QA glossary
What is the difference between QA and QC?
QA (quality assurance) is the work of preventing defects by improving how software is planned, built and reviewed. QC (quality control) is the work of finding defects in what has been built, by testing it. QA looks at the process; QC looks at the product.
An example from QA practice
A team keeps shipping login bugs. A QC tester finds each one before release by running the login tests, and each bug is fixed. A QA engineer asks why the bugs keep appearing, finds that requirements for login were never written down, and adds a review step and acceptance criteria before development starts. QC caught the bugs; QA removed the reason for them.
How the two differ
- Aim: QA prevents defects; QC detects them.
- Focus: QA covers the process (standards, reviews, requirements, release rules); QC covers the product (test runs, bug reports, sign-off).
- Timing: QA runs through the whole life of the project; QC happens once there is something to test.
- Typical work: QA writes the test strategy and reviews requirements; QC executes test cases and logs defects.
In practice the line is blurry and one engineer often does both. What matters is that someone owns each question: are we building it the right way, and did what we built work.
How BetterQA does it
Our engineers work on both sides. On the QC side they run the tests and file defects in BugBoard. On the QA side they review requirements before development, help write the test strategy and report on patterns in the bugs so the cause gets fixed, not only the symptom. Because we are not the team that wrote the code, we can report on the process as well as the product.
Related terms
Two more terms that are often mixed up, explained side by side.