Processes and methodologies directed to ensure that all interested parties of an application's development are satisfied that all of the application's technical, logistical, and performance requirements have been achieved. These processes and methodologies include requirements tracking and tracing, design reviews, defect tracking, testing, and communication. Quality software is delivered within project deadlines and budget. The software design makes it easy to maintain as well. It is delivered without error to the user, and all customer requirements are functioning as specified.


1.  Establishment of Requirements and Requirements Tracing

Why are strong requirements important?:

• 30-35% of software development effort is spent on rework.
• Over 50% of software defects are attributed to requirement errors.
• Over 80% of rework effort is spent on requirements related defects.
• Projects that spend less than 5% of effort on requirements management can expect 80-200% cost overruns.

[Source: "Chaos Report," Standish Group]

Using requirements as our baseline from which we create tests, we can ensure that our applications behave the way our customers expect. Requirements are determined by the customer and Qualitech solutions during JAD (Joint Application Design) sessions. QA ensures that all requirements are testable, traceable, and do not conflict with each other.

By establishing strong requirements at the beginning of the project, we have headed off most of the problems that might occur.

2.  Design Review

Design reviews ensure the application appears the way the customer expects. This includes page and window layout, colors, graphics and language. QA is involved at the design stage either by reviewing specifications or direct involvement in JAD sessions.

3.  Unit Testing

Unit testing is a test of the code from the development perspective. Technical unit testing includes ensures programming constructs (such as loops and conditional logic) work correctly and value boundaries are established correctly. Functional unit testing ensures that processes (such as attachments and saves) and database interactions work correctly.

4.  Code Reviews

Code reviews take place to ensure that the code itself is organized correctly and efficiently. Senior-level programmers are involved with code reviews.

5.  Defect Tracking

Defect tracking takes place during the entire software development lifecycle. A strong defect tracking process allows QSI to ensure no issue is ever overlooked. Defect tracking is best known to be associated with testing.

6.  Testing

All applications undergo rigorous testing before being delivered to a customer. In addition to unit testing described above, requirements also undergo testing. The functionality of our applications are meticulously tested by hand (manual testing). Also, some applications undergo a series of automated tests to allow repeated testing to be completed more effectively.

7.  Exit Criteria

For every application, exit criteria is established. Exit criteria details a set of measures, established by the Quality Assurance department that must be met before release to the customer for User Acceptance Testing or Environmental Testing. These measures may include functionality checklists and risk levels for known issues.