Though the terms quality assurance, quality control, testing are used interchangeably many times, they are not synonyms but they are surely related. All these terms are defined under the concept of quality management. Quality assurance and quality control are two different concepts under broad terminology quality management. Quality assurance is about achieving the quality of software by executing the testing process properly. Quality control focuses on achieving the standard levels of quality with continuous monitoring and controlling the testing process.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality testing is the process that will ensure that organization delivers the good products or services possible.
Quality assurance aims for consistent results through standardized procedures which means that the organization will need to make sure that their processes for gaining desired results hit a specific benchmark.The important thing is that Quality assurance will not be involved in the actual testing of the products. Instead of that, it will focus on procedures which will make sure to achieve the best result and these are process oriented.
Quality assurance has a process that has the following steps in it:
- Plan
- Do
- Check
- Act
- Plan: Planning will be done by organisation and establish process which are related to objectives that determine the process which is required to deliver high quality and also product.
- Do: Development and testing process and do changes in process
- Check: It checks whether we meet predetermined objectives, monitoring of process.
- Act: this should implement actions which are necessary to gain improvements in process.
Organizations should use Quality assurance which will make sure the product is designed and implemented with correct procedures that help to reduce problems and errors.
Best practices for quality assurance are:
- It will create robust testing
- It will select release criteria
- It allocates time appropriately for each of the process
- It will simulate customer accounts which is similar to production environment.
There are several certifications available in the industry that make sure that the organization will follow standards quality processes, customers make this qualifying criterion while selecting a software vendor.
The main reason for this is to review and verify whether organization is been following the process as expected and check whether existing processes need improvement.
What is Quality control?
The main aim of quality control is to verify if the product meets the specifications and requirements of the customer. Suppose if the problem is identified and it has to be fixed before it’s delivered to the customer. Quality control makes corrections, people of their quality level skills set which imparts training and certification. This will evaluate the requirements for service which is based on and helps to provide perfect service to the customers.
Quality assurance function:
- Transferring technology: this will be involved in retrieving the product design which can document as well as do trial and error of data and its evaluation.
- Validation: this is plan for entire system which is prepared. It will get rights of test criteria which will validate product and process is set.
- Documentation: this will control the distribution and archiving of documents. If changes are made in the document,by adopting proper change control procedure.
- Assuring quality products
- Quality improvements plans
Differences between Quality Assurance and Quality Control
| Quality control | Quality assurance |
| This will be a Walkthrough | This is a quality audit |
| This is Testing | This will be defining process |
| This will do the Inspection, identification and selection | This is a tool |
| Validates the point review | Training of quality standard |
| Process oriented | Product-oriented |
| Preventive activities | Corrective process |
Please add some more differences here
Example of Quality Assurance:
There will be human error in the banking user interface which will allow traders to switch quantity and also price, this will result in some incidents where several mispriced orders will be submitted to the market.
If possible please consider one example and explain the flow in both QA and QC to understand better. What the QA team will do and what the QC team will do in the same scenario.
Real-time Example of Quality Control:
High-speed train manufacture will run a detailed test on every component produced which includes manual and automated verifications.
Questions:
- What is quality assurance? Explain
- What is quality control? explain
