Functional and Non-Functional Requirements

Both functional and non-functional requirements are crucial for delivering a successful software development project that meets user needs and performance expectations. Functional requirements are a crucial aspect of ensuring the proper functioning of a system, as they outline the necessary actions the system must perform, including its inputs and outputs.

In contrast to functional requirements, non-functional requirements concentrate on system performance and usability, outlining how the system operates rather than what it does. They describe the characteristics and qualities of the system that contribute to its overall effectiveness.

Code Quality Assurance

The development and testing teams perform numerous internal processes to ensure optimal software quality during the software development lifecycle. One such process that software development teams often adopt is Code review.

What is the meaning of Code Review?

Code review is the process of breaking down the code of a software application into smaller parts, which experienced developers and managers then analyze. Its main aim is to detect errors and potential bugs in the source code, resulting in cleaner code. This step is essential in the DevOps cycle and is usually conducted before QA testing.

What are the benefits of reviewing code?

Code review has several benefits, including:

1. Early bug detection: Reviewing code helps identify bugs at an early stage, which is less costly to fix during the development process, thereby reducing overall software development costs.
2. Cost Savings: Identifying issues early in the development cycle saves money in the long run.
3. Encourages Agile Development: Code review promotes delivering quality services within set timeframes, ensuring that the final product complies with industry standards.
4. Mentorship: Senior managers should review the code written by new employees, offering constructive feedback to help the employee understand the company’s standards.
5. Team Building: Sharing knowledge and expertise through the code review process helps promote a culture of feedback, enabling employees to learn from each other and improve their skills.

What is the difference between code review and testing?

Code review is the process of reviewing code by leads and managers to identify bugs, comply with industry standards, simplify code structure, and enhance code quality and functionality. In contrast, the testing phase is a necessary and time-consuming process in software development. Code review involves reviewing code sections to detect structural issues and minor bugs, while testing involves executing the code multiple times to ensure all features and functionalities work correctly.

Code review cannot replace testing entirely. Even with a stringent code review process, you cannot deploy the final product without testing because code review only helps identify minor errors and ensures clean, bug-free code. Testing is necessary to verify that all features and functionalities work correctly, particularly for complex and extensive code structures where it becomes challenging to detect critical bugs through code reviews alone.

Load testing

Load testing is performance testing that evaluates the system’s ability to handle a certain amount of workload. This is done by steadily increasing the load on the system until it reaches its threshold limit, which is the maximum capacity of the system. The primary purpose of load testing is to monitor the system’s performance under stress and to identify any defects or issues related to memory management, load balancing, and capacity. By conducting load testing, organizations can ensure that their systems can handle anticipated loads in the future and identify and address any issues before they impact users.

Stress testing

Stress testing is a crucial aspect of software testing and quality assurance that involves overloading a system with excessive jobs and removing components from the system to test its limits. Its goal is to determine the system’s breaking point and assess how it recovers from failure.

The ultimate goal of stress testing is to analyze the post-crash reports and define the application’s behavior after failure. A successful stress test will ensure the system returns to normality along with all its components, even after a severe breakdown. The biggest challenge during stress testing is maintaining sensitive data security after a system failure.

SonarQube for clean and efficient code

At Sipod, tools such as SonarQube are essential to our code quality assurance. SonarQube helps our developers catch code quality issues early in the development process by continuously monitoring code changes, ensuring that the codebase adheres to coding standards and that security vulnerabilities are addressed. With SonarQube, our team can detect potential technical debt, maintain high-quality code, and achieve delivery goals. You can read more about this code analysis tool in our blog.

Scalability aspects

Scalability is a crucial factor in software project planning. It directly impacts the software system’s ability to handle increased workloads while accommodating the addition or removal of users with minimal cost impact. Additionally, the software’s capacity to perform and support growing amounts of data is an essential aspect of scalability, particularly for businesses experiencing seasonal demand changes or rapid growth. 

As software ages, inflexible, entry-level software can become overburdened, slow down, and become more susceptible to security threats, affecting performance and data security. Scalability is also critical for seizing opportunities since a company’s ability to scale determines whether it can capitalize on critical opportunities as they arise.

The primary type of scalability is performance scalability, which refers to a system’s ability to adapt to increased performance, maintenance, and availability demands. Performance scalability has two subtypes: 

1. Vertical scaling, which involves growth through more advanced or powerful hardware.
2. Horizontal scaling, which involves growth through adding more hardware and distributing the workload throughout the new infrastructure.

Security aspects

To safeguard our software from cyber criminals and maintain users’ privacy, following best practices that minimize vulnerabilities in our code is essential. Knowing the common security risks developers face is crucial before listing these practices. For instance, outdated software and poorly written code can make it easier for hackers to gain unauthorized access to confidential information. Vulnerable web services can also expose sensitive data, and insecure password storage can make it easier for attackers to decrypt passwords. Legacy software, which is not updated frequently, is also vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches. Often, developers may skip security preparations due to time and resource constraints or a lack of awareness of potential threats.

However, at Sipod, we prioritize security as a key aspect of our software development process. We integrate security measures throughout the entire development cycle to ensure that it’s not just an afterthought or an occasional task but a continuous part of our workflow. This means we implement various security measures and best practices such as input validation, output encoding, secure storage, and secure coding practices to minimize vulnerabilities and prevent potential security breaches.

We also keep updated with the latest trends and techniques to improve and secure our code against evolving threats. We understand that secure software development is a continuous process, and we strive to improve our security practices continually.

In conclusion

Sipod adopts a holistic approach to software development when initiating a new project. In addition to functional requirements, we consider non-functional requirements and scalability, security, and performance aspects to design a system that can fulfill the requirements of clients and users. 

To guarantee code quality, we use tools like SonarQube, which can detect potential technical debt. Code review is a crucial part of our development process as it helps identify errors and bugs in the source code, resulting in cleaner code. 

We conduct load and stress testing to ensure that the system can handle predicted loads in the future and to pinpoint and address any issues before they impact users. We employ these methods to deliver exceptional software that meets and exceeds the expectations of our clients and users.