QA auditing is an integral part of the app development process because there is so much competition in developing digital products and services. In addition, today’s consumer is savvy. If your web services or mobile app fail to meet quality standards, users will abandon your products and services, and your brand image and reputation will suffer.
While being first to market is important, you cannot sacrifice quality for speed. Quality assurance auditing doesn’t necessarily have to hamper the pace of your development projects, but you need to account for quality and implement an audit process as part of development.
Let’s take a closer look at what quality audits are, how they work, and the key benefits of regular quality assurance auditing.
What is QA Auditing?
Quality assurance auditing is tasked with ensuring the quality and compliance of digital products and services through the analysis and improvement of the development process. The end goal is to make the development process as efficient and effective as possible while adhering to quality and compliance standards that are defined by the team, organization, or customer.
Also, keep in mind that app stores like the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store will require your app to meet specific quality requirements. Not doing so will most likely delay your plans or keep your app from being published entirely.
The Difference Between Quality Assurance and Quality Control
In many cases, the terms quality assurance and quality control are confused or used interchangeably. This is understandable since both feature similar tasks, management systems, and a common end goal, which is a high-quality product.
Here is a simple way to distinguish between quality assurance and quality control audits. A quality control audit involves reviewing the end product and looking for aspects that could be improved, fixed, etc. A quality assurance audit concerns itself with improving, if necessary, the processes that lead to the end product.
QA audits seek to prevent defects from occurring in the first place. A quality control audit looks for already present flaws and finds ways to remedy them. Performing quality assurance audits is a proactive measure, not a reactive measure.
How Quality Assurance Audits Work
Since the ultimate goal of a QA audit is to prevent bugs and other defects from arising, audits need to focus on the entire software development life cycle. The earlier an error or defect is identified in the software development life cycle, the cheaper and easier corrective actions become.
A thorough QA audit will monitor all of the processes involved in the software development life cycle in real-time, help set quality standards to aid in preventing errors, and make improvements to the process where and when necessary.
One of the best ways to perform an audit is by establishing an audit team within your development project. An audit team can handle project management tasks and help communicate quality and compliance standards to stakeholders and team members. In addition, auditing is greatly aided by clearly defining and communicating your quality assurance process to each member of the teams involved in your project.
If you set clear standards, the team members performing development tasks can ensure that all actions are followed appropriately and all tasks adhere to a consistent standard. In addition, communicated standards will make the task of auditing simpler and less time-consuming since every team member essentially performs a mini quality audit on their tasks.
The Key Benefits of Audits
Performing audits is an essential part of the web and mobile app development. Without a quality audit of the digital products and services your teams are developing, you risk releasing poorly built software. This can negatively impact your business reputation and cost your organization a lot of time and money in corrective actions that could have been prevented.
While quality control testing procedures are also critical, you don’t want to wait until your product is built to start thinking about quality. Here are the reasons why a quality assurance audit report is so important:
- Save time and money
- Benchmark performance
- Drive improvement
- Aids in standardization of processes
Save Time and Money
Two of the most valuable resources a business has are time and money. By saving both, organizations can increase productivity and drive innovation. QA audits help highlight issues and errors at every step of the development process.
Errors caught early in development are easier to fix and less costly. If you wait to audit or quality test until the product is built, you could be missing issues that could have been found in the planning or design phases of development.
The longer an error is allowed to persist, the more likely you will need to make significant changes to the design or source code. This will cost time and money and make your development team less efficient and productive.
Benchmark Performance
Quality assurance auditing gives project managers and team leads the ability to check the current performance levels of individual processes during development. Audit findings can be compared with internal audit standards or other groups on the project to determine how well each aspect of a function is performing in the context of the greater project.
This gives audit teams the ability to quickly pinpoint areas that need improvement and track a project versus past performance metrics and standards.
Drives Improvement
With the ability to benchmark project performance, quality assurance auditing can help drive improvements on the development team, highlight areas where team knowledge could be improved upon, and identify changing trends and underperforming processes.
QA audit findings can be used by project management to make improvements to the quality management system and take corrective action to address any shortcomings identified by a quality assurance audit.
Aids in Standardization of Processes
Implementing a quality audit strategy will ultimately help your organization define development and performance standards that can be used across all projects. In addition, audit standardization helps ensure consistency from project to project, and it helps ensure that standards are clearly communicated to team members. This will ultimately make the audit process more efficient in the future too.
Final Thoughts
Quality assurance auditing is an essential part of development. It is far too costly to wait until a product is developed to run a quality audit. QA audits should be a part of all development projects because they ensure that quality standards are being met at every point in the software development life cycle.
If you’re working on a development project, have an app idea, or need guidance, reach out to an app development partner. A partner can help you understand the importance of quality audits, design a thorough audit process, implement audit management systems, and so much more. Use a development partner’s experience and technical expertise to unlock robust QA auditing for your business.
