Comparison between Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA)
To guarantee that the final product meets all of the specified criteria, the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) must include both quality assurance and quality control. When it comes to quality assurance, though, they use different approaches.Quality Assurance is concerned with avoiding problems in the first place, whereas Quality Control looks for problems after they've already been made.
Quality assurance (QA) is procedure-based; its primary objective is to verify the viability of the methods used throughout development. Quality assurance practices are useful for avoiding problems and salvaging a failing project. Checklists, audits, and the creation of both methods and standards are all types of quality assurance but also: requirements, design, prototyping, coding, code reviews, versioning, CI/CD, configuration management, test preparation and execution, release management, deployment, and integration.
However, Quality Control (QC) is primarily concerned with whether or not the delivered software really meets the current set of specifications. In contrast to quality assurance, quality control is meant to find problems after they have already been introduced to the product. The purpose of quality control is to ensure that all deliverables are complete and accurate. Inspecting, reviewing, and testing outputs are all examples of quality control activities.
The process of digital quality control includes the following steps:
- Maintaining compliance with established norms and identifying flaws in quality or the user experience in order to fix them.
- Test report creation and upkeeping by creating a record of all of the issues that need to be solved before the product is released, or those that can wait until the next version.
- Detection of defects or errors in the product.
- Testing against predetermined quality requirements established during the design phase.;
How Many Stages Does the Quality Assurance process has?
Quality assurance is most effective when implemented at the earliest possible stage of the development life cycle. These steps are typical of a QA procedure:
- Determining Necessary Features
At this stage of quality assurance, testers check that the criteria are comprehensive, well-defined, consistent, verifiable, and amenable to testing. Incomplete or ambiguous requirements are a common source of problems, and this helps eliminate that risk throughout the planning and design stages.
- Testing Design
After going through the requirements, testers may start formulating a plan and organizing their output. They may outline the whole extent of the testing that will be done, specify the tests that will be conducted and at what stages, and decide on the methods and instruments that will be used.
- Setting-up Tests
After a thorough strategy has been developed, QA specialists may go on to creating test cases, establishing automation scenarios, and setting up the test environment.
- Trying Out The User Interface And The Overall User Experience
In order to ensure that all of the criteria have been met, the user interface (UI) must be tested.
The goal of user experience (UX) testing is to provide the highest quality of life for the software's intended audience by identifying and fixing any usability flaws.
- Applying Exporatory Testing
Instead than using a list of prepared test cases, testers in exploratory testing come up with their own test scenarios and put them into action immediately. Exploratory testing, in contrast to structured testing, calls for human thought and cannot be programmed.
- Performing Regression Testing
To make sure no new issues are introduced into the system and that all previously tested functionality continues to operate as intended, developers do regression testing.
- Procedures for Running Tests and Documenting Issues
When developers create and run unit tests, the testing process officially starts. Integration and system testing are then performed by the testing team. The team runs through the scenarios and logs any issues they encounter in a defect tracking tool. In addition, tests may be run automatically and results can be generated with the help of test automation tools.
- Testing the Public Release version
When a new version of a software product is ready to be released, the testing team does smoke testing to guarantee the release candidate is stable and free of bugs, runs test suites that cover the new features, and produces a test result report.
In summary
Despite their differences, quality assurance and quality control rely on one another to function well. It's impossible to have reliable QC without reliable QA, and without reliable QA, QC will be swamped with defects, and many of those bugs will make it to the consumers. No matter how hard a company tries, they can't be sure that the newest version of a product will be well accepted by consumers and will perform as expected without thorough quality control.
Quality assurance and control (QA and QC) aids firms in achieving many objectives that boost their bottom line. When executed properly, these two digital quality techniques benefit firms by:
- Build superior software products
- Improvement of dev team performance.
- Increase satisfaction and commitment from your customers.
- Cut down on extra expenses and lost time;
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