quality assurance
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quality assurance


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DEFINITION - In developing products and services, quality assurance is any systematic process of checking to see whether a product or service being developed is meeting specified requirements. Many companies have a separate department devoted to quality assurance. A quality assurance system is said to increase customer confidence and a company's credibility, to improve work processes and efficiency, and to enable a company to better compete with others. Quality assurance was initially introduced in World War II when munitions were inspected and tested for defects after they were made. Today's quality assurance systems emphasize catching defects before they get into the final product.

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ISO 9000 is an international standard that many companies use to ensure that their quality assurance system is in place and effective. Conformance to ISO 9000 is said to guarantee that a company delivers quality products and services. To follow ISO 9000, a company's management team decides quality assurance policies and objectives. Next, the company or an external consultant formally writes down the company's policies and requirements and how the staff can implement the quality assurance system. Once this guideline is in place and the quality assurance procedures are implemented, an outside assessor examines the company's quality assurance system to make sure it complies with ISO 9000. A detailed report describes the parts of the standard the company missed, and the company agrees to correct any problems within a specific time. Once the problems are corrected, the company is certified as in conformance with the standard.

Getting started with quality assurance
To explore how quality assurance is used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources for learning about quality assurance:
Quality process first; quality testing second: Quality is not tangible and is often considered unimportant in development. However, the odds of success are better if there's a constructive quality process and testing lifecycle.
SOA prompts changes in quality assurance: The use of SOA means quality assurance (QA) engineers and testers must include integration, regression, business process, performance and security testing in their test plans.
Software requirements sign-off essential for solid QA: Not properly signing off on a software project's requirements limits the quality assurance (QA) team's ability to ensure that the software does as it's intended.

Learn more about Software testing and quality assurance (QA) fundamentals
How to make your software tamperproof: Learn ways to tamperproof and secure your software app from this chapter of the book, Surreptitious Software: Obfuscation, Watermarking, and Tamperproofing for Software Protection.
Agile software development tutorial: Agile testing: In this section of our agile tutorial, learn how to be a successful software tester in an agile environment, from tips on test development to exploratory testing techniques.
Creating strong QA and testing strategies in a changing world: Software quality and testing can remain robust -- even in lean economic times -- when a clear, consistent project strategy is in place and automation is used judiciously.
Software testing fundamentals: Other useful resources: Software testing books, FAQs, expert advice, tools and blogs.
Software testing fundamentals: Testing basics: Software testing experts weigh in on creating test plans, writing test cases, choosing test models and other basic building blocks of software testing.

CONTRIBUTORS: J. Alexander
LAST UPDATED: 02 Jul 2008

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More resources from around the web:
- The UK-based International Quality Institute offers membership to business professionals who see quality assurance as a primary concern.





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