What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance (QA), as defined by Wikipedia, is a way of preventing mistakes and defects in products, and avoiding problems when delivering products and services to customers.

Defect prevention differs slightly from defect detection in quality control, although both terms are used interchangeably to refer to ways of ensuring the quality of service of a service or a product.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing, on the other hand, is a way of exploring the system to see how it operates to find possible defects. The products are tested with various methods to locate bugs and ensure that they’re fixed.

Testing enables customers to see if the product meets their expectations in its design, compatibility, functionality, etc.

The Similarities:
Quality assurance, and Software testing both have one aim: to guarantee a high level of software quality. Although these are related, they’re not interchangeable. To be qualified enough to carry out quality assurance, quality assurance training is necessary. The same applies to software testing.

The Differences:
Software testing and quality assurance are not of the same stock. They have different goals, specific features, and methods of application.

• Quality assurance is about the activities designed to make sure the product conforms with the expectations of the customers. Software testing involves the execution of software or system components using automated or manual tools to evaluate properties of interest.  The purpose of software testing is to identify errors, gaps, or missing requirements in contrast to actual requirements.

• Most software testing companies have properly tested software products to ensure reliability, security, and high performance, which further results in time-saving, cost-effectiveness, and eventually, customer satisfaction. Quality assurance works out ways to prevent possible bugs in the process of software development. Quality assurance specializes in the management areas: methods and techniques of development, project analysis, and checklists.

• Quality assurance more or less controls the testing process and verifies the ability of the software to work under the set conditions. Software testing, however, concentrates on case studying, implementation and evaluation.

• The main aim of QA is to plan and establish the processes of quality evaluation. Testing is a way to gather information about software quality to check the results of the implemented processes. QA prevents issues rather than detects them. Its procedures include preparing a test plan, execution of risk-based testing, industry-specific testing, and test data management.

• Quality assurance is a set of methods and activities designed to ensure that the developed software corresponds with all the specifications. It is a planned strategy of the testing process evaluation aimed at the quality product yield.
• Software testing is part of quality control. It has various techniques that can detect software issues. Moreover, the goal of software testing is to make sure detected bugs are fixed without any side effects.

Conclusion

QA and software testing both serve the purpose of ensuring the development and delivery of high-quality software. They’re hardly the same thing, but they work hand in hand in the long run, to achieve similar goals.

If you need to know more about software testing and quality assurance, and how they can benefit your business, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.