Arsen Baghdasaryan: QA is well developed in Armenia

On April 29 Yerevan Testing Days conference kicked off at American University of Armenia. The platinum sponsor of the event is DataArt.

Head of DataArt Armenia Arsen Baghdasaryan told Itel.am about the history of development of QA in Armenia and its current stage.

“The idea of QA (Quality assurance) wasn’t at all developed in Armenia around 20 years ago, when the IT community started to form and several years later some Armenian startups came here from abroad. We were trying to understand what QA was. Was it better than testing? Was manual testing better than the automated one? The need for QA became apparent when people started selling their programs to customers,” Arsen Baghdasaryan said.

According to him, the customers discovered very serious software failures in one-two actions, which brought the necessity of developing decent testing in Armenian IT environment.

“This way QA development started in Armenia about 18 years ago,” Head of DataArt Armenia told.

He said that the most important aspect in testing in accuracy of results. It’s crucial to understand whether the program works or not, as well as whether its works accurately.


“The ways of testing are increasing, and the programs are expanding. To solve the issue with meeting deadlines, automated testing was created, a significant contribution in that direction. Probably, there is no Armenian IT company today that doesn’t have a QA department,” Arsen Baghdasaryan noted.
 
He remarked that QA includes all types and elements of testing. It implies not only testing, but also quality assurance, which means that it’s important to be skillful, to be able to make accurate assessments and changes in relevant processes to achieve the “ultimate” quality.

“Today QA specialists and programmers are in one team, since these specialists cannot provide quality work separately, therefore, team work is essential here. Around 10 companies in Armenia provide QA services. Over the past 10 years we have destroyed the stereotype, according to which QA specialists are unsuccessful programmers. We promoted the idea that QA is a serious occupation, which presents an inseparable phase of program development,” Arsen Baghdasaryan concluded.