1. Quality assurance, or QA as abbreviated, is a set of activities to provide evidence required in establishing quality in work, and those activities that require good quality are being performed effectively. All those planned or systematic actions necessary to provide enough confidence that a product or a service will satisfy the given requirements for quality is known as Quality Assurance. OR
2. All actions taken to ensure that standards and procedures are adhered to and the delivered products or services meet performance requirements as defined. OR
3. The systematically planned activities necessary to ensure that a product, module, application, or system conforms to establish technical requirements is knows as Quality Assurance. OR
4. The policies, procedures, and systematic planned actions established in an organization for the purpose of providing and maintaining a certain specified degree of confidence in data integrity and accuracy throughout the software development life cycle of the data or application, which includes input, update, manipulation, and output. OR
5. A planned and systematic set of activities to ensure that variances in processes are clearly identified, assessed and improving defined processes for fulfilling the requirements of customers and product or service makers. OR
6. A popular definition sees quality as simple as “fitness for a purpose”. OR
7. A planned and systematic pattern of all the actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that the product will optimally fulfils end user's expectations. OR
8. "Work done to ensure that Quality is built into work products, rather than Defects." This is by
a identifying what "quality" means in context;
b specifying methods by which its presence can be ensured; and
c specifying ways in which it can be measured to ensure conformance OR
9. Quality Assurance is a formal methodology designed to assess the quality of products or services provided through its various methods, policies, and tools. OR
10. Quality assurance includes formal review of prevention, problem identification, and corrective actions to resolve any deficiencies, discrepancies, and evaluation of actions taken. OR
11. Quality assurance implies that necessary preventive steps have been taken so that the entire production of a product or a service is within the defined specifications under wide conditions of operations. This usually requires that the production process is mastered and monitored using various indicators available. OR
12. QA is a global term used to incorporate the quality policy, quality management and quality control functions, which combine to assure the client that the product will be consistently manufactured to the required condition and specification. Its aim is to achieve and assure quality through the adoption of a cost effective quality control system and through external inspections and audits. Quality planning is an integral part of the planning activity. The results of the quality planning activities are reflected in the resource and technical plans, at each level of the project. Quality control is concerned with ensuring that the required qualities are built into all of the products throughout their development life cycles. Quality control utilizes measurable quality criteria and is exercised via quality reviews, project reviews and by the testing of products. QA requires agreement on the level of quality controls to be adopted, both specifically relating to the project and to the overall organizational policy. It is important that all three interests represented by the project owner are taken into account when deciding the mechanisms to be adopted. OR
13. Software QA involves the entire software development PROCESS - monitoring and improving the process, making sure that any agreed-upon standards and procedures are followed, and ensuring that problems are found and dealt with. It is oriented to 'prevention'.
Quality Assurance consists of the processes and methods used to ensure quality of all the products and services being provided by any organization. This may include processes such as
· To review the requirements documents;
· To review source code control;
· To review change management;
· To review configuration management.
Today's quality assurance systems emphasize catching defects before they get into the final product. QA covers all activities from
· Design
· Development
· Production
· Installation
· Servicing to documentation
It introduced the sayings "fit for a purpose" and "do it right the first time". It includes the regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production, and inspection processes. 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.
Confused!!! By the above statements, here is the crux “Quality Assurance better known as QA is a set of systematic and planned activities which assure the customer that his or her product or an application will adhere to the requirements and specifications defined.”
