Our planet has been moderately digitalized in the last two decades. Digital products and services can be seen in sprawling numbers across various verticals. Numerous companies are applying striking ways to utilize the latest technologies for generating value and revenue. With this gradual change, the testing workforce has also remodelled. The Quality Assurance process has started following a User Centric Approach these days and hence, Design QA is the latest trend that deserves a special mention.

What is Design QA?

Simply put, Design Quality Assurance is reviewing the product’s design to catch any errors or to improve the product’s design much before it is incorporated as an approved feature. Abundant font size or button styles introduced in every sprint can lead to Design Debt and working backwards. It is imperative that we make Design QA task as part of our workflow by checking the overall UX on different devices and going through the different design flows. The goal is to keep focusing on putting the user at the center and trimming the fat.

What is the difference between QA and Design QA?

All the Digital Products undergo different kinds of domain specific QA Testing. The product teams are usually more concerned about the errors or a break in the functionality that will lead to hindrance in the shipping of the product, but, on the other hand the issues specific to design should also be emphasized. It is an assumption that if the product is functioning well, that means there are no flaws in the design. However, that is not the case. Design QA is important to maintain consistency in the product. It is performed as per the user’s point of view, by discussing the requirements and eradicating the inconsistences.

Benefits of having Design QA during the Product Design Phase Itself

Adding Design QA to your process will ensure that a quality product is introduced in the market and is liked by the end users. Basically, it is an excellent way to advocate for your user. If Design QA is happening in parallel, it will lead to several benefits.

1. Appropriate interface is built for the Product

Imagine building a complete feature and then rolling it back to make certain UI changes. Here, if Design QA is a regular and early part of the process, then the complete UI will be scrutinized step by step, so that all the necessary changes/enhancements happen in one go before the feature deployment

2. Better efficiency in the Product Development tasks

As a Design QA, it is important that you voice your opinion during the verification process. This will not only improve the efficiency during the product development, but will also reduce the extensive number of iterations

3. Time Saviour

If the Design QA happens late in the game, it will become a cumbersome task for the developers, as they will have to rework on their code after Feature Deployment

4. Discovery of Issues at an Earlier Stage

If Design issues are jotted down in the early stage, it is quite possible that the Design QA team can uncover some unexpected issues sooner rather than later

5. Better Collaboration within the Team

The more the team members the better the communication and collaboration. By keeping the Design QA team in the loop will help in creating transparency and will help in building a great quality product

Where can we fit in Design QA?

Design QA as a mandatory process, should happen between the development and actual product testing.

Who should be doing Design QA?

As developers should not be testing their code, similarly it is recommended that UX designers should not be testing their design. It is important that QA Testing Vendor team tests both the design and functionality of the application, as they possess a distinct set of skills and have a broader knowledge of the application. They can anticipate how a user would judge a product and it’s design. They understand how the users truly use an application.

By articulating your knowledge and ideas with the development team and the UX designers, Design QA can help in shipping out an extraordinary product in the market. It looks like an additional step to the regular QA and Testing Services, but this additional step will be a turning point in your product’s future.

Throughout the testing and development phase of a software product, a lot of test data is created and consumed. With the widespread adoption of Agile methodologies in Software development comes multiple and frequent releases. This, in turn, also increases the creation and consumption of more test data during QA and testing services. Developers like to keep databases and stored procedures of test environments in sync with Production. Sync has the threat of exposing end-user data to the test environments thereby increasing the chances of violation of information security.

Following are some of the practices that may be implemented to maintain the integrity of data:

1. Recognize your Sensitive Data

The term ‘sensitive’ may have a different meaning in different domains and geo-locations. However, it is good practice to consider any data from end users as sensitive. As a tester, we should best not use any production data collected from the end-user. For such testing purposes, it is imperative that we create mock or dummy test data.

2. Append or Mask your Data

All data earmarked as sensitive or confidential must be masked or appended or obfuscated in a way such that it abides by Information security standards of its geolocation. However, this process should be done in such a way that the validity of the test data is not hampered. For example, obfuscation of say Zip code should not lead to invalid data being used. Else, the purpose of testing would fail. On top of that, it is a good practice to use appended test data while creation of data.

3. Use Test Management Tools to Record Usage of Data in Test

Test management tools not only help to organize and manage your Test Suites, but also help record and control the usage of test data. Cucumber is one of the most popular BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) tools for test management and it supports test data recording.

4. Regularly Purge Data created for Test

It is a security risk to keep test data and test accounts active after being used. This is most notable in the Production environment. Anyone getting illicit access of these test accounts can exploit the system and worse can expose its vulnerabilities. Test accounts are also more vulnerable to cyber-attacks such as brute-force attack. Therefore, it is always a good practice to regularly purge all test accounts and test data once they are used for testing and are no longer required.

5. Automate Flows of Creation of Test Data

This is in follow-up with the above practice of regularly purging data. Creation of test data should not take up a bulk of a test engineer’s time and creating test data manually definitely does so. This becomes even more acute when you are regularly deleting your test data. Therefore, to save time, extraction and creation of test data should be automated. For running Automated Software Testing scripts, test data should be dynamic and created at run-time. For manual scripts, test data should be extracted or created through API scripts or through SQL stored procedures. This would greatly enhance the efficacy of testing.

It is important to note that above are suggested practices only and it’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario. Some projects may have workflows which would prohibit usage of these practices. In that case, it is necessary to learn the reasoning behind those workflows and what is being done to secure the integrity of test data. At the end of the day, data privacy is the responsibility of the whole team and it should be considered seriously.

The COVID-19 situation is unique and hopefully once in a lifetime for all of us. As we all deal with it across the globe—medically, economically, and professionally—there are plenty of lessons to discover. There is also a lot to learn when it comes to cybersecurity.

Even organizations that have strictly advocated against working from home are now having to consider enacting a remote presence in order to maintain business continuity. IT teams are overwhelmed in ensuring remote setups work not just from functional and performance standpoints, but also from a security standpoint.

Any small vulnerability gives enough entryway for hackers to attempt to break into our systems, even in digitally savvy countries like the US. And with the confusing and ever-changing situations people are now in globally, it’s prime time for bad actors to explore all possible combinations of attacks. Even leading products and platforms are not immune to security hacks.

As we all try to figure out what our “new normal” is going to look like, for the time being there are things we can do to be cautious in safeguarding our personal and professional IP and assets.

At a minimum, how you connect to your professional network is important, as is the device you use. If you’re relying on a personal device, ensure it is completed patched and secure. In most cases an official work laptop is already patched, but it never hurts to get it double-checked with your organization’s IT team.

Be aware of any unsolicited calls and emails with attachments, especially ones that look real with domains of well-known organizations. If any such official communication needs to come in, it would be from that IT team, not from individual sources.

There is also currently a lot of crowdfunding happening to support global organizations in the drive to assist impacted people. Watch for trusted sources, and do your research so you don’t fall prey to phony solicitations.

Watch for scenarios where actions on your screen are self-driven—for example, if your mouse starts performing actions on its own—as this indicates that someone may have taken control of your device. If you notice this, immediately disconnect from the network and reach out to your IT team.

The above scenarios may sound basic, but they are all being leveraged by hackers around the world to take advantage of people’s anxiety. With all the uncertainty and nervousness, people are more perceptible to malicious attempts such as phishing scams.

IT teams have been working to ensure safe environments as we all move to working from home, but it’s important that we do our parts too. With basic levels of due diligence—especially around network connectivity, being aware of what messages we forward and process, vetting attachments, periodically changing passwords, and putting security ahead of convenience—we can make cybercrime one fewer thing we have to worry about right now.

Reposted from the original article QA InfoTech wrote for TechWell.

Quality engineering is ever evolving. Part of this evolution is the need for a quality professional’s role to change in the agile world. Rather than being mere quality assurance or quality conformance players, it’s important for testers on an engineering team to be true enablers of quality.

Whatever tide the quality discipline may ride, the quality team has the greatest reach in its visibility and ability to connect with all other engineering and non-engineering teams. For a tester to realize their fullest potential, they need to acknowledge and leverage this reach, going above and beyond the call of duty.

Traditionally, a tester has always been an end-user advocate. In this role, the tester represents the end-user’s expectations for a given product and has a good connection with them, next only to the business team. This is a valuable relationship that the tester can learn from and contribute to.

Within the engineering team, the tester should have a tightly coupled relationship with developers. As quality shifts left and paired engineering efforts become more prevalent, testers often work hand in glove with developers, and they should make the effort to build a solid collaboration in this relationship.

On the other end of the spectrum, the tester has strong ties with the Ops team, too. Whether it’s through deployment-related discussions, engineering for continuous quality to ensure Ops is able to debug issues, or enabling them to take up the first round of triaging and troubleshooting in a support process, testers have a long-standing relationship with Ops.

As we step out of the engineering purview, testers have more conversations with business teams today than they used to. Both use analytics to understand the market, users, and competition among other brands. There is a lot of knowledge share that can happen between these two groups to benefit the product under development. We have had teams where the business side even looks at the tests that the quality team writes in behaviour-driven development format.

In the pursuit to optimize development, testers also are closely working with designers to give design input, especially in areas such as usability and accessibility, which can save subsequent re-engineering efforts. Given the inherent curious and user-focused nature of a tester’s mindset, ideas for new features, enhancements, and suggestions from the quality team are usually welcomed by the stakeholders.

The quality team has extensive visibility and reach, and there is also widespread acceptance about the importance of enabling quality. There is a global awareness about what the repercussions could be if something critical goes untested.

Given this conducive environment, quality enablers should understand that our connections are the most far-reaching and valuable. We should make the best use of them for the benefit of the product, the team, and our own professional growth!

Reposted from the original article QA InfoTech wrote for TechWell.