Quality in Third Angle

In the contemporary world where both the facts and myths reside at the same time,

everything made out of the creeping minds are not meant for scrap folders only.

We all have sufficient understanding of QA and its processes, rather than discussing, the

same topic, here I would like to ask one simple question.

What is Quality?

Though knowing the fact that there is not any plausibly established definition of the same, but still

what is Quality, Good quality, Bad quality?

Apart from functional parameter, “there is nothing like good or bad quality, it’s just a matter of

perspectives”, (…Just hang me for saying this…), but yes, we badly need to define certain parameters

to measure the quality, and believe me, there are hundreds of them in our sector.

It’s a learnt fact that meaning of quality differs from person to person and from profession to

profession, apart from the mentioned specifications, all the unspecified parameters are more

or less depends on the perspectives of the personnel involved in the evaluation. In this

situation, what a QA team requires is to select certain criterion that is most suitable with its

clientele.

But again the question arises, how to decide those criterion? That’s a tricky question. The

glimpse of the problem will direct towards the process existing at the client side and it is the

best idea that any QA can have to just mimic the entire process exercising at the client’s end

and verify the Quality of the product. However, this approach has a glitch in it –it does not

measure the capacity of the system to handle the unexpected adverse events. This

parameter, some calls it negative testing, I would rather refer it as the system’s “handling

capacity” that determines how it relieves the user when he is learnt of something wrong

done by him.

Moreover, quality is all about the proper understanding of user’s requirements, its usage.

Besides these factors, Usability also finds a very important place quality evaluation.

Application with high level of functional correctness, without meeting the mark

ergonomically, can be rated as poor quality just because the user does not find it easy to

handle though they might continue using.

So, if the Business objective is achieved, why to bother about ergonomics?

The answer lies in the importance of the “Usability” factor, which is the parameter that

determines the sustainability of the user on the product.

So, based upon the degree of confluence of the product’s output and user’s requirement, the

quality can be categorized as acceptable quality or poor quality. We can say that whether it is

acceptable to the user or not, and this is the solemn responsibility of the QA team.

So prior to releasing any version, Perspectives based testing must be performed on the AUT,

in order to assure the quality, and perspective must be culminated by regular solicitations of

user stories.

On an ending note, there is no any hard and fast rule to determine the quality of any product

besides meeting its prime requirements, analyst has to collaborate various factors and

perspectives on the same plane in order to evaluate the grade of quality the product

possesses.