Apart from adhering to defined mechanisms for regular checks, developers must ensure several additional critical practices to maintain and improve software quality:
- Include Risk Management: Integrate risk assessment into quality assurance to identify and mitigate potential issues early, organizing QA activities around real improvement of software development
- Cover the Entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC): Quality assurance should span all phases of development, from planning through deployment, ensuring continuous quality monitoring and improvement
- Implement Automated and Continuous Testing: Use automated testing to efficiently handle repetitive tasks and integrate continuous testing to provide rapid feedback and early defect detection throughout the SDLC
- Use Multiple Testing Techniques: Employ a mix of testing methods such as functional, regression, performance, exploratory, and security testing to achieve comprehensive coverage and uncover diverse defects
- Ensure Strong Communication and Collaboration: Foster transparent communication and collaboration between QA teams, developers, and stakeholders to align efforts and enhance productivity
- Adopt Shift-Left Testing: Move testing activities earlier in the development cycle to catch defects sooner when they are less costly to fix, promoting faster feedback and higher quality
- Maintain Stable and Representative Testing Environments: Ensure testing environments closely mirror production to produce reliable test results and minimize discrepancies
- Automate Security Scanning and Governance: Integrate security scans into developer workflows and enforce governance on tools and access controls to prevent vulnerabilities and unauthorized changes, especially in infrastructure as code
- Develop Clear QA Plans and Documentation: Create comprehensive quality assurance plans detailing objectives, metrics, and testing methods, supported by effective documentation and bug reporting tools
- Use Code Review and Quality Tools: Employ code review checklists and automated code analysis tools to enforce coding standards, improve code readability, and encourage modular, reusable code
By integrating these practices alongside regular checks, developers can ensure a robust, proactive approach to software quality assurance that reduces risks, improves product quality, and accelerates delivery
