The only way to achieve a high-quality product is to have an effective QA process in place. Here are a few best practices in 3rd party QA testing that will help you achieve greater success in quality assurance –

1. Build a Robust Product and Third-Party Application Knowledge Prior to Testing

There are many times when third-party application issues during testing can be mistaken with actual product issues. This can significantly impact testing and affect your time-to-market.

It is, therefore, important that the QA team should develop an extensive knowledge of all domains (APIs, OS, mobile, etc.) before executing test scenarios.

2. Plan the Testing and QA Process in Detail

One of the best ways to improve the overall quality of the end product is to well plan, define, and document the software test process.

Good documentation is an effective way to build efficient communication within the software team and allows them to maintain the quality and test plans for a project. Few of the most valuable documents that can be shared with clients or stakeholders include –

• Test plan
• Supported platforms
• Release notes
• Test cases/checklists

3. Focus on Improvement in Quality

The key objective of any quality assurance process is to provide assurance to all the stakeholders that the processes and activities used during the development of your software are thoroughly designed to maintain the high quality of the end product.

The QA testing, therefore, should primarily focus on improving the process of development of software with the aim to optimize the quality of end products.

4. Apply Effective Methodologies

An effective QA testing methodology can be instrumental in reducing the cost of the overall lifecycle of the software. It ensures that the software is conforming to all the requirements and standards, which are fundamental assumptions in the development of life-critical products.

Additionally, it is also important to define the right processes to be used in the development of the product and ensure that those processes are used as per plan strictly, with no deviations.

5. Prioritize Risk Management with Quality Assurance

Unlike the popular notion that QA is synonymous with testing, quality assurance is a much broader term. It involves a whole spectrum of processes, activities, and risk management to assure the quality of your product.

Risk management, coupled with a quality check is, in fact, one of the building blocks of adequate quality assurance.

6. Utilize Testing Strategies Based on Requirements

To be able to perform different types of tests, such as security, mobile, agile, big data, and analytics, you need to follow different testing approaches that suit the specific kind of test management framework.

Simply put, it is important to follow a requirements-based testing approach that can help you in both system/application validation and in calculating the specific testing efforts needed.

7. Test Early and Test Often

The aim of QA testing is to incorporate testing at each stage of the project’s lifecycle to identify issues as early as possible. Within each testing phase, QA engineers test and retest the product to check the viability of the new features added. This allows them to identify and catch any problems that may have been introduced during this process.

Testing early and often involves continuous monitoring of the process to make sure that all the agreed-upon standards and procedures are being followed diligently along the development process.

8. Automation

It is always a great idea to find new ways to automate specific test cases that are repetitive. This, in no way, means spending a lot of money to automate each and everything.

The ideal option is to hire the services of a test automation service provider and install servers capable of handling the automated tests effectively.

9. Practice to Get it Right the First Time

In any delivery project even with watertight requirements, mistakes are inevitable. Getting it right first time in software testing essentially means that all such potential errors should be eliminated.

The idea here is to determine with some degree of accuracy what you are trying to do in the project and creating a solution that clearly reflects what you want at the end and ensuring that any kind of deviations are understood and accepted.