Software delivery is a process where QA teams create software applications and ensure that it performs what it is intended to. Since software apps have become extremely important for organizations and their success totally depends on its quality, the way they are designed, built and distributed is also evolving.
Software development processes are much more sophisticated today, than they were a decade ago. Organizations are equipped with more resources and can focus on quality assurance better. After pondering years of attention on the software delivery process as separate segments, QA experts have brought together the idea of how these pieces fit together to form the right software application. In this process, modern test management tools help testers in improving quality and meeting project deadlines.
Software Delivery Management (SDM)
This process of change is used in the new IT concept known as the software delivery management (SDM). It brings all teams, tools, networks and processes under one roof that are related to the delivery of software applications. It eliminates inefficiencies that cause roadblocks to achieve quality and help create more value-driven products, by aligning organization’s resources towards achieving business goals.
Read also about The Process of Mobile Application Development
The Evolution of SDM
The IT infrastructure is divided into two basic categories, hardware and software. These categories were analyzed in terms of their output. Experts researched how many computer systems a big integrated manufacturer produced, or how many software disks are lined up at Microsoft’s production units. Organizations had their own ways of rolling out their products and they used management techniques like TQM (total quality management) that supported these processes and only less attention was paid to specific steps that organizations had taken all the way.
All these things changed ever since software started evolving. The IoT devices, smartphones and more versatile operating systems made software quality more important than ever before. It also introduced modern test management tools for the ease of software delivery process. Software development companies spent a lot of time in the research and created different teams. They applied a variety of tools to complete tasks and implemented continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) approach to streamline their functions.
Improving the Delivery Process
The process delivery is never too perfect. There are pieces that are separated from each other. Teams are not used to communicate with each other or use collaborative tools to improve communication. Information remains siloed, and employees refrain from sharing information with each other. In other words, data that is not shared, cannot be updated either. Slight issues like these can have ripple effects throughout the organization.
Project timelines are delayed, apps that are delivered have bugs/vulnerabilities, developers feel overworked, etc. Thus, to achieve all of the above and to streamline the processes, the SDM approach was brought in. QA teams utilized test management tools to improve their testing capabilities and make the most of their testing efforts. Since one process is connected to the other, the software delivery management builds that connection to ensure nothing important is missed.