Quality Engineering: What is it?

Every firm on the earth, whether they realize it or not, is engaged in quality engineering. The act of generating a product or service means confronting the problem of providing high quality. Ignoring quality has nearly always resulted in bad outcomes.

In reality, the cost of poor quality software in the United States alone was $2.8 trillion in 2018. That's the net value of Bill Gates multiplied by five, Jeff Bezos multiplied by six, Elon Musk multiplied by four, plus a couple of Larry Pages and Ellisons thrown in for good measure (obsessive-compulsive readers will have validated this calculation by now)!

Everyone is on the lookout for the holy grail of high-quality products and services: more customers and growth, reduced expenses, and higher profit margins. The subject of quality engineering arose as a result of that search, which is far from over.  

Quality engineering is formally defined as a set of procedures, processes, and concepts that assist an organization in improving its business operations in order to reach a given degree of quality for its goods or services. As a savvy quality assurance specialist, you've probably observed the circular meaning of the word quality, which leads us to the next question:

What is quality? What are the aspects of quality?

Quality is not easy to define since it has several aspects that are subjective. In fact, philosopher-author Robert Pirsig wrote a whole book on quality: “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” where he stated his Metaphysics of Quality.

Interestingly, his book was rejected by 121 publishers who thought it was low quality. Pirsig persisted, however, and publisher #122 felt that “This book is brilliant beyond belief, it is probably a work of genius…” and published it, after which it sold over 5 million copies.

Pirsig may have been on to something when he said that quality is hard to define, but we all understand it intuitively. However, as engineers, we cannot and will not leave it well enough alone and will attempt to provide a list for the aspects of quality.

Worldwide, the manufacturing industry uses various quality standards and approaches to better standardize quality such as ISO 9001, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management.

Quality Engineering in Software: A New Paradigm

The software industry has realized that the corrective approach prescribed by quality assurance and quality control – finding and fixing bugs after the fact – has gone as far as it can.

Quality engineering offers a way forward with a proactive, preventive approach to implementing quality systems that solves the quality problem confronting software development in general and product development in particular.

Keeping aside the “quality is in the eye of the beholder” philosophy, quality engineering in software tackles two aspects of ensuring high quality:

Functional quality which deals with the functional aspects of a software product or solution: Does it do what is expected? Does it conform to a design specification?

Structural quality which deals with the non-functional aspects of software: Is it robust? Secure? Highly available? Easy to maintain?  

The Evolution & Lifecycle of Quality Engineering in Software

Software quality engineering has been undergoing a renaissance with organizations pulling out at all stops to prevent defects or catch them as early as possible. This has led to a slew of new tools and methods including test automation, shift-left testing, DevOps, DevSecOps, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), SDET, Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), risk management, and artificial intelligence.  

All these combined forms an emerging approach to quality engineering.

The Role of Data and Metrics in Quality Engineering

Edwards Deming, Quality management guru, helped Japanese manufacturing processes become a world-class juggernaut in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

It is well established that data and metrics matter for quality. In fact, they are one of the major ways in which to determine if your quality engineering initiative is taking root and working. But what kind of metrics are we talking about?

Using metrics to effect change is a nontrivial process.

Today, it is possible to get a lot more data than we know what to do with and it’s easy to drown in this veritable ocean. Therefore, it is important to figure out what data and measurements are relevant. To paraphrase The Rt. Hon. Rumsfeld, “Beware of unknown unknowns!”

It is said that the metrics that measure final outcomes and results are the most telling of all. After all, quality engineering initiatives must result in a stronger and better business. This includes metrics like:

• Product sales volume
• Customer satisfaction – specifically customer recommendations to others
• Support request volume and type

However, arriving at these metrics can take anywhere from a few months to a couple of years after implementation, and Ain’t nobody got that much time!

To help us keep track of quality improvement as it happens, we use metrics like:

• The cost of quality
• Defect metrics
• Coverage
• Performance and release metrics
• Productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness metrics.

Ultimately, all data and metrics should help quality engineering leaders to identify risk in advance, minimize defects and technical debt, and increase agility and time-to-market.

What Does a Quality Engineer Do?

Software quality engineers are an integral part of the software design and quality team. They oversee the software development process, from ideation to execution, to ensure that software meets predetermined quality standards.

Certified quality engineers use continuous improvement techniques and various quality control tools to ensure quality. Measures like corrective actions and preventive actions are used to eliminate any gaps in quality.

To meet the varying and demanding needs of today's software organization, software quality engineers play a variety of roles, including design, SDET, testing, and more. Typically, this is a challenging role that requires multiple skill sets to perform well, including problem-solving, troubleshooting, statistical process control, software testing, automation, and quality control.

The American Society for Quality (ASQ) provides the Certified Software Quality Engineer certification for quality engineers.

What Are You Waiting For?

The move from quality control and quality assurance towards quality engineering is well and truly underway. Quality engineering has changed the way software is created, and it is still in the process of evolution.

An exciting journey awaits the intrepid quality engineers who boldly venture into areas few testing professionals have gone before!

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