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Quality assurance for world-readiness

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The goal of ensuring world-readiness has a wider scope and requires more forethought than merely testing localized applications. It must start early on by determining the necessary criteria for globalization. Then the Quality Assurance (QA) process must make sure that those implicit requirements are met throughout design and development.

For software products shipped to multiple markets, a single world-ready binary dramatically simplifies QA. By using a single binary, you only have to deal with one product built for one specification. The product is built by one development team. and there's only one binary that is tested, tracked, and supported later on. Expanding the target markets of the product becomes easier and more efficient because you don't need to completely retest the world-ready binary to sell it in another country/region.

Software design and development can easily break world-readiness when:

  • Legacy single-language methods, thinking, and practices are used.

  • International conventions aren't considered.

  • Text layout and other properties aren't designed for.

Making software world-ready is a new goal for many software companies, and new problems are likely to arise when new technologies and methods are used. The people responsible for testing and QA must recognize the problem with test processes that aren't world-ready. Testers must be prepared to prevent these problems or reduce their negative effect through proven solutions.

See "Globalize the Test".