In this article, we discuss what software quality engineer is along with why it's important. Software quality engineering is the practice of integrating quality checks throughout the development cycle of software tools and applications. Its purpose is to ensure the software development team is efficiently testing for quality throughout the product development cycle.
To do this, software quality engineers must closely study existing development processes so that it can integrate the quality checks, rather than add them on top. Software quality engineers are responsible for the design, development and maintenance of the policies and procedures used for improving the efficiency of quality assurance.
Software quality engineers and software quality analysts both aim to ensure a high-quality final product but have distinctive roles. Software quality analysts work to develop and implement quality standards during the product's design stage. They typically create the environments for testing and may carry out the quality tests themselves. Software quality engineers, however, focus on improving the efficiency of quality assurance.
They begin their work after the software quality analysts complete their work and submit the quality assurance requirements. Software engineers may perform tasks such as automating tests, identifying repeated tests and identifying issues that arise from testing procedures. Related: Guide to Quality Assurance. Software quality engineers use several practices to ensure a high-quality product.
Some of these practices include:. Peer review is when the software developers share their code with one another. Having programmers review each other's code provides two major benefits. First, it makes it more likely that they will spot any errors by giving each piece of code additional reviewing. Second, it allows the programmers to learn from one another. Programmers can share advice or suggestions to help improve the software's code, which ultimately leads to a better product. Software quality engineers integrate analysis tools directly into a programmers coding environment.
Through these tools, the programmer gains real-time feedback about their work, ensuring that it conforms to pre-defined quality standards. This real-time code analysis saves the development team time by eliminating problems before they become ingrained within the program.
So what does this mean for you? External quality represents what we have discussed above in the non-functional quality model and is typically measured by actual execution of the code and examination of software behavior. Here is yet another model: quality lifecycle. This model may be closer to how you perceive quality. That is, quality from an end user viewpoint when they are actually using the software in real life and not in a lab.
For example, software quality testing can happen on a test server and have perfect test results, but users in their environment may have different results.
They may not be able to find a button or control as easily as a tester would, or maybe they want to print directly from a place in the application that you never thought of. Thus, Quality in use can still result in poor quality measures from the end user point of view even though when tested in the lab external quality no defects are found. On the other hand, you could find defects during static testing code quality, internal measures , but then have no defects found during testing or in the field.
Also important to note in Figure 2 is the use of the arrows and dotted lines. Namely, internal quality has an influence on, but not a direct correlation with, external quality and that external quality depends on internal quality.
This means that you can have great code quality internal quality and still have poor external quality software behavior in the test lab. This makes sense in reverse too. The software might work okay, but the internal quality could be terrible. As you can see from the chart, the characteristics of quality in use effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, freedom from risk and context coverage cover how the user completes their task in a real life situation.
Tying it together, operability as a sub-characteristic of usability, see Figure 1 could be measured internally as in conformance to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines on Navigation Bars.
This would contribute to or influence the operability measured externally, whereby users can navigate through a user story. Then, the ability of users to complete a user story would be measured by quality in use. Can they do it in four seconds efficiency? Do they make mistakes seven out of 10 times effectiveness? At this point you may be gasping for air, wondering how this fits in with CMMI and process quality. As the figure above Figure 2 shows, process quality does fit into the overall scheme of quality in software engineering.
Using the same application of arrows and dotted lines as in the quality lifecycle diagram Figure 2 , you can see that product quality depends on process quality and process quality influences product quality. Quality engineers also make sure that the manufacturer makes the goods according to specifications. Quality engineers design and monitor the quality of processes.
They work in a variety of industries and play a vital role in correcting or fixing defects. Wikipedia has the following definition of quality engineering:. Quality assurance is the overall process of making sure that a manufacturer makes things properly.
The manufacturer needs a quality system to make that happen.
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