Testing and Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Most people are confused with the concepts and difference between Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Testing. Although they are interrelated and at some level they can be considered as the same activities, but there is indeed a difference between them. Mentioned below are the definitions and differences between them:

S.N.	Quality Assurance	Quality Control	Testing
1	Activities which ensure the implementation of processes, procedures and standards in context to verification of developed software and intended requirements.	Activities which ensure the verification of developed software with respect to documented (or not in some cases) requirements.	Activities which ensure the identification of bugs/error/defects in the Software.
2	Focuses on processes and procedures rather then conducting actual testing on the system.	Focuses on actual testing by executing Software with intend to identify bug/defect through implementation of procedures and process.	Focuses on actual testing.
3	Process oriented activities.	Product oriented activities.	Product oriented activities.
4	Preventive activities.	It is a corrective process.	It is a preventive process.
5	It is a subset of Software Test Life Cycle (STLC).	QC can be considered as the subset of Quality Assurance.	Testing is the subset of Quality Control.

Audit and Inspection

Audit:

A systematic process to determine how the actual testing process is conducted within an organization or a team. Generally, it is an independent examination of processes which are involved during the testing of software. As per IEEE, it is a review of documented processes whether organizations implements and follows the processes or not. Types of Audit include the Legal Compliance Audit, Internal Audit, and System Audit.

Inspection:

A formal technique which involves the formal or informal technical reviews of any artifact by identifying any error or gap. Inspection includes the formal as well as informal technical reviews. As per IEEE94, Inspection is a formal evaluation technique in which software requirements, design, or code are examined in detail by a person or group other than the author to detect faults, violations of development standards, and other problems.

Formal Inspection meetings may have following process: Planning, Overview Preparation, Inspection Meeting, Rework, and Follow-up.

Testing and Debugging

Testing:

It involves the identification of bug/error/defect in the software without correcting it. Normally professionals with a Quality Assurance background are involved in the identification of bugs. Testing is performed in the testing phase.

Debugging:

It involves identifying, isolating and fixing the problems/bug. Developers who code the software conduct debugging upon encountering an error in the code. Debugging is the part of White box or Unit Testing. Debugging can be performed in the development phase while conducting Unit Testing or in phases while fixing the reported bugs.

Many organizations around the globe are developing and implementing different Standards to improve the quality needs of their Software. The next section briefly describes some of the widely used standards related to Quality Assurance and Testing. Here is a definition of some of them:

ISO/IEC 9126

This standard deals with the following aspects to determine the quality of a software application:

• Quality model
• External metrics
• Internal metrics
• Quality in use metrics

This standard presents some set of quality attributes for any Software such as:

• Functionality
• Reliability
• Usability
• Efficiency
• Maintainability
• Portability

The above mentioned quality attributes are further divided into sub-factors which you can study when you will go in detail of the standard.

ISO/IEC 9241-11

Part 11 of this standard deals with the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction in a specified context of use.

This standard proposed a framework which describes the usability components and relationship between them. In this standard the usability is considered in terms of user performance and satisfaction. According to ISO 9241-11 usability depends on context of use and the level of usability will change as the context changes.

ISO/IEC 25000:2005

ISO/IEC 25000:2005 is commonly known as the standard which gives the guidelines for Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE). This standard helps in organizing and enhancing the process related to Software quality requirements and their evaluations. In reality, ISO-25000 replaces the two old ISO standards i.e. ISO-9126 and ISO-14598.

SQuaRE is divided into sub parts such as:

• ISO 2500n - Quality Management Division.
• ISO 2501n - Quality Model Division.
• ISO 2502n - Quality Measurement Division.
• ISO 2503n - Quality Requirements Division.
• ISO 2504n - Quality Evaluation Division.

The main contents of SQuaRE are:

• Terms and definitions.
• Reference Models.
• General guide.
• Individual division guides.
• Standard related to Requirement Engineering (i.e. specification, planning, measurement and evaluation process)

ISO/IEC 12119

This standard deals with Software packages delivered to the client. It does not focus or deal with the client.s (the person/organization whom Software is delivered) production process. The main contents are related to the following items:

• Set of Requirements for Software packages.
• Instructions for testing the delivered Software package against the requirements.

Miscellaneous

Some of the other standards related to QA and Testing processes are mentioned below:

S.N.	Standard & Description
1	IEEE 829 A standard for the format of documents used in different stages of software testing.
2	IEEE 1061 A methodology for establishing quality requirements, identifying, implementing, analyzing, and validating the process and product of software quality metrics is defined.
3	IEEE 1059 Guide for Software Verification and Validation Plans.
4	IEEE 1008 A standard for unit testing.
5	IEEE 1012 A standard for Software Verification and Validation.
6	IEEE 1028 A standard for software inspections.
7	IEEE 1044 A standard for the classification of software anomalies.
8	IEEE 1044-1 A guide to the classification of software anomalies.
9	IEEE 830 A guide for developing system requirements specifications.
10	IEEE 730 A standard for software quality assurance plans
11	IEEE 1061 A standard for software quality metrics and methodology.
12	IEEE 12207 A standard for software life cycle processes and life cycle data.
13	BS 7925-1 A vocabulary of terms used in software testing.
14	BS 7925-2 A standard for software component testing. ·         credit to www.tutorialspoint.com