Quality is extremely hard to define, and it is simply stated: “Fit for use or purpose.” It is all about meeting the needs and expectations of customers with respect to functionality, design, reliability, durability, & price of the product.
Assurance is nothing but a positive declaration on a product or service, which gives confidence. It is certainty of a product or a service, which it will work well. It provides a guarantee that the product will work without any problems as per the expectations or requirements.
Quality Assurance (QA) is defined as an activity to ensure that an organization is providing the best possible product or service to customers. QA focuses on improving the processes to deliver Quality Products to the customer. An organization has to ensure, that processes are efficient and effective as per the quality standards defined for software products. Quality Assurance is popularly known as QA Testing
Quality assurance has a defined cycle called PDCA cycle or Deming cycle. The phases of this cycle are:
- Plan
- Do
- Check
- Act
These above steps are repeated to ensure that processes followed in the organization are evaluated and improved on a periodic basis. Let’s look into the above steps in detail:
- Plan: Organization should plan and establish the process related objectives and determine the processes that are required to deliver a high Quality end product.
- Do: Development and testing of Processes and also “do” changes in the processes
- Check: Monitoring of processes, modify the processes, and check whether it meets the predetermined objectives
- Act: Implement actions that are necessary to achieve improvements in the processes
An organization must use Quality Assurance to ensure that the product is designed and implemented with correct procedures. This helps reduce problems and errors, in the final product.
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