Why Do You Need QA and How It Can Save Your Money?

Imagine you spend a month developing quality software, and during the release time, one small bug takes away your hard work. Sounds bad? That’s why a Quality analyst is required to deploy software without any bugs and delays.

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The Quality Assurance concept is a crucial part of software testing that checks for quality standards and adheres to industry benchmarks. During the entire product launch phase, the quality analyst supports the planning, designing, and execution of the project. They closely work with the development team to validate test cases and consider the system requirements. A software quality analyst is responsible for implementing QA principles and practices during the software development life cycle.

So, every developer aims to release software or an application within a shortened development cycle and smoother deployment, and a quality assurance analyst will ensure that the product meets the requirements.

Are you struggling to find the right Quality assurance analyst for your software project? This comprehensive guide will help you gather essential details for making informed hiring decisions and ensuring the success of your QA strategies.

Who are Quality Analysts?

A Quality analyst is the person accountable for checking on quality standards for products, following the right guidelines and principles. These professionals evaluate software quality through the manual testing and the automation testing phases. Software quality analysts consider managing customer queries for the product, so it not only meets quality standards but also meets end-user requirements.

The role might differ for companies. You will find either a quality analyst or a QA engineer to manage test management with expertise in automation, testing methodologies, analytical thinking, problem-solving, critical thinking, coding, teamwork, and communication.

Based on the responsibilities, here are the following types of software quality analysts:

Manual QA Analyst

They test for software performance without automation tools and execute test cases to verify with exploratory testing, identifying bugs, and regression checks throughout the development cycles. Manual testing is preferred to validate for user interface, edge cases, and usability.

Automation QA Analyst

These quality analysts are using automation tools and scripts, and also develop test automation frameworks, such as Playwright, Cypress, and Selenium. They have expertise in continuous integration, test cycles, and reduced manual intervention in regression testing. Automation QA is ideal for large-scale projects with limited features and releases.

Performance QA Analyst

These professionals are accountable for verifying application performance and capabilities under different scenarios. Using tools like LoadRunner and JMeter, they can create stress and load tests to measure system behaviour. Their role helps to identify performance bottlenecks, server response times, and helps developers to optimise code and infrastructure.

Functional QA Analyst

These QA ensure that the software functions based on business logic and specific requirements. It focuses on testing each feature to make sure it creates the same output as expected. By writing test cases in detail and the workflow, they ensure the quality control for the software project.

Why Do You Need QA?

Hiring a qualified quality analyst can ensure the success of your software project, as they catch bugs earlier before the release, leading to the delivery of a stable and reliable product. Here’s why you should include QA in your development team:

High-Quality Software

Quality assurance analysts perform multiple tests, spending more time than developers, as they have the right expertise for techniques to find bugs earlier. These experts check for quality measures to ensure that the product complies with both functional and non-functional factors like usability, security, and performance.

Perform Testing

Executing a testing plan is an essential part of checking for quality measures for software development. A quality analyst can test cases to inspect for functionalities and usability. Depending on the requirements, it goes through different forms of testing, including functional, acceptance, regression, performance, and security testing.

User Experience

Quality analysts evaluate software from the end user’s perspective, ensuring it is an intuitive, functional, and responsive software. They test for performance and compatibility to deploy quality features, confirming that it works across different devices, real-world conditions, browsers, and navigation. Without quality assurance analysts, even the best software might release errors.

Fix Bugs

If any bug, whether big or small, wasn’t reported earlier, this might escalate into a mess for the developing team, taking more time and money for the company to fix. Hiring a software quality analyst will work throughout the process with a testing plan to easily track for any bugs, maintain quality code, and avoid technical debt.

Security and Compliance

While developing any product, companies are required to adhere to compliance and industry standards. Releasing software with bugs can lead to losing clients or negatively impact their reputation. Quality assurance analysts integrate compliance testing with processes to eliminate any risk beforehand and maintain audit trails with documentation.

How Hiring Quality Analysts Saves Money?

Adding a Quality assurance analyst to your team can save your investment as they can minimise risk and defer major costs during the software development lifecycle. Although they do not directly increase your revenue, they indirectly cover losses, boost efficiencies, and ensure customer satisfaction.

Lower Fix Costs

Any bug detected during the development phase will be easier to fix, while during production, it can go up to 2X. So, early detection requires less investment to handle downtime, product damage, lost network, and emergency patches. Early detection of issues can significantly eliminate the need for unplanned sprint development, emergency patches, and post-release hotfixes.

Client Retention

With Quality analysts, your client will get software or applications with continuous improvements. It can result in high customer retention and satisfaction due to quality checks and regular updates. Companies find it a cost-effective alternative to acquiring new customers who provide more trust and product credibility.

Automation

QA follows automation testing, which has an advantage over manual testing. It saves more time and cost during releases, allowing for faster deployment, ideal for DevOps and Agile. Unlike manual testing, this can reduce deployment timelines, testing time, and easily track for pipelines.

Reduce Downtime Cost

Industries like finance, eCommerce, or SaaS are constantly facing downtime that can result in lost transactions and customers. QA can mitigate the risk with continuous performance, stress, and load testing to promptly resolve system vulnerabilities. It helps to build a resilient, scalable, and capable system handling peak usage. Preventing outages for higher uptime, user experience, and cost savings.

Role of Quality Assurance Analysts

Every organisation has a defined role for quality analysts to check whether the developed software meets quality standards through testing, error identification, and feedback. Here are the multifaceted roles of software quality analysts:

Software Testing

One of the primary roles is to develop and execute test cases and scripts. They analyse requirements and specifications for testing based on different scenarios. It helps to identify any glitches, bugs, and errors to be addressed before deployment. QAs can significantly reduce risk for post-launch failures to ensure the final product is more reliable, stable, and performs under different conditions.

Collaborations

Quality analysts work closely with other team members like project managers, UI/UX designers, business analysts, and developers. It helps to align teams to follow the same quality standards and provides valuable insights for successful product deployment. They act as mediators who loop back into development cycles through sprint planning, review sessions, and stand-up meetings.

QA Documentation

During the testing phase, software quality analysts create documents for key test results, estimated outcomes, and steps involved in the development phase. This helps stakeholders and developers to address any issues without the need to review messy code. QAs can prepare documentation with more traceability, transparency and accountability to make informed decision-making.

Compliance Testing

To meet industry standards and regulatory requirements, QA analysts conduct compliance testing to verify product quality based on specific guidelines and regulations. These professionals can review data practices, reporting, and follow security control measures to maintain regulatory assurance and technical integrity. Conducting compliance checks helps to avoid risk and costly mistakes.

Process Improvement

A quality assurance analyst can continuously evaluate testing processes and methodologies to improve software. Using automation tools and techniques, they can easily perform repetitive tests in complex scenarios. Modern QA tools and automation frameworks can help build extensive test suites to achieve operational excellence.

Test Management

One of the critical roles performed by Quality analysts is to manage the entire testing lifecycle through organised test cases, schedule test cases, test executions, and monitor progress. Using tools like QTest, Zephyr, TestRail, or JIRA to document and manage data, while structuring features and workflow before release. It helps to make the right decision, complying with all quality products.

Real-World Examples: How QA Helps with Challenges?

Here are the following examples of real companies and how they invest in Quality analysts to reduce costs and improve product quality.

Microsoft: For Detecting Bugs

In 2000, during the phase of Windows development, Microsoft decided to invest in standard QA that includes stress testing, code reviews, and automated regression testing.

QA Implementation:

In the early development phases, they implemented QA checkpoints and followed continuous integration.

Result:

Saving costs up to $100 million by eliminating hotfixes, customer support escalations, and post-release patches
Shorter developing cycle backed with reusable automated testing frameworks
Detecting over 63% of critical bugs during the early phases

Slack: Automation Testing to Save Feature Rollback

When Slack was struggling with performance issues after a new feature release, it rolled back without following any proper regression testing.

QA Implementation:

The Slack team is implementing end-to-end automation testing through CI pipelines and Cypress for feature rollouts.

Results:

Reduces costly rollback for productivity and user experience.
Decreased debugging time by over 30+ hours per week.
Cut off post-deployment issues by 85%.

Spotify: Detect Bugs for Agile Team

Due to missing centralised quality assurance, the Spotify team is facing challenges in managing product quality and bugs detected.

QA Implementation:

Spotify introduced QA and test engineers to focus on continuous testing through a test-driven development approach.

Results:

Cut down bug rates by 65% within 1 year.
Saving development hours through preemptive testing.
Maintain consistent delivery without decreased quality.

Conclusion

Any product or software-oriented business attracts the demand for skilled QA with expertise in technical skills, continuous learning, and an active problem-solving approach. As the technology range is scaling faster, creating more complex challenges for software development, the requirement for quality analysts will be an effective investment to get control of quality management. These professionals are not just accountable for developing error-free products to be released in the market, but also contribute to meeting customer expectations.