Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control — Ultimate Guide

QC and QA are frequently mistaken as interchangeable since they are interconnected facets of quality management. Their combined efforts aim to guarantee that the final products align with customer expectations. Nevertheless, this article seeks to elucidate a clear distinction between the two.

Before examining the differences between quality assurance and quality control, let us accurately clarify the two terms according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 9000)

What are Quality Assurance and Quality Control?

Excellence guarantees the utmost satisfaction of the customer, surpassing their needs, expectations, and prerequisites while maintaining flawless precision and cohesiveness. Adhering to meticulous benchmarks is imperative in order to fulfill customer desires. Assurance provides a steadfast pledge that the product adheres to the mandated criteria and will perform precisely as envisioned or requested, leaving no room for any concerns or complications.

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance is an element of management to ensure that a developer upholds quality standards. The provision of this guarantee extends to both internal stakeholders, such as top management, and external parties including clients, state agencies, regulators, auditors, and other entities involved. Another interpretation of quality assurance is “the comprehensive implementation of structured and organized processes within the quality system, which demonstrate that a product or service meets the required standards of excellence.”

Quality Assurance assumes responsibility for establishing and upholding universally applicable regulations and protocols across the organization. These guidelines should encompass business principles, technical constraints (e.g., ISO 25010), and industry-specific requirements (e.g., HIPAA for healthcare establishments). To ensure adherence to all relevant standards, an organization must establish robust QA policies.

These are some of the tasks that QA covers:

• establishing requirements;
• design and prototyping;
• programming and code control;
• version monitoring;
• keeping up with constant integration/continuous circulation (CI/CD);
• taking care of configurations;
• tests executing;
• managing releases;
• software deployment and its integration; analyzing customer feedback.

The effectiveness of a thriving Quality Assurance system depends on numerous distinct elements. It should possess the ability to continuously adjust and cater to the specific requirements of any given item in real-time. What may have been effective in the past may no longer be suitable in the present — thus, Quality Assurance must evolve and transform alongside the development of product offerings.

Quality Assurance Tools

A cause-and-effect diagram, commonly known as an Ishikawa diagram or fishbone diagram, serves as a valuable tool for identifying potential causes related to an effect or issue, while also facilitating the organization of ideas into meaningful groups.

On the other hand, a check sheet is a meticulously designed document utilized for the systematic collection and analysis of information. It is a versatile instrument that can be customized to address various requirements and purposes.

Control chart: A graph helps to track how a process changes over time. Determining if the process variation is controlled or unpredictable requires comparing the most recent data to historical control limits.

Histogram is the most popular graph for displaying frequency distributions — or how frequently each different value in a data set occurs.

Pareto chart. This is a bar graph that shows which variables are more important.

A scatter diagram displays pairs of numeric data, one variable per axis, to establish relationships.

Stratification: A technique that structures data collected from various sources so that you can identify patterns. Some lists replace stratification with flowcharts or run charts.

What Are the Benefits of Quality Assurance?

It is equally important to understand the advantages of carrying out the QA process as it should be since you are now aware of the risks of neglecting it.

Higher Security

A product that does not operate correctly is considerably more likely to be breached than one that functions properly. The safety of your clients’ information depends on this fact.

Save time and money

You can save time and money by implementing an effective QA process. It is easier to identify and fix any problems when they are noticed early on rather than trying to correct them after they have already arisen.

High-quality product

A product that does not operate correctly is considerably more likely to be breached than one that functions properly. The safety of your clients’ information depends on this fact.

Brand Reputation

Having a first-rate product is one of the aspects that can enhance your business’s popular opinion. People typically regard a product free from mistakes as superior and a reflection of your attitude toward clientele.

What is Quality Control?

Quality control encompasses a series of product testing procedures aimed at verifying its compliance with predetermined quality criteria. By implementing quality control measures, organizations ensure that the final product meets established quality standards.

In the realm of software products, defects such as user interface glitches, subpar design, accessibility issues, or security vulnerabilities can have long-lasting negative effects on a company’s reputation. To mitigate such risks, companies employ a systematic quality control process to rectify any shortcomings and ensure that their products align with customer expectations and business needs. The tasks involved in digital quality control encompass a range of activities:

• spotting flaws or errors in the product;
• QC testing. Testing following the standards for Quality established during planning;
• ensuring compliance with laws or industry norms;
• producing and keeping track of test reports;
• recording the bugs that either need to be fixed right away or can wait until the following iteration;
• identifying potential areas for improvement in Quality or user experience.

Types of Quality Control

Quality control fundamentally demands methodical research and close attention to detail. There are many different types of quality control techniques, such as:

Process Control. Processes are evaluated and modified as needed to maintain and enhance performance.

Control Graphs. A graph or chart helps to examine how processes change over time. The business and manufacturing processes are studied using statistics to determine whether they are “in control.”

Acceptance Sampling Procedures: A statistical test determines whether a batch or sample of products adheres to the general manufacturing standard.

Processing protocol is a benchmarking technique that improves the design and implementation processes by developing performance indicators for each stage.

Why is Quality Control Important?

What does quality assurance (QA) signify within the realm of business? Implementing quality control measures as a long-term investment can serve as a protective shield for a business’s reputation, prevent the production of unreliable goods, and enhance consumer confidence.

Moreover, quality control holds significant importance by ensuring that businesses base their assessments of product compliance on factual data and research, rather than relying solely on subjective observations.

An essential aspect of quality control involves the regular evaluation of products to ensure they consistently meet consumer demands and manufacturing standards. The testing process itself can also have an impact on marketing and sales, as consumers tend to place greater trust in products that have undergone rigorous quality assurance.

How Similar Are Quality Assurance and Quality Control?

It would be wrong to consider these two strategies as rivals, as “quality assurance vs. quality control” or incompatible concepts. Many of the goals and objectives of QC and QA are similar.

QC and QA Common Features

Ensure highly competitive products. You can’t just launch a product and hope for the best, says a business. QA aids the company in developing a strategy for its digital quality approach. QC makes sure the final product meets expectations. QC and QA are crucial to delivering a high-quality product to customers and ensuring financial success for the company.

Use policies and procedures. Both strategies align with the organization’s established standards to uphold high quality, but they differ in their focus. QA is primarily process-oriented, emphasizing the establishment and adherence to quality-related processes throughout the development lifecycle. On the other hand, QC may involve a range of testing approaches, including exploratory, unconventional, or user experience (UX) testing, which calls for testers to employ creativity. However, it is crucial that defect detection and resolution be documented and executed systematically, ensuring that all identified issues are appropriately addressed.

Soften problems and reduce costs. Defects within a system can range from minor annoyances to severe disruptions in business operations. Identifying and addressing flaws earlier in the process is not only more cost-effective but also less complicated. The risk associated with defects increases exponentially as they approach the customer.

Both quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) efforts are directed toward cost reduction. QA focuses on implementing policies and practices for the early detection of issues, while QC aims to diligently identify and rectify as many bugs as possible in the final product. By combining the strengths of QA and QC, companies can minimize costs and deliver higher-quality products to their customers.

Both demand time & financial expenditure. Neglecting digital quality can result in significant long-term costs for your company, regardless of whether you opt to invest in internal QC and QA teams or seek assistance from a testing partner. It is essential to invest in the right personnel and resources to uphold quality standards throughout the organization.

Even though there may be constraints in terms of release windows, achieving extensive test coverage is of utmost importance. Take the necessary time for thorough quality assurance and quality control processes, as rushing through them can have detrimental effects on overall product qualityю

Streamline the manufacturing process. Developers are accustomed to the concept of feedback loops. Attempting continuous learning will help organizations improve their effectiveness and efficiency. The company can find out where it needs to improve by using QC and QA in areas like bug detection, test automation, requirements gathering, and user experience.

Differences Between Quality Assurance and Quality Control

There needs to be more clarification between the two terms, and there is even disagreement regarding which tasks belong in which category. Keep in mind that quality control is a component of quality assurance, which explains why there is some overlap when discussing the two concepts’ differences. However, some broad conclusions set QA apart from QC.

Proactive vs. reactive. guardrails to maintain product alignment with the defined scope and ensure testability. The primary objective of QA is to establish a robust framework that minimizes bugs from the very beginning, even influencing the programming practices of developers. On the other hand, Quality Control (QC) comes into play during the development phase, actively identifying and addressing any remaining defects or issues, and prioritizing them accordingly. While QC focuses on the developed product, QA plays a pivotal role in shaping how a company ensures the overall quality of its products.

The most important things that QA and QC specialists use

Test design is the process of creating test cases and test suites to validate the functionality of software systems. It involves identifying test conditions, selecting test data, and determining the expected results.

• Equivalence Partitioning: Dividing input values into groups and selecting representative values from each group for testing.
• Boundary Value Analysis: Testing the boundaries between equivalence partitions, including minimum and maximum values, to detect issues that may arise at these boundaries.
• Decision Table Testing: Defining the actions to be taken in different scenarios, to test all possible combinations of input conditions.
• State Transition Testing: Testing a system’s response to transitions between different states or conditions, such as an application transitioning from an “idle” state to a “processing” state.
• Use Case Testing: Testing the system using realistic scenarios or use cases that are likely to be encountered in real-world situations.
• Pairwise Testing: Testing all possible combinations of two parameters or input values to minimize the number of tests required while still providing adequate coverage.
• Exploratory Testing: A type of testing that involves exploring a system or application to find defects and gain an understanding of how the system works.
• Error Guessing: Based on a tester’s experience and intuition, this technique involves guessing where defects are likely to be found and testing those areas thoroughly.
• Ad Hoc Testing: Testing the system in an informal, unstructured manner without a predefined test plan or test cases, allowing the tester to focus on areas that are likely to contain defects.
• Regression Testing: Testing the system after making changes to ensure that existing functionality has not been negatively affected by those changes.

When it takes place. As mentioned above, QA happens at every stage of the software development life cycle. QA is an ongoing process that aims to implement and guarantee digital Quality

Process (QA) vs. Product (QC). One of the critical distinctions between QA and other types of testing is that the main emphasis is on quality control. Monitoring and audits, training, and documentation are some of the practices that are primarily the focus of quality assurance (QA). To find flaws that persist after development, QC concentrates on the finished product.

Defect detection and prevention. Strong development practices, including quality-oriented ones like test-driven development, can reduce the number of defects that make it to the QC stage and even fewer that reach customers. Through team alignment techniques, such as code reviews, QA hopes to avoid some defects altogether. Testers can determine and rank the remaining flaws through QC.

Who performs the work? QA is a company-wide endeavor. Through a framework like Scrum, if the business, development, and testing sides can’t agree on standards for software quality, there will be too many defects getting past QC. QA aids in directing product development so that when a minor QC team receives it, those people can carry out their tests with the resources and time allotted.

Critical Attributes of Software Quality

Software quality attributes provide software testing experts with a convenient means to assess the performance of a software product. These attributes serve as valuable indicators that allow software architects to confidently verify whether a software application will operate in accordance with the client’s specifications. Now, let us explore the key quality attributes in detail.

Security. This characteristic evaluates a system’s capacity to deter and stop nefarious or unauthorized actions that might otherwise render the system useless. Techniques for authorization and authentication, defense against network intrusions, data encryption, and similar risks are all included in security.

Availability. This characteristic gives an application the ability to carry out the assigned tasks. Some ideas are related to software security, integrity, performance, reliability, and confidentiality.

Performance. This characteristic concerns how well a software-driven system can adhere to timing specifications. These occurrences can be clock events, messages, process interruptions, user requests, and others.

Interoperability. Software-driven systems need to collaborate and communicate with one another to complete tasks. Interoperability refers to a system’s capacity to communicate with another system via a specific interface. It implies that software testing specialists must check to see if the system reacts to different events within predetermined time frames.

Testability. Software testability measures how well a system driven by software makes it possible for testers to run tests according to predetermined standards. Engineers can evaluate a system’s testability using various techniques, including interfaces, encapsulation, patterns, low coupling, etc.

Usability. Usability measures how easily users carry out tasks on a system and what kind of user support the system provides. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the most well-known tenet for this characteristic. Its usability significantly and historically influences a software application or package’s commercial success.

Functionality. The degree of adherence to requirements and specifications is a pivotal attribute that defines how closely a software-driven system aligns with expectations. Experienced software testing professionals often emphasize the significance of conducting tests that assess the desired functionality of a system during the early stages of software testing initiatives. They consider this quality as a crucial and prominent requirement for modern applications.

How Stfalcon Can Help You to Maintain Quality

Efficient quality assurance plays a crucial role in allowing quality control to address and rectify flaws that could otherwise reach the hands of customers. Without a reliable quality control process, the company would be unable to ensure that the latest version of a product functions as intended and meets customer expectations. The synergy between quality assurance and quality control is essential for verifying product functionality and customer satisfaction.

Businesses can achieve various objectives with the aid of QA and QC, which ultimately helps the bottom line:

• Develop top-quality products;
• Optimize workflow;
• Improve customer loyalty and experiences;
• Reduce wasteful expenditures and effort;

As a market leader in software testing services and products, Stfalcon supports its clients at every stage. We can assist you in creating a digital quality strategy suited to your particular regional and market requirements

Wrapping Up

Quality control plays a crucial role in ensuring that the final product delivered by the developer meets the desired standards. It involves identifying and rectifying any deficiencies or flaws encountered during the creation process. On the other hand, quality assurance focuses on proactively improving processes to anticipate and prevent potential issues from arising in the future.

While they are distinct components of quality management, both quality control and quality assurance are equally vital in ensuring overall product quality. They work hand in hand to establish a solid foundation for maintaining high standards.

If you would like to create a top-notch product, then contact us, a free consultation is available.

Originally published at https://stfalcon.com.