Difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Control in the software development process

Whether you have a business in banking, travel or IT industry, you know that an essential factor that your customers will appreciate is your products or services quality. Customers assure that high-grade products or services are ones that meet their needs. That’s why companies are to deliver high-quality digital software solutions to serve users better. However, to launch new and exciting features as quickly as possible companies should balance their development timeline as well as reckon on a defined development life cycle.

It is common knowledge that there may be many issues in software development life cycle from planning to going live. The further within the life cycle these issues arise, the harder it is to resolve them. That’s why it is critical to remember about quality control and quality assurance that will help to reduce the number of issues at the early phase as well as lead to the quality increase.

Software development process: six phases - one process

Describes the overarching process of development - from planning to maintenance phases. These phases let us know how to create, develop, maintain, alter, enhance, test or even launch the product(s) you are going to build. They can be grouped into six core categories: planning, analysis, design, development or implementation, testing&integration, and deploy. IT companies utilize this process whether their clients want to create an app, CRM for e-commerce or a complex ERP system. Now let’s take a look at different phases more closely:

• Planning. Dev team aims to find out the solution to the problem of their client. Resources, costs, time, benefits and other items are considered at this stage.
• Analysis. Dev team captures and discusses each tech requirement to make sure everyone understands the scope of the work and how to fulfill it. Then they create the SRS document (Software Requirement Specification document) that includes all the tech requirements,identifies the scope of work (SOW) that needs to be done.
• Design. Based on the SRS documentation, our technical architects and developers designs the product’s optimal architecture, develop UI, database, test strategy, use cases for the software/product. Then they create the DDS document that includes design specification.
• Development or Implementation. The tech and design requirements discussed earlier are kept in mind when the dev team starts to code. This stage is repeated until the dev team adheres to the tech and business requirements.
• Testing&Integration. Experienced testing engineers test the system to find defects and inconsistencies as well as verifying whether it behaves as expected and in accordance with what was documented in the Software Requirement Specification document.
• Deploy. Once the software/product has been thoroughly tested, and no high priority issues remain, dev team deploys to production where customers can use it. Once a software/product version is released, a maintenance team begins to look after if any post-production issues open up.

Every stage of the SDLC goes hand in hand with the software testing process. Let’s delve into details below:

Different SDLC models in action: in what lies the difference?

Below we have listed the most common SDLC models. Let’s delve into details!

#1 Rapid Action Model

With the objective of encouraging a collaborative environment, facilitating a dynamic eliciting of requirements, this model favors rapid prototyping, which requires minimal planning. The team doesn’t perform comprehensive pre-planning activities that accelerate the software writing process. This model involves the active participation of stakeholders in prototyping, test case writing, and unit testing. Interspersing planning with the software writing also simplifies the development due to the ability to change fast according to the re-emerged requirements.

#2 V-Model

A hybrid form of the waterfall model that entails phase-wise development depicted in the ‘V’ shape. One phase is finished with great deliberation before the development moves to the next stage. This model favors a well-structured testing approach: this process includes superior quality and increases focus on issues prevention. The phase-wise testing, verification, validation assure that the process controlled and determined at various stages accurately contributing to improved quality and reliability.

#3 Waterfall Model

This model reviews the QA process as a steady flow of the activities moving through various phases. Initially, the team analyzes the requirements and realizes test planning for a given product. They complete the test case designing basing on analysis of the test cases that were performed earlier. All types of tests execution for functional, usability, cross-browser and security testing are carried out simultaneously to log all bugs in each phase. That continues with the resolution of bugs accessed through a proper regression testing.

#4 Agile Model

In an agile framework, software engineers in close collaboration with the testing team conduct the process of QA in the development stage only. Mentioned above model is based on an iterative approach, the product/service development divided into smaller parts and followed by an effective process of testing. QA team always plays a very vital role in this model. Discussion on queries and analysis of tech requirements related to business flow and scope through emails/scrum call add to the overall quality. The team maintains the quality to align it with the company goals and needs. The process involves just the right amount of documentation, and the response is quick.

Also, you can read: Pros and cons of best software development methodologies 

QA and QC in the process of software development: are they important?

Being essential components, QA/QC should be definitely taken into account if you have an idea to create a new digital solution. At the beginning of the development lifecycle, the quality assurance (QA) process is used to specificate the business and tech requirements from both sides - business and user. Then dev team makes sure they follow the right steps throughout the SDLC to meet the defined specs.

The key purpose of QC is concentrating on planning, documenting, and finalizing the guidelines to be aware that the quality of the developed software/product is superior. QC engineers implement aspects identified by the QA team, such as running test cases, then compares results to QA specifications. QC may run a test, generate a bug-report, then return the code to the dev team to fix.

Undoubtedly, most people, as well as business owners, are embarrassed or confused about these two processes, and ask the following questions: “do they have similar/different concepts,” “is there a close relation between them or not”? If you are also embarrassed, let’s find answers in the comparison table below:

What are the most common ways of testing used within the development life cycle?

Testing methods are usually applied to assess the functionality of a software/product. There are many ways to test it, but the two main ones are functional and non-functional.

Below we have provided an overview of high-usage non-functional testing types:

• Performance. Used to survey the framework speed and adequacy to ensure it is producing outcomes in a predefined time.
• Load. Puts the demand on a device or framework and regulates its reaction. The performance engineers typically lead it.
• Stress. Assesses a component or system at or past the limits of its predefined prerequisites. The performance engineer typically leads it.
• Security. A procedure to discover that a data framework ensures data and manages functionality as expected. It can be accomplished by testing groups or by particular security-testing organizations.
• Compatibility. Applied to verify if the product can function on the various operating system, hardware, bandwidth, databases, application servers, web servers, hardware peripherals, various configuration, emulators, different browsers, processors and distinct versions of the browsers. The testing group executes this type of test.
• Localization. Required to adjust to a specific area. It should support a specific region/dialect with regards to display, accepting data to that particular locale, text style, presentation, currency, date time, and so on, identified with a particular region. Software testers lead this type of testing.
• Usability. Performed for the user, to assess how the user-friendliness of the GUI is? How effectively can the user learn? How satisfying is it to utilize its design plan, how to use it?
• Compliance. Done to validate, whether the system meets the organization’s prescribed standards or not.
• Recovery. Decides whether the framework can proceed with the task after a crash.

Below we have provided an overview of high-usage functional testing types:

• Unit. Used to verify and validate software/product by examining all its possible individual components dividing an application into the smallest possible testable parts and testing them separately to confirm their behavior and determinate as high as possible bugs.
• Integration. Ensures that distinct components work under customer expectations/needs and meet them. Test sets are created with the specific goal to examine the interfaces between various unit components.
• System. Requires testing the system as a whole and takes into account the overall specifications from developers expectations to the end-user requirements to ensure the system complies with a specification while viewing the full system as a unit.
• Regression. Guarantees that the entire part works appropriately even on adding elements to the whole program.
• Smoke. Inspects all the essential parts of a software framework to ensure that they act properly. Typically, the testing groupсarryouts it after a product build is produced.
• Interface. Actually verifies or evaluates whether systems or components are done correctly.
• Sanity. Performed to decide whether a new product version is performing sufficiently to acknowledge it as a noteworthy testing attempt or not. If an application is failing for the primary use, then the framework isn’t steady enough for additional testing. Thus, an application or build is appointed to settle it.
• Acceptance. Used to prescribe verification and validation of an application against all given user acceptance and business requirements. Though this approach is similar to system testing, where the whole system is verified, it varies considerably in its focus. The measurement is always carried out by the real users in a business environment.

There are not all types of testing mentioned above. If you want to learn more, here you can find all the information you are interested in.

Bottom line

Summarizing the talk, companies use QC and QA as the ways of ensuring the quality of a service or product that is being built. QA proves that the procedures bring into accordance with the products, and their implementation is accurate as well as quality control determines if the created digital solution fulfills the requirements. Simply put, QC emphasizes on testing of the products to uncover defects or issues whereas quality assurance utilized to prevent defects. We, at DDI Development company, always implement both QA/QC components that allow us to deliver successful and efficient projects all the way from A to Z in a wide range of business expertise. Let us know if you have an idea and want to turn it into a digital software solution to start your business and make crazy money.