Retail automation system is achieved by capturing, collating and analysing all

the transactions electronically. The system helps to seamlessly manage the

forecourt, sales room (at the outlet) and Regional office (operation &
business) transactions pertaining to Retail Outlets. Manual intervention is
eliminated, and speed of transaction & operations is increased, resulting in a
Quick Fill Experience. This strengthens the ‘Club HP’ brand image which is
based on Quality & Quantity (Q&Q), Customer care and Vehicle care. These
automated outlets have been branded "e -fuel stations".
Implement SQA through all this software development life cycle of this tool
development process.

QA helps project teams identify inconsistencies, system errors and feature

redundancies in an ever evolving software product. Strong QA processes are
essential for any successful software project, following are top reasons

 Prevention of major failures in production applications.

 Damage to brand value resulting from poor user experience.
 Loss of potential revenue due to system defects.
 Reduced engagement from users, developers and community.

The Software Development Life Cycle mainly revolves around six phases, may it
be the traditional lifecycle or Agile lifecycle of a project:

1. Planning
2. Design
3. Implementation
4. Testing
5. Deployment
6. Maintenance

Planning

This phase involves gathering requirements for upcoming features. In Agile,

requirements are typically left loose, however, the team always has an initial
idea of the core feature(s) for upcoming version(s) of the application.
A good QA tester should be an advocate and expert on user experience. After
all, user experience plays a vital role when planning out new features. QA can
point out potential issues with user experience that may even affect the team’s
decision to move forward, which in turn, can save thousands of dollars in design
and development efforts. 

Lastly, even if QA’s input doesn’t result in any significant product changes,
sneaking through the upcoming features can help QAs plan out test scenarios,
edge cases and test cases.

Design

Similar to the planning process, QA involvement is critical in the design phase, as

it can save companies significant resources in the long run. Potential gaps in
designs or wireframes are magnified exponentially if QAs are exposed to designs
directly in the testing phase or towards the end of development.

On the other hand, involving QA in the design phase would help in identifying
aspects of the design that might cause future usability problems. Early
intervention enables UI/UX designers to make changes on the fly, resulting in a
better end product and happier customers.

Implementation

The project team focuses on writing source code during this phase of the
application development lifecycle, and the concept of Continuous
Testing continues to play an important role in modern best practices for the
Implementation phase. We recommend following a component testing
approach for Continuous Testing, as it helps the team check each component of
the application (object, module, etc.) to validate if the system works properly.

Each small component is tested in isolation. QA creates a list of test cases

describing the steps to be performed and expected results. In case an
issue/defect is found, this approach helps in redesigning or re-coding only the
tested module instead of working on the entire codebase.

Another factor to consider in the mobile application development is cross-

browser and cross-platform testing. This method is used to test the working
capability of a product across different browsers and platforms, as certain
features may behave differently depending on the platform you are using.
Quality Assurance should always test websites and applications in different
environments to ensure that the application delivers an optimal user experience
independent of the browser you use to access it.

Testing

As a tester, testing is the most important phase of the Software Development

Lifecycle, and you need to be prepared to hit the ground running. At the same
time, Quality Assurance does not only relate solely to the “testing” of software,
but also includes activities like: 

 Writing test cases

 Filing bugs and testing Bug Fixes
 Regression Testing
 Preparing bug reports
 Preparing testing status
 Prioritizing client-supported browsers and devices.

As a tester, you must go through all of the possible layers of the software,
looking for the smallest to most critical bugs. It’s important to test even the
simplest of applications, as there will always be features and scenarios where
users could encounter problems — like issues across different devices, browsers
and scenarios.

Deployment
Quality assurance in software development plays a less crucial role in the
deployment phase, as this phase encompasses pushing the code to production.
However, you still want to perform smoke testing in this phase to make sure the
deployment didn’t cause any issues when it went into production.

Maintenance
You sometimes miss bugs in the production phase due to stringent timelines, or
due to a simple miss. As a tester, you’re counted on to fix these bugs in the
maintenance phase, where you’ll be on-hand to test the bug fixes, or upgrades
to features.
System Architecture
Implementation of SQA

1) SQA PLAN

Testing activity needs Test Plan likewise SQA activity also needs a plan which is

called SQA plan.

The goal of SQA plan is to craft planning processes and procedures to ensure
products manufactured, or the service delivered by the organization are of
exceptional quality.

During project planning, Test Manager makes an SQA plan where SQA audit is
scheduled periodically.

In the SQA Plan, the Test Manager should do as following

1.1) Identify the role and responsibilities of SQA team

In a project team, every member must have responsibility for the quality of his
or her work. Each person has to make sure their work meet the QA criteria.

The SQA team is the group of person who plays the major role in the project.
Without QA, no business will run successfully. Therefore, the Test Manager has
to make clear the responsibility of each SQA member in SQA plan as below:

 Review and evaluate the quality of project activities to meet the QA

criteria
 Coordinate with management board and project teams to assess
requirements and engage in project review and status meetings.
 Design track and collect metrics to monitor project quality.
 Measure the quality of product; ensure the product meet the customer
expectations.

For example, in the SQA Plan of the project, you can create the list members
of SQA team as below
S.NO MEMBER ROLES RESPONSIBILITY
1 Peter SQA Leader Develop and document quality
standard and process for all
management process
Manage software quality assurance
activities for the project

2 James SQA Auditor Perform SQA tasks, report to SQA

leader the result of SQA review.
3 Bean SQA Auditor Perform SQA tasks, report to SQA
leader the result of SQA review.

Step 1.2) List of the work products that the SQA auditor will review and audit
The Test Manager should

 List out all the work products of each Test Management Process

 Define which facilities or equipment the SQA auditor can access to
perform SQA tasks such as process evaluations and audits.

For example, for the project, you can list out the work products of each Test
Management Process and define permission for SQA members to access these
work products as per the following table

No Managemen Work Path Permission Grant to

t phases product person
1 Risk analysis Risk [server Read All SQA
Management path] team
document members
2 Estimation Estimation … Read Peter
and Metrics
report
3 Planning Test Planning … Read All SQA
document team
members
4 OrganizationHuman … Read All SQA
resource team
5plan, members
training plan
5 Monitoring Collected … Read Bean
and control metrics of
project effort
6 Issue Issue … Read James
management management
report
7 Test report Test Report … Read All SQA
document team
members

1.3) Create the schedule to perform the SQA tasks

In this step, the Test Manager should describe the tasks to be performed by
SQA auditor with special emphasis on SQA activities as well as the work
product for each task.

Test Manager also creates the scheduling of those SQA tasks. Normally, the
SQA schedule is driven by the project development schedule. Therefore, an
SQA task is performed in relationship to what software development activities
are taking place.

Date SQA Tasks Person in Description Output

charge
30-Oct-2014 Evaluate James – Software SQA
project Specification planning
planning, Review report, SQA
tracking and review
oversight – Estimation, minute
processes Master
Schedule
and Project
Plan Review
15-Dec-2014 Review James – Review the Process
requirement software audit report
 analysis requirement
development
30-Mar-2015 Review and James – Review the SQA report,
Evaluate Test Design SQA review
Test Design document minute

30-Mar-2015 Review Bean – Process SQA

release Audit: Final process
Release audit report
3-May-2015 Review Bean – External SQA
Project review after process
closing final delivery audit report
to customer

2) Define the standards/methodology

To review the Management activities against the standards process, you
should do the following steps

1. Define the policies and procedures intended to prevent defects from

occurring in the management process
2. Document the policies & procedures
3. Inform and train the staff to use it

3) Review the process

Review project activities to verify compliance with the defined management
process. In the management review, the SQA members have to perform 5 SQA
reviews as following
Review time for SQA depends on the project’s development lifecycle model. In
case of the project, the review schedule should be following

In each SQA phase, the SQA members provide consultation and review of the
project plans, work product, and procedures regarding compliance to defined
organizational policy and standard procedures.

During Audit, the SQA members should use SQA review checklist. After you
walk through the 3 steps of software assurance implementation, you have the
result of Test Management Review & Audit. This is the evidence to show to
your stakeholders about your management quality.
Software quality assurance best practice

Here are some best practices for an effective SQA implementation

Continuous improvement: All the standard process in SQA must be improved

frequently and made official so that the other can follow. This process should
be certified by popular organization such as ISO, CMMI… etc.

Documentation: All the QA policies and methods, which are defined by QA

team, should be documented for training and reuse for future projects.

Experience: Choosing the members who are seasoned SQA auditors is a good
way to ensure the quality of management review

Tool Usage: Utilizing tool such as the tracking tool, management tool for SQA
process reduces SQA effort and project cost.

Metrics: Developing and creating metrics to track the software quality in its
current state, as well as to compare the improvement with previous versions,
will help increase the value and maturity of the Testing process

Responsibility: The SQA process is not the SQA member’s task, but everyone’s
task. Everybody in the team is responsible for quality of product, not just the
test lead or manager.