What is quality assurance (QA)?
Quality assurance is the set of practices that prevent defects and give confidence that software meets its requirements.
QA covers the whole process: how requirements are written, how code is reviewed, how testing is planned and automated and how releases are decided. Quality control, by contrast, is the act of finding defects in a finished product.
In modern teams QA is increasingly built into engineering, with automated testing, release gates and clear ownership of the ship decision.
Example
A team adopts pull-request test gates, a daily release verdict and defined acceptance criteria. Defects found in production drop because quality is designed into the process.
Best practices
- Define quality goals for each release
- Automate repeatable checks
- Make someone accountable for the release decision
- Learn from escaped defects
Ship without fear.
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