Quality Control vs Quality Assurance vs Testing: What’s the Difference?
The quality of a product, application, or website plays a vital role in its success. While developers build the functionalities, testers’ job is to determine the software’s quality and effectiveness. However, the definition of quality can be subjective, making it crucial to establish methods and processes to verify the product’s quality for both those involved in creating it and its users.
In software development, the terms ‘Testing,’ ‘Quality Assurance,’ and ‘Quality Control’ are often thrown around interchangeably. But it’s important to understand that Quality Control vs Quality Assurance vs Testing are distinct concepts that form different parts of the quality management cycle. In this blog, we delve into the significance of these three terms and explore how they can be utilized to enhance the quality of a product.
This blog discusses the differences between Quality Control, Quality Assurance, and Testing. These are all essential parts of ensuring software works well, so understanding how they work together is vital if you want a great product. We’ll look at these processes and explain what makes them unique. If you’re into software testing or engineering or are just curious about software development, this blog will be super helpful! Let’s start exploring the world of Quality Control vs Quality Assurance vs Testing!
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is “A system for evaluating performance, as in the delivery of services or the quality of products provided to consumers, customers, or patients.
“Quality Assurance(QA) is a standard process set up by an organization to meet quality standards. This process helps to avoid mistakes and defects, delivering products and services to customers.
QA is the foundation pillar for quality management as it focuses on the integrity of the product. It also provides confidence to stakeholders that desired and mentioned requirements are fulfilled.
What is Quality Control?
Quality Control is “setting standards and testing to ensure something, like a product or service, is done correctly.”
Quality control aims to check whether the prescribed model was followed. It can be achieved by performing audits and determining whether the team followed the defined model to attain quality.
Quality Control and Quality Assurance: Origin
Both Quality Assurance and Quality control are interrelated. They are essential parts of quality management protocols followed by an organization. Initially, Quality control started to be followed in the 1920s by the manufacturing industry.
Quality control guidelines need to be implemented as the manufacturing industry demands the exact replicas of the original product in bulk without any variations. The Quality control process helps them check if the desired requirements were met without committing any mistakes.
With passing years, more research work and Growing technology made the manufacturing process more complex. This made the Quality control process even more complex.
This made the organization define a proper quality control process and ensure it is followed throughout that particular unit’s development.
In the 1950s, Quality Control was further extended in the manufacturing unit by performing Quality Assurance checks and Audits. The significant focus areas were the sectors related to public health and safety.
The idea behind “Assurance” was randomly selecting any manufactured piece from the batch and checking if it meets the desired requirement. If the piece is found to meet the requirement, it is passed.
It may be passed if the piece does not match the exact requirement but is within the defined range. If it is found out of the defined range, it has to be rejected and can lead to the immediate stopping of the manufacturing process and starting it all over again from scratch leading to loss of money and time.
Quality control focuses on auditing the project and checking if defined guidelines and protocols were followed while manufacturing.
Quality Control vs Quality Assurance
One focuses on finding and mixing mistakes, and the other makes sure that mistakes don’t happen in the first place; many differences make these two stand apart, and let’s take a look at the differences between Quality Control and Quality Assurance:
Quality ControlQuality AssuranceQC looks for defects in a product so they can be fixedQA ensures that what’s being made meets specific standards.QC inspects and tests what’s been made to ensure it’s rightQA works on the design and development of the product to ensure it meets requirements from the start.Quality Control is all about finding and fixing mistakesQuality Assurance is focused on making sure mistakes don’t happen in the first place.
Both are important for creating something great, but they take different approaches to get there.
Testing vs QA
Testing and Quality Assurance are distinct processes. The former evaluates a software system’s components to determine if it meets specified requirements. Quality Assurance, on the other hand, is a process-oriented approach that seeks to improve the software development process to ensure the delivery of high-quality software. The primary objective of Testing is to identify defects and assess software quality, while Quality Assurance aims to prevent defects and enhance overall software quality. A comparison between Testing and Quality Assurance is provided in the following:
TestingQAFocuses on finding defects in the software.Focuses on improving the software development process.Conducted after the development process and is conducted by Testers.Conducted during the development process, integrated into the development process, and conducted by both developers and testers.Emphasis is on identifying defects and validating software quality.Emphasis is on preventing defects and improving software quality.The objective is to find software defects and ensure it meets requirements.The objective is to improve the software development process to make high-quality software.
Quality Control: What role do quality audits and inspection play in product development?
Quality Audits are the onsite evaluation of a process to ensure compliance with the requirements. They are performed under the supervision of an auditor who checks whether set guidelines were practiced during the making of the product.
Audits are not about checking the product quality but about inspecting the type of work done in making a product. It evaluates how closely the prescribed model was followed. Are there any variations? If yes, then what is the reason behind variations?
The objective of audits is to continuously improve the quality of the work henceforth increasing product quality. Inspection can be one of the aspects of an Audit.
The inspection examines the traits of a product. It checks how well the product fits requirements and whether there are any variations between the developed product and desired product. If yes, will it fit the requirement or not? How many can load/stress products handle? Which adverse situation can make it crash?
In short, the audit examines the quality of the process used while making a product. Inspection is about examining how well the product fits the requirement provided by stakeholders.
Quality and inspection are practiced in various industries, such as software, manufacturing, automobile, retail, etc., to ensure all follow a standard procedure and practice.
As in bulk manufacturing, any deviation from the standard procedure might lead to mistakes, resulting in the loss of a considerable amount of money and time.
What is Testing?
Testing checks if the designed product behaves as required when subjected to various conditions.
The requirements are documented in the form of test cases. The tester verifies and validates the product. If the product requirement under test behaves as expected, the test case is marked as pass or fail. When this test case execution is done without human intervention, it is called automated testing.
Today, various tools are available for automated testing – some paid, while some are free and open source. Some are very easy to use, while some need a good level of expertise.
Now, with all advancements in the test automation industry and a particular focus on ease of use, even test automation tools have been developed that have made test automation easy to learn and inclusive. One such test automation tool is Testsigma, a cloud-based test automation tool that allows test automation for web and mobile apps in simple English.
The Necessity of Following Test Protocols for Optimal Results:
The main aim of testing and test automation is to find defects/bugs as soon as possible. A defect is raised by the tester for the failed scenarios and assigned to the developer. Once the defect is fixed by the developer again, the requirement is tested to verify the fix, and the corresponding case is passed. These feedback loops are essential at every stage of the product delivery lifecycle.
By documenting requirements and corresponding testing results, we get a clear picture of how testing is progressing, what procedures are being followed, what is pending, and the current success rate. Some of the pointers which are defined by testing are:
1. Code and function coverage
2. The traceability matrix helps define each requirement and has at least one case mapped.
3. percentage of automation vs. manual testing
4. number of test cases executed
5. Total number of cases passed
6. Total number of cases failed
7. The number of defects raised and fixed.
The testing process cannot be subjected to one model as they are various kinds of tests that a product undergoes. Each type of testing has different goals to fulfill. For example, Functional testing will only check for conformance to requirements.
Whereas non-functional testing will check other requirements, such as how an application would behave when subjected to heavy load.
Hence, it is almost impossible to follow one model throughout testing and achieve the desired result. If you try following one model throughout the testing scope, they are high chance of missing some essential requirements.
How can testing help make your product better?
Testing is a vital part of making sure a product works well. It helps ensure the product meets what it’s supposed to do and that there aren’t any problems before you use it. Testing can also give developers feedback on how people interact with the product, so they can make changes to make it better for you.
Testing is essential to ensure the product you’re working on will be great. It checks for all the possible outcomes of what you’re making and helps ensure it’s going to work how it’s supposed to. Testing should start immediately when you first think of an idea to determine if it’s feasible in the first place, what assumptions need to be made, and how best to test it. Without testing, there would be no way of knowing if your product works properly. The more testing you do early in the process, the more likely your product will be successful and make customers happy!
Finally, testing ensures the product is safe and secure, protecting users and developers from potential risks. Doing tests before releasing a product helps businesses ensure their products are of good quality and provide a good user experience.
Comparison between Quality Control vs Quality Assurance Vs Testing
Quality Assurance (QA): QA ensures that your software is of good quality and free from defects. It’s all about improving how software is made to be reliable and up to standard. The main aim is to stop any problems from occurring, resulting in better software overall.
Quality Control (QC): QC ensures that software works as it should. It looks for and fixes any problems with the software after it’s been made. The main goal is to ensure the software meets all its requirements and works appropriately.
Testing: Testing is a way of checking if a software system or its parts meet the requirements it was designed for. The primary purpose of testing is to find any problems or mistakes and ensure the software is of good quality.
Quality Assurance (QA)Quality Control (QC)TestingProcess-oriented focuses on making the process of creating software better.A product-oriented approach is a way to make sure the software meets all its requirements.Testing the software system is about finding any mistakes or issues.It works with the development process to help stop mistakes and ensure the software is of good quality.This means setting up and keeping standards, processes, procedures, and tools in place to ensure we’re consistently producing high-quality software.It’s done after the development process and involves running test cases and seeing how the software reacts.This usually happens after the software has been created, and it’s all about ensuring that the software’s quality is up to standard.The goal is to keep improving our software development process for the best possible results.The goal is to find any defects or errors in the software and fix them.It involves running tests and looking at what comes out of them, finding any problems with the software, and ensuring that it does everything it’s supposed to do.
Finally, what is the relationship between QA, QC, and Testing?
QA, QC, and Testing are like a chain that works together to ensure a high-quality product. QA sets the standards for how it should be done, QC ensures those standards are followed, and Testing checks that everything is up to the quality standards. That way, any issues can be found quickly so they can be fixed before anyone else sees them.
QA, QC, and Testing are all crucial steps to make sure that a product is up to the standard it should be. Testsigma can help you to get precisely what you want. It’s a cloud-based testing solution that automates the testing process, so you don’t have to do it manually and waste time. It also provides a Quality Control environment to ensure everything is done right and the product is top-notch. So if you’re a software tester or quality assurance engineer, TestSigma is perfect for you! Get started and see how it can improve your software testing process and product quality.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between quality assurance and testing?
Quality assurance and testing are two critical concepts in software development. Quality assurance (QA) ensures the product meets all requirements and contains no defects. This means looking at code and designs and running tests to ensure everything is up to standard. Testing is then used to find any issues or bugs that may have been missed in QA, so they can be fixed before the product is released to customers. Specialized personnel with expertise in this field usually do the testing.
What is the difference between software testing and quality assurance?
Software testing and quality assurance (QA) are similar, but there’s a difference. Software testing involves running a program or app to look for mistakes. You check it out and report any issues you find to the people who made it so they can fix them. Quality assurance is more of an overall thing that involves ensuring products meet specific standards of quality. It includes planning, coding, documentation, review, testing, and management – all the steps needed to ensure everything works correctly and consistently.
Is testing part of quality assurance?
Yes, Testing is essential for ensuring products and services are up to standards. It helps identify issues before they become significant problems so customers get the best experience possible. Testing can be done manually, automatically, or through unit testing. Doing this will help keep costs down by fixing issues before they become more significant problems.
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