Differences between Quality Assurance and Quality control

Sno	Quality Assurance	Quality Control
1	Quality assurance is a planned and systematic set of activities necessary to provide adequate confidence that products and services will conform to specified requirements and meet user needs.	Quality control is the process by which product quality is compared with applicable standards, and the action taken when nonconformance is detected.
2	Quality assurance is a staff function, responsible for implementing the quality policy defined through the development and continuous improvement of software development processes.	Quality control is a line function, and the work is done within a process to ensure that the work product conforms to standards and requirements.
3	Quality assurance is an activity that establishes and evaluates the processes that produce products.	Quality control activities focus on identifying defects in the actual products produced. These activities begin at the start of the software development process with reviews of requirements, and continue until all application testing is complete.
4	Quality assurance helps establish processes.	Quality control relates to a specific product or service.
5	Quality assurance sets up measurement programs to evaluate processes.	Quality control verifies whether specific attribute(s) are in, or are not in, a specific product or service.
6	Quality assurance identifies weaknesses in processes and improves them.	Quality control identifies defects for the primary purpose of correcting defects.
7	Quality assurance is a management responsibility	Quality control is the responsibility of the team/worker.
8	Quality assurance is concerned with all of the products that will ever be produced by a process.	Quality control is concerned with a specific product.

Compiled from CSTE CBOK

2013: Major software failures

2013: Major software failures

Every industry is impacted with software  failures/bugs in 2013. It is very important to perform extensive QA &  testing before release to market to avoid losses

1) Health Care: 
Sebelius admitted that the testing done before the Oct. 1 launch was "clearly not" enough. "We did not adequately do end-to-end testing," she said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/30/sebelius-to-face-grilling-at-hearing-on-glitch-ridden-obamacare-website-rollout/

2) Airlines:
"Sabre is experiencing a system issue,"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/travel/sabre-outage-flight-delays/

3) Financial:

A mysterious technical glitch halted trading on the Nasdaq

http://news.yahoo.com/nasdaq-trading-halts-3-hours-due-glitch-203619288.html

4) Retail:

"We experienced a technical error that caused some items to show incorrect pricing," Walmart

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-super-low-prices-website-glitch/story?id=20804317

5) Payroll:

California sues SAP over payroll system failures

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/21/local/la-me-pc-california-sues-sap-20131121

Compiled by Damodhara Reddy Jammli( DJ)

To Make Career In Testing

Software Testing is the process by which application quality is improved.

The role of a software tester is very important in software development.

--- A software tester has to communicate with the clients as well as team members also.Communication plays the most important part in testing career and written communication as well.

–-- Testing Certifications:-These certifications improve the confidence of the clients on the testing professionals, which help the testers to scale up in the professional ladder.

--- A tester should have know about/possess knowledge on:-
Project life cycle, Testing concepts, testing types, Database concepts, Test plan, analyzing requirements, Documentation process, Knowledge of testing tools.
 
--- Leadership qualities should be present.

--- A tester has to check for the bugs and also determine whether the project meets the business as well as technical requirements.

--- Domain Knowledge – Good knowledge in domain area of the application adds value to the testing professionals.

--- Knowledge of Testing Tools:- Automation Testing Tools Knowledge – There is great demand for automation testers. A good skill on scripting languages of these tools is basic necessity for succeeding in test automation. Knowledge on creation, validation and enhancement of test automation framework is very much required.

--- The testing team is technically called Q.A. i.e., Quality Assurance Roles and responsibilities of a QA trainee are:

    Test case writing for different projects;
    peer-to-peer review;
    Capturing/review defects;
    process adherence;

--- A tester must be able to work on software ranging from that of requirements to the end point of the project.

--- As testing professionals a tester should always work towards sharpening their testing skills to succeed in this competitive environment. It enables rapid career growth in testing field if somebody can't make a career in development field, then settle down into testing field. Career wise and also remuneration wise, the growth opportunities for a professional in testing domain has increased.

--- Testing can be performed on two basic testing methodologies. They are

1) Manual Testing
2) Automated Testing

Manual Testing:-
It is the process of manually testing the software functionality for errors in programming. In this method of testing, a tester plays the role of an end user and works on all the options provided by the application to ensure correct behavior of the project.

Automated Testing:-
It is the process in which a tester uses tools to test the project.

--- Professionally trained software testers are in great demand today.

Why "Software Testing"?

~ In Jun, 1996 European Space Agency's lost almost half billion dollars after failure of its 5 rocket launch. The reason was exception handling of a floating-point error in a conversion from a 64-bit integer to a 16-bit signed integer was not done.

~ In May, 2004 a news paper reported a loss of $110 million by major North American bank because of installation of inadequate testing software.

~ In Jan, 2005 a news paper reported shutdown of $180 million US government project because of the major problems in the software. The main reason was lack of proper testing.

~ In Nov, 2005 a news paper reported failure in the online trading software upgrade that resulted in halting the complete Asian stock exchange trading until the bug was fixed. The main reason was lack of proper testing.

~ In Jun, 2006 a news paper reported failure in telecom billing machine that caused over billing of up to several thousand dollars for many of its customers. It took much time and money to fix the defect. The main reason was lack of proper testing.

~ In Aug, 2006 a news paper reported failure in the U.S. government student loan service that made public the personal data of as many as 18,000 borrowers on its web site. The main reason was lack of proper testing.

~ In Sep, 2006 a news paper reported failure in the electronic voting machines that caused delay in voting in many areas as the machines were unexpectedly reboot many times. The main reason was due to insufficient testing.

~ In Apr, 2007 a news paper reported a failure of underground metro system software that was supposed to detect and prevent excess power usage by the new train that resulted in halting the complete services.

~ In Dec, 2007 a news paper reported failure of a new ERP system for large urban school that resulted in incorrect paychecks for the employees that caused a loss of $53 million. The main reason was? No proper Testing was done?

~ In Feb, 2008 a news paper reported failure in the automated baggage sorting system that stopped thousands of passengers from checking their baggage into the flights and the reason was because of software upgrade that was pre-tested.

These are some of real-time examples that occurred just because of lack of adequate testing. The experts from their past experience realized that detecting and fixing a bug in the early stages of the product development life cycle could save lot of time, money and customers. In order to avoid such problems the experts have come up with a separate testing life cycle.

What Is Software Testing?

Investigation done on a software product to provide information to the stakeholders on the quality of the product, with respect to the specified requirements in which it is intended to do.

Testing is a process of executing a program with an intention of finding errors.

There are 3 major types of testing done on a product.

a.   Functional Testing – Concentrates on the actual functionality of the product.

b.   Non-Functional Testing – Concentrates on the non-functional aspects like performance, compatibility, interoperability, security and etc.

c.   Usability Testing – Concentrated on the look, feel and help available for the product.