Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance#

Quality Assurance (QA) is a systematic process focused on ensuring that a product or service meets specified requirements and customer expectations. At its core, QA is about building quality into every step of development rather than just inspecting for it at the end.

The fundamental principles of QA include:

  1. Prevention over detection: Finding ways to prevent defects rather than just finding them after they occur

  2. Process improvement: Continuously refining processes to eliminate root causes of quality issues

  3. Quality by design: Building quality considerations into products from the beginning

  4. Evidence-based decision making: Using data and metrics to guide quality improvements

  5. Customer focus: Ensuring that quality efforts align with what customers actually value

In practical terms, QA involves:

  • Developing quality standards and requirements

  • Creating test plans and test cases

  • Conducting various types of testing (functional, performance, security, etc.)

  • Documenting and tracking defects

  • Performing root cause analysis

  • Implementing process improvements

  • Measuring and reporting on quality metrics

QA differs from Quality Control (QC) in that QA is focused on the process while QC is focused on the product. QA aims to prevent defects by improving processes, while QC aims to identify defects through inspection and testing.

Effective QA provides numerous benefits including increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs (by catching issues early), improved team productivity, and better risk management.

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