Quality Assurance and Quality Control
Quality Plans being the major parts of an organizations, these area can turn to success of every single project. Effective usage of these terms, reduces extra efforts by all means. Loads of things may turn out to be wrong caused by confusion. Things such as project overtaking deadlines, work does not satisfy the customer, project does not fit in budget and more. This article will show you the differences, thus you can make sure every team in your business is operating within your requirements and are put to their best capabilities.
So there are two key differences that needs to be noted:
- QC is making sure that all went well. Its main purpose is the verification of the complete product.
- QA on the other hand is something that keeps flowing with the development project. It is actually the process of managing quality.
One can lead to devastating results by having any confusion, misunderstanding and unappropriated usage of these concepts. Let’s consider a scenario when QA was done perfectly, the entire process was full of test cases and fixes, every single part of code was functioning as a clock. But you forgot QC.
The end product was never checked, the combined parts of code created some bugs, severe ones, the product release is ruined, all the deadlines are compromised and alas the team is at the loosing side of the table.
The same might happen again if one relies only on QC.
So the work is done (so you think) and yet the final check shows that your software refuses to operate properly. The team does not have time to develop fixes, the deadlines are missed and we return to our first scenario. At least now you already know where the seats at the loosing side are located.
Quality Assurance
- Quality Assurance ensures that the approaches, techniques, methods and processes are designed for the projects are implemented correctly.
- Quality assurance activities monitor and verify that the processes used to manage and create the deliver-able have been followed and are operative.
- Quality Assurance is a proactive process and is Prevention in nature.
- It recognizes flaws in the process.
Quality Control
- QC ensures that the approaches, techniques, methods and processes are designed in the project are following correctly.
- QC activities monitor and verify that the project deliver-able meet the defined quality standards.
- Quality Control is a reactive process and is detection in nature.
- It recognizes the defects. Quality Control has to complete after Quality Assurance.
Many people think QA and QC are same and interchangeable but this is not true. Both are tightly linked and sometimes it is very difficult to identify the differences. Fact is both are related to each other but they are different in origins. QA and QC both are part of Quality Management however QA is focusing on preventing defect while QC is focusing on identifying the defect.