiple browser/OS platforms and ensure a high level of application performance before release.

Quality Assurance Solutions

• Industry vendors now deliver quality assurance solutions that let users load-test applications under real-world peak loads using real devices connected to the Internet.
• Quality assurance tests can now be performed that realistically emulate the profile and load characteristics of a customer's actual production user base.
• You can now test your web site under a production load in an authentic environment prior to releasing it to customers. And you can do it in a single click. This and the other new On-Demand QA Solutions reflect the fact that a quality web experience starts long before applications are deployed.
• Solutions are now available that provide cross-browser functional QA testing of applications. Users can load scripts of business transactions recorded using the leading open source web-testing frameworks. Once loaded into the system, these scripts can be played back manually or on a scheduled basis against the desired combination of browsers and operating systems. In addition to providing a pass/fail determination of the web application's functionality, a product can capture screen shots and movies of each test. This unique capability enables developers to see precisely how an end user would experience the application, which is critical for the latest generation of Web 2.0 type applications.