Nowadays, most of individuals and institutions find it difficult to distinguish between quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and testing. Though there is a close connection between these processes, their conceptions differ. Since all of them are needed for efficient risk management in the area of advancing and operating computer programs, identifying distinctions is of a great importance for the software directors. Their definitions are given below:
- Quality Assurance: A certain range of operations carried out in order to ascertain in the adequacy of advancing and/or servicing procedure and to ascertain a system is able to attain its objects.
- Quality Control: A certain range of operations carried out to assess a developed system.
- Testing: The procedure of running a work product in order to reveal imperfections. (It should be also noted that the “procedure of executing a work product” is about test programming first and only then the process of running the test cases takes place).
QA operations ascertain whether the procedure is appropriate and clarified or not. Methods and standards of advancing can serve as samples of QA operations. A QA survey would mainly aim at the procedure components of a program – e.g., are specifications being described properly. In comparison to QA operations, the main purpose of QC operations is to reveal imperfections in certain deliverables- e.g., are the described specifications the true specifications. Testing is one of QC operations. Among others examination can be also mentioned. As a rule, QA and QC operations are needed to succeed in software advancement.
There is also a possibility of dispute concerning the responsible person for QA and QC operations — i.e., whether an outside organization should be responsible for either QA or QC. As the case may be different answers, but the knowledge of Mosaic says the following:
- When chief manages should be mainly responsible for execution of the right QA, QC and testing operations on a design, an external QA functionality can be useful for important review and prospect.
- The experience of an institution and its risk management plays a key role in carrying out external QA/QC. While the institutions are developing and getting more experience, managers and other workers will execute appropriate policy. In this case there is no real need in involving external guides.