A guide to purchasing the right quality assurance software

Editor's note

The quality of an application or software is as vital today as it has ever been. Most times, the quality of a product is perceived through a strong user experience, and ensuring a strong user experience begins with making sure a product works and works well. You can test a product to see if it works right, but what ensures that your testing process is correct? And if it's correct, what guarantees that process is being used every time it needs to be?

Quality assurance software manages and executes testing processes. It assists development teams with managing the development cycles of software and applications and provides metrics into how the product is running. Like all other software, quality assurance software comes in many different sizes and shapes and addresses different issues for companies in different situations. This buyer's guide helps you sort that out to make sure you have the right quality assurance tools.

The process to purchasing quality assurance software should be as assuring as the software you're procuring. This buyer's guide defines the buying process for you. Heeding expert Gerie Owen's advice for selecting the right quality assurance tools should mitigate the risk that comes along with such a buying decision. Follow along as she takes you through what quality assurance software is, when it's used, when your organization would use it and which software is best suited for your organization.

Mitigating risk, preventing bugs and defects, tracing requirements, and adjusting to Agile or DevOps methodologies are all circumstances in which quality assurance software would be of great use. But not all organizations are built and operated the same way. Knowing which situation you're in requires you to perform a needs analysis for your organization. Once the needs have been identified, only then can you truly identify if you need QA software and, if so, which vendor is the best fit.