Software Development Cycle: Challenges and Solutions

The IT sphere, as any other sort of activity, involves the certain action sequence, methodologies, guidelines, and of course poses risks and difficulties. Any software testing company realizes this and tries to prevent the negative consequences of its work.

A software development cycle is a many-staged process which in either event, faces the difficulties because of a number of objective and subjective factors. Thereafter, software testing as one of the steps of the product development may cause a lot of problems and, simultaneously, may solve most of the existed ones.

6 Main Challenges in the Software Development Cycle:

•  Lack of communication. In the case of the insignificant communication (especially, a personal one) between developers, testers, and client, the issues may occur.

•  Inconceivable terms. It is a very common thing when an employee or a QA team bites off more than one can chew and wants to succeed in a short period of time.

•  Improper requirements. The IT sphere employees often face the problem of the poor requirements or specifications. The testers also suffer from this.

•  Improper user stories. This item derives from the previous one. Inaccurate or incomplete user stories, written improperly may have a negative impact on the product release.

•  Subordination misunderstandings. Frequently, due to the disconnection between the junior and lead, the final result of the common case may be worse than it was expected.
•  Improper testing. The sad fact is that the quality of the product will be anyway judged by the testers' work, not the developers' one.

The above-mentioned list of reasons, leading to the unsatisfactory software product, may be surely expanded and added. But what matter is to understand the preventive measures which may be successfully and easily implemented in the development process of each QA team.

How to Solve the Problems of the Product Development Cycle

• Established communication system. Executing whether ad-hoc testing or preparing for release testing, both internal and external level of interaction should be accurately organized.
• Conceivable terms. It is of great importance to plan one's project schedule in order to complete all QA stages in time.
• Complete and clear requirements. Conducting any kind of checking, especially, functional testing, a tester should possess a full specification and be ready to make his own suggestions if the situation requires changes.
• Understanding of one's responsibilities. Software development cycle requires all participants to be professional in their field and execute all necessary tasks.
• Top-quality testing. The checking part of the development process should be started as soon as possible and maintained during the whole cycle at the appropriate level.

To perform mobile testing, desktop testing or web site testing efficiently these methods should be adjusted for each company and each project. QATestLab is independent, offshore software testing company located in Kiev, Ukraine. QATestLab performs testing of products on each stage of software development cycle.