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QA vs. Testing

I constantly hear developers calling testing QA. “Send the build to QA”. Based on ANSI/IEEE standards:

Testing: The process of executing a system with the intent of finding defects including test planning prior to the execution of the test cases.
Quality Control: A set of activities designed to evaluate a developed working product.
Quality Assurance: A set of activities designed to ensure that the mobile app development and/or maintenance process is adequate to ensure a system will meet its objectives.

The key difference to remember is that QA is interested in the process whereas testing and quality control are interested in the product. Having a testing component in your development process demonstrates a higher degree of quality (as in QA).

Read more about the differences on Geeks with Blogs:

Smoke & sanity testing
Verification and validation
QA & QC

You'll find more links to QA & testing FAQs and interview questions in the original post.

(This is a re-post of my article posted originally in my blog).

Rob Grzywinski

VP of Software and Engineering at NeuStar, Inc. An accomplished CTO and Chief Architect with expertise in leading projects with short development cycles and limited resources while creating cohesive and rewarding environment for staff.