Software development, QA and QC

nospam@example.com (Jeff Howell) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:24:49 -0500

I’ve been working in software development for a while, but I’m still getting used to the usage of the term QA. The activities of the software QA groups that I have seen are centered around proving, with some level of confidence, that a software works, where works means it-does-what-the-requirement-says-it-should-do.

While this is important, it does not embrace the more important aspects in my understanding of Quality Assurance. So here’s my take on defining QA & QC based on experience in Software & Hardware development as well as Manufacturing management and engineering:

QA - Provides information to upper management regarding the likelihood that the marketplace will accept (buy) the product; and analyzes and improves the process that produce the products.

QC - Measures the outcomes of the process through testing and inspection and passes the results to QA for analysis.

To give this some practical sense, consider a company which designs and manufactures bicycle sprockets. At a high level the product life cycle follows a path like:

Continue reading "Software development, QA and QC"

IT'S BROKEN - software development

Software development, QA and QC