Quality Assurance

In developing products and services, quality assurance is any systematic process of checking to see whether a product or service being developed is meeting specified requirements. Many companies have a separate department devoted to quality assurance. A quality assurance system is said to increase customer confidence and a company's credibility, to improve work processes and efficiency, and to enable a company to better compete with others. Quality assurance was initially introduced in World War II when munitions were inspected and tested for defects after they were made. Today's quality assurance systems emphasize catching defects before they get into the final product.

Quality Assurance Definition The planned and systematic activities necessary to provide adequate confidence that the product or service will meet the given requirements.

I Difference between Quality Control and Quality Assurance

	Quality Control	Quality Assurance
Definition	QC is about checking at the end of some process, that we have built quality in i.e. that we have achieved the required quality with our methods.	QA is about having an overall development and management process that provides right environment for ensuring quality of final product.
Description	QC is like testing a module against requirement specification or design document, measuring response time, throughput etc	QA gives us added assurance that the whole producing or checking process is properly planned and executed and thus maintaining high quality.
What it does	To check that the modern methods of software development are largely designed to ensure right quality is achieved. QC checks that these methods are in place and to discover where they are not then corrections are to be made.	It gives us added assurance that the while producing / checking process is being properly planned and executed and hence is keeping high our chances of producing software of required quality.
Stages	If product fails only taking corrective actions.	1. Determination of quality policy through Quality Management System 2. Checking that predetermined Quality control activities are being properly taken care off.
Best carried out on	QC is best carried out on products	QA is best carried out on process.
Technique	Structured walkthrough, Fagan techniques are some of QC techniques.	Quality policy defined and generally implemented in the form of Quality Management System is used to carry out QA.