Difference Between Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Software testing and software quality assurance are two very populate words in software testing field and these two words are very related to each other so that some people and organization are confused about these two terms of software performance. But they are different in concepts.

Software testing:

An act with the intent of finding defects. This is the process aims to find out the bugs in the system/application occurs at the time of development or implementation. Behavior of the system/application is checked at both conditions normal and abnormal and their respected result is maintained to found out whether they are behaving according to its pre-defined rules or results. In testing we also check the behavior of the system/application is up to the standard marks or not. In testing the acts are performed under controlled manner. Testing is something to find out what will be happen, when this thing will happen and also to find out what will be happen when that will be happen. The aim behind this is only to find whether the system will perform as expected or not. This is a departmental level function. It is “detection” oriented process. Software testing process will be started at any stage of development or implementation, its need not be begin from very first initial stage of the development or implementation of the system/application in SDLC.

Quality assurance:

Set of pre-defined activities designed to ensure the development process or/and maintenance process to ensure a system/application will meet its objectives. Quality assurance includes the entire software development process i.e. monitoring and improving the process up to the per-defined marks, used function/procedures are following standards, making sure that agreements are upon standards and conforming that not problems are found later on. Main focus is on prevention, processes and continuous monitoring and improvement of the processes. This is the responsibility of the staff that is developing the system/application. It is “prevention” oriented. This is because quality must be maintained form the starting point else it will be very difficult to maintain it later on. It must be maintained from very first initial point of software/application development in SDLC.