Everyone who works on a product, be it a web application in the IT industry or a cappuccino in a coffee house, has one important goal – to satisfy the customers using it. When analyzing this and thinking about how you can tell whether the product is successful or not, quality is one of the critical metrics that naturally comes to mind. However, what you understand about a quality product can differ greatly from other people’s perceptions.
So, let’s start by defining the term product quality. It can stand for both building the right product and building the product right. This means that all you need is to make sure that the product you’re working on is what your customers are looking for and expecting from you. The product developer needs to organize the working process as efficiently as possible so the budget is optimized and the project timelines are respected.
Software quality metrics or how to measure software quality
From a high-level perspective, both points from the paragraph above are essential. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that the final product fits the requirements that were stipulated at the very beginning. No matter how fast the product has been built, it can only be called a high-quality product if it meets your customers’ needs. Even if the product has all kinds of up-to-date features, if it misses out on even just one small function from your requirements list, it will still remain a low-quality product as far as the client is concerned.
For this purpose, we emphasize two key processes to fulfill the software quality standards. The first one is collecting the requirements and figuring out what goals the product is supposed to serve. Suppose you spend enough time determining your business goals, adjusting your strategy, and discussing with our development team what features your customers expect before the project begins. In that case, you may consider the product half-completed. If, and only if, the tech team clearly sees their tasks, ensure that they will deliver a high performance.
The second one is all about testing. This is the phase when we check whether the product does what it’s supposed to. In other words, we find and fix all possible technical issues. Based on the requirements, software quality assurance engineers will examine how the product works and ensure everything runs smoothly.
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Quality driven software
As mentioned above, collecting the requirements at the beginning of the development project is essential. And the questions naturally arise: “What should I do if I don’t know all of the requirements but have an idea of what kind of product I would like to develop? Or if I want to make changes and adjustments to the initial requirements at a later development phase?”
The answer is: “Define as many criteria as possible at the beginning and leave room for improvements.” Our development and QA teams will help you keep the product backlog prioritized and update it according to the latest decisions. The Scrum framework is sure to be the best solution for such cases. The approach of continuous improvement adopted by Scrum guarantees meeting quality requirements and constantly improving product quality.
More about applying Agile software development methodologies and best project management practices can be found in our article about best practices of software development project management.
How to improve software quality?
As we mentioned earlier, the continuous improvement approach is capable of improving your product. The better this process is set up and maintained, the higher the quality of the product will be. You can use various methods to improve product quality.
The most popular amongst them are Kaizen which means continuous improvement, and Plan-Do-Check-Act. Kaizen focuses primarily on efficient management rather than on quality assurance itself and suggests making minor improvements, measuring their impact, and therefore improving your workflow.
Plan-Do-Check-Act helps improve the process by analyzing how helpful small changes could be before implementing them. This approach is quite popular among Kaizen practitioners, too. Generally speaking, though, no matter how skilled the tech team you hire is or how well the requirements are specified, the sky is the limit. So, don’t miss a chance to fine-tune the process, which will undoubtedly positively influence the software quality.
You may also be interested in the following topic: Seven PM Methodologies That Will Make Your Software Operations a Blast.
Conclusion
We hope this article has brought you more clarity and understanding of software development quality and what actions you should undertake to refine your product quality metrics.
We at ELITEX are happy to support you in leading your product to success by providing expertise in Custom Software Development, Software Quality Engineering, and Project Management.
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