How to Reduce the Cost of Quality Assurance

Businesses are focussing on Quality Assurance to reduce costs associated with the product. Earlier the bugs are found in the system, and the lesser is the cost associated with them. The quality of a product is non-negotiable, and it is noticed that minor bugs have historically added hefty costs to businesses. While maintaining quality for the product, the cost associated with the process also increases. But, it is important to reduce QA costs without compromising on quality at the same time.

It is very important to set clear goals and expectations in the starting. The early testing starts in SDLC the lesser is the cost of testing. With the BDD in place, test-driven development should be followed, so that bug leakage is reduced. The testing team should concentrate on automating more, and hidden costs should be reduced. You must be confused about how do you reduce the cost of testing. Let’s look at all the ways which help in reducing QA costs.

1) Clear Testing Goals and Expectations

Project requirements and goals should be clearly defined before proceeding with testing activities. The vision for testing should be clear for the manager and his team on how testing should be carried out. A tested of devices, browsers, platforms, and their version numbers should be collected in a sheet.

This helps in completing testing on time which will reduce the chances of outsourcing the work at the very last moment. An effective test strategy should be created to fulfill all these goals in the estimated time.

Prioritizing different components and functionalities is very important. These should be tested first, followed by other components. The testing team should be aware of the consumer base for the application so that they can think from their perspective while testing the product.

Formats of different reports should be defined well in advance, like bug leakage reports, bug density reports, and automation coverage reports. These give a better picture to stakeholders from the starting. Issues should be discussed with the team regularly so that there are fewer chances for bugs to be leaked to production.

You should clearly define types of testing, testing milestones, risks, and deliverable in the starting phase of SDLC. Automation of the regression suite is another factor that should be communicated to the stakeholders so that manual testing efforts can be reduced.

2) Test as soon as possible

Testing activities should be started along with development because if defects are discovered post-release, then it is very expensive to fix them. It is very important to find defects early in SDLC so that they never reach production by using the best testing practices. It is very important to execute all edge case scenarios so that even minor bugs can be identified. These can assist in lowering the cost of testing.

When bugs are identified during design and architecture, then the cost goes by 1x factor, whereas if bugs are detected during the implementation phase, then the cost goes by 5x factor. Bugs identified during integration testing will raise project cost by 10x factor, and which are identified during customer beta test will raise the cost by 15x factor. Bugs that are caught after release can increase the cost by 30x factor.

APIs responses can be mocked with the help of mock servers so that we don’t have to wait for the developer to build the APIs. We can start with the testing for those APIs in advance using mocker servers and mock responses. There should be helps to reduce the cost of production.

If testing is starting at an early phase, then bugs are detected much early, and developers start working on them on priority, whereas if bugs are identified at a later stage then, due to time crunch, there are chances for bugs to be leaked to the production environment. Hence start early with testing and save cost by 30x factor.

3) Incorporate Test-Driven Development

It relies on a thought process where unit test cases are written before coding. Small and crisp unit tests should be written so that developers should know that their tests should pass these sets of unit tests. Scope creep gets reduced when test-driven development is used in the project. Developers should be aware of the product requirements so that they can write effective unit tests.

TDD also helps to maintain the code base so that anyone can modify, maintain, or update the codebase. Test coverage should be increased for unit tests so that there are very few chances for bugs to be introduced. The lesser the bugs introduced in the system, the lesser is the cost for QA. It provides a flexible architecture and should be introduced in your project to reduce bugs while coding. 100% test coverage will result in fewer bugs, and thus less QA efforts will be involved, which will reduce the cost associated with QA.

4) More Automation

It isn’t easy to test everything manually. Manual testing is prone to errors, and for testing, complete application lot of testers need to be involved. We can reduce the task force by implementing automation. It is very important to automate the regression suite so that automation does most of the work for testing your application in a matter of a few hours.

One can save time in the execution of manual test cases with the automation suite. The selection of the right test cases for automation is the key to reducing the cost for QA. Previous bugs which were identified in post-release should be automated so that there are fewer chances for them to be introduced again. Edge case scenarios should be automated, which further reduces the chances for the bugs to be introduced.

Test automation increases efficacy for the QA team so that they can concentrate on more important testing tasks. When time gets reduced for testing, the cost associated with testing automatically reduces. Different automation testing tools can be used for testing, such as Selenium for automation testing, Appium for mobile automation testing, and Rest Assured for API Testing. High automation test coverage is the key to reducing costs for QA.

5) Right risk-based strategy in place

It is very important to evaluate risks associated with the project along with the impediment, if there are any. We need to create a prioritized list of risks that can impact the system. Information gaps, performance issues, and resource availability should be managed at the starting of the project so that they don’t hamper your work.

All the risks should be taken care of at the starting of the project, and proper mitigation strategies should be made to avoid them. It reduces the cost associated with QA.

6) Outsource tasks

Sometimes instead of maintaining the infrastructure, we should outsource the work to save cost on infrastructure. Cost on per hour basis varies from country to country. You can outsource work to people from a country where they charge you less. Suppose if you are in the US, then you can outsource your testing activities to Eastern Europe or Asia, where the cost associated with resourced decreases marginally.

If you are looking for a reliable team of highly skilled QA engineers to test your product, contact the Testscenario team.

7) Choose the best talent.

While hiring for your QA team, it becomes very important to choose the best talent. We should not have all Jr QAs to decrease the cost. We should have people with different skill sets, such as performance functional and non-functional. The ones who are adept at their work should be paid and hired because they are the ones who are going to put the right strategy and going to save QA cost by reducing the bug leakage ratio.

Conclusion

Now, you must be aware of the best way to reduce automation costs with valid assumptions and the strategy that needs to be followed for reducing QA costs.

You would also be aware of the best practices. It is always advisable to incorporate all the above ways in your project to reduce QA costs by marginal numbers. If you still have any doubts, get a free estimation from us, and make your testing process more robust at minimum cost.