Quality assurance

Quality Assurance (QA) is a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers. QA is applied to physical products in some way, but it is also applicable to software development.

Definition

Quality Assurance is the systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled. It is the systematic measurement, comparison with a standard, monitoring of processes and an associated feedback loop that confers error prevention. This can be contrasted with quality control, which is focused on process outputs.

Key Concepts

Two key principles characterise QA: "Fit for purpose" (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose) and "right first time" (mistakes should be eliminated). QA includes management of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components, services related to production, and management, production and inspection processes.

History

The roots of QA date back to the time of the guilds in medieval Europe. The rise of QA in the United States came from the quality crisis in the 1980s, both in product and service industries.

QA in Software Development

In the context of software engineering, software quality refers more to "the degree to which a system, system component, or process meets specified requirements" and "the degree to which a system, system component, or process meets customer or user needs or expectations".

See Also

• Quality Control
• Software Quality
• Quality Management System
• ISO 9000

References

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