The last thing any company wants when launching a long-awaited, high-profile tech project is being met with a slew of missed bugs and user complaints. A thorough quality assurance process not only saves your team and your users from wasted time and frustration, but also safeguards your brand’s reputation.
To get a new product, service or feature release off to a smooth start, it’s essential to avoid cutting any corners. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council highlight essential QA steps that can help development teams squash any lingering bugs, optimize functionality and deliver a top-notch product. Follow their advice to ensure your next big launch stands out for all the right reasons.
1. Perform Thorough Load Testing
One essential QA step before a major release is load testing. This ensures the system can handle the expected user traffic and performance demands. It’s critical because even a well-functioning app can fail under heavy loads, leading to downtime, a poor user experience and damage to your brand’s reputation. Thorough load testing mitigates these risks. – Savitri Sagar, Kenzo Infotech
2. Use A Phased Rollout To Minimize Risk
A phased rollout allows new features to be tested with a subset of users. Taking this approach rather than doing a “big bang” release allows risk to be phased and mitigated while also allowing nonfunctional aspects to be tracked. For instance, load testing can be increased slowly. – Dileep Marway, AND Digital
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3. Take A Thorough, Multistep Approach
Before a big release, multiple QA steps are needed—not just one. You’ll need solid code coverage and a good curve in terms of new bug reports. Among other steps, use the product internally (a.k.a., dogfooding) and ensure you’ve had successful limited availability beta testing. Each step comes with its own set of challenges. – Alexander Krizhanovsky, Tempesta Technologies
4. Incorporate Expert-Led ‘Red Teaming’ In QA For GenAI
Today, we have customers bringing AI-powered products to market, and the risks of inaccuracy, bias and toxicity can’t be ignored. In the case of generative AI, it’s essential to incorporate expert-led “red teaming” into your QA process to expose vulnerabilities and protect systems against common threats, including hallucinations, to ensure experiences are safe and reliable for all users prior to launch. – Rob Mason, Applause
5. Choose Testers Who Represent Your Actual Users
One essential QA step is to test the product with a demographic that represents your actual users. This ensures the product meets their needs and expectations and works across different use cases. Real user feedback helps identify potential issues early, ensuring a smoother experience at launch and protecting your brand’s reputation by delivering a product that truly resonates with its audience. – Andrew Kucheriavy, Intechnic
6. Consider Hiring An External QA Agency
Engage an external QA agency and let them do a round of exploratory testing. Did they find any critical or minor issues? If major bugs were reported, your in-house team may have developed tunnel vision. Independent exploratory testers, uninfluenced by internal biases or pressures, can identify new testing scenarios and edge cases, increasing test coverage and providing impartial quality assessment. – Konstantin Klyagin, Redwerk
7. Ensure Comprehensive Coverage
In the DevOps and DevSecOps environments, the boundaries between applications, infrastructure and connectivity are increasingly blurred. As IT and OT teams converge, QA methods and tools must ensure comprehensive coverage. – Manish Rajendran, Deloitte Consulting
8. Focus On Automation
Given the significance of quality assurance, it’s essential to focus on a strategy that prioritizes automated testing. Seek to reduce testing time, especially for critical scenarios. – Buyan Thyagarajan, Eigen X
9. Use A Mix Of Automated And Targeted QA Processes
Apart from spending suitable time and resources running a comprehensive security testing program, use a mix of automated and targeted QA processes to isolate and address any issues prior to release. A company’s reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy. – Bankim Chandra, DotSquares LLC
10. Beta Test At Scale
Beta test at scale, and don’t confuse beta testing with alpha testing. Your beta test should be of a product you think is ready for deployment with your most demanding and sophisticated customers. Alpha testing, on the other hand, should be with visionary and collaborative customers who can help shape features. If you pass muster with your most demanding clients and they see value in the product, you’re ready to deploy. – Jim Barrett, Edge Total Intelligence
11. Use Professional Beta Testers To Replicate Real Scenarios
Conducting thorough testing with professional human beta testers is an essential QA step before a big release. While automated testing is valuable, human testers can replicate real user scenarios across diverse tech environments, uncovering issues that machines might miss. This ensures the product performs well in real-world conditions, safeguarding your brand’s reputation. – Rodion Telpizov, SmartJobBoard
12. Perform Comprehensive End-To-End Testing
Comprehensive end-to-end testing is the one essential step right before any project launch. End-to-end testing involves testing the full functionality of a system from a user’s perspective. It tests that all the integrations are working seamlessly and allows you to identify and fix any breakdowns or unexpected behavior that could frustrate customers and harm your brand reputation. – Batul Bohara, Amazon
13. Carry Out UAT In A Production-Like Environment
One essential QA step before a big release is user acceptance testing. In this step, real users validate the product in a production-like environment to ensure it meets their needs. UAT helps identify user-specific issues that other tests may miss, ensuring a smooth launch, protecting your brand’s reputation and delivering a reliable, user-approved product. – Ben Gebremeskel, TeckPath
14. Test For A Smooth UX
Important QA steps include user acceptance testing, along with testing all the interfaces that interact with the product. Try to test it with a subset of production data prior to deployment, and have real-time use cases that can be tested by your team and by a set of end users. Each end user interacts differently with your application. Ensuring an easy user experience across your application will increase user adoption. – Amina Elgouacem, NEOSTEK
15. Ensure Your Product Is Inclusive And Accessible
Ensuring your product is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, is essential. Accessibility testing not only expands your user base, but also demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity, enhancing your brand image. – Manasi Sharma, Microsoft
16. Carry Out Thorough Performance, Resilience And Security Testing
An essential QA step before launch is thorough performance, resilience and security testing. Performance tests ensure the system handles high demand, resiliency tests confirm the ability to recover from failures, and security tests prevent breaches. Any failure in any of these areas can lead to system crashes, data leaks or downtime, which can devastate a brand’s reputation. – Jo Debecker, Wipro
17. Test Tools Under Simulated Customer Conditions
One critical step in the QA process before a major release is rigorous real-world testing under simulated customer conditions. This ensures the product functions seamlessly across diverse environments. In digital forensics, tools must handle large datasets and varied evidence types flawlessly. This step protects both performance integrity and user trust. – Yuri Gubanov, Belkasoft
18. Run Regression Testing With An Updated Suite
It’s standard practice to run regression testing before a release. However, it’s crucial that the regression test suite is well-constructed and kept relevant. This ensures not only functional testing, but also that new code doesn’t introduce bugs in existing features. This maintains the high quality standards of your software. – Stoyan Mitov, Dreamix
19. Develop A One-Person, Quick-Turn ‘Smoke Test’
Sometimes teams skip manual testing just prior to a release, fully relying on automated testing. Big Tech can pull that off, but for “the rest of us,” I encourage developing a “smoke test” focused on core workflows that can be executed manually by one person in four hours or less. I don’t ever like to skip “touching the product” before a big release, just to make sure everything is working. – Dave Todaro, Ascendle
20. Leverage ‘Dark Launch Testing’
A rare QA step is “dark launch testing.” This means releasing new features to a small group of users without anyone else knowing. It lets you test how the feature works in real life, making sure it’s ready before showing it to everyone. – Margarita Simonova, ILoveMyQA
