Software quality assurance or SQA and difference with Quality check and Software Testing

Quality:

Quality means consistently meeting user requirements in terms of cost , delivery  schedule & service.

Quality Assurance (QA):

- QA is planned and systematic way to evaluate quality of process used to produce a quality product.

- The goal of a QA is to provide assurance that a product is meeting customer’s quality expectations.

- QA deals with how to prevent bugs from occurring in a product being developed.

- Software Quality Assurance Engineer’s main responsibility is to create and implement methods and standards to improve development process.

- QA is associated with activities like measuring the quality of process used to develop a product, process improvement and defect prevention.

- It consists of auditing and reporting procedures related to development and testing.

Quality Control (QC):

Quality control name comes from manufacturing industry where QC inspector evaluate sample products taken from the manufacturing line, test them & if the products fail the test they have the authority to shut down the whole production line.

- QC in software industry is evaluating software product, find the defects & suggest improvements.

- QC implements the process established by QA.

- Software tester is responsible for QC.

- If required, personnel involve in QC have to carry out QA tasks as well.

Software Testing:

- Software testing is a planned process that is used to identify the correctness, completeness, security and quality of software.

- Testing is generally done to demonstrate that the software is doing what it is supposed to do as well as the software is not doing what it is not supposed to do.

- The goal of testing or software tester is to locate defects and make sure that they get fixed.

These are the basic differences between the three concepts. Sometimes there is an overlap of duties between tester, QA Engineer and QC Engineer. As per the need, some testers might be required to perform certain QA activities & some QA-ers perform testing of product.

Most likely asked questions on testing

1. Who mention that 'Quality is free '?
(a) Philip Crosby
(b) Genichi Taguchi
(c) Edwards Deming
(d) Joseph M. Juran

2. QC is?
(a) Preventive
(b) Detective
(c) Validation
(d) Verification

3.How many maturity levels that indicate process capability CMM has?
(a) 5
(b) 4
(c) 6

4.How many KPA (key process areas) CMM has?
(a) 18
(b) 20
(c) 14

5. What UML diagram is useful for black box testing?
(a) Class Diagram
(b) Sequence diagram
(c) Object Diagram

6. What type of tests is performed early in a software testing process?
(a) White-box
(b) Black-box
(c) Grey-box

7. Who mention "Top management is in charge of quality"?
(a) Edwards Deming
(b) Joseph M. Juran
(c) Genichi Taguchi

8. The program according requirements expects the uppercase letters from A to Z. Analyze the following inputs and choose one that can cause the failure with greater probability. Help �> character set is ASCII
(a) 1, 0
(b) @, [
(c) B, W

9. What kind of tools would you suggest to use for the automation of regression tests?
(a) Static analysis tools
(b) Capture and playback
(c) Debugging tools

10. Equivalence class partitioning is:
(a) A black-box method that divides the inputs to a program into classes from which test cases can be derived
(b) A white-box method that divides control paths into dependent and independent categories for testing
(c) A black-box method that divides program functions into related groups for testing

11. Which of the following best defines testing?
(a) Testing is the process of proving that a system works according to specifications.
(b) Testing is the process of proving that a system is error-free.
(c) Testing is the process of locating errors.
(d)Testing is the process of confirming that a system meets its objectives.

12. Which of the following best defines walkthrough ?
(a) A walkthrough as attesting technique whereby the system is subjected to huge loads of data over a short time
(b)A walkthrough is a technique whereby a system is timed to see how long it takes the computer to walk through it to produce a result.
(c) A walkthrough is a session during which the participants act out the role of the computer in order to find flaws in the system.
(d)A walkthrough is a technique whereby a number of testers are given the system for black box testing.

13.Which unit testing technique eliminates the need for writing drivers?
(a) Top down testing
(b) Bottom up testing
(c) Big bang testing
(d) Non incremental testing

14.Which unit testing technique eliminates the need for writing stubs?
(a) Top down testing
(b) Bottom up testing
(c) Big bang testing
(d) Non incremental testing

15. Who of the following is the least reliable person to test a program?
(a) The developer who wrote the code
(b) An independent agency
(c) The testing department in the company that created the application
(d) The developer who design the system

16. Which of the following is non - incremental test?
(a) Top-down testing
(b) Bottom-up testing
(c) Big bang testing
(d) Stab testing

17. What type of high order test subjects the system to large loads over a short period of time?
(a) Volume testing
(b) Stress testing
(c) Usability testing
(d) Security testing

18. Which testing technique involves installing a system at a large number of user sites?
(a) Alpha testing
(b) Volume testing
(c) Beta testing
(d) Boundary value analysis

19. At what stage of software development life cycle (SDLC) software errors are least costly to correct?
(a) Requirements
(b) Detail specification
(c) Acceptance test
(d) Maintenance

20. What is the relationship between (QA) quality assurance and software testing?
(a) QA is part of software testing process
(b) Testing and QA are two different processes
(c) Testing is part of QA process
(d) Testing and QA are all the same thing

21. Which of the following categories of costs associated with cost of quality?
(1) Preventive, (2) Failure, and (3) Appraisal
(a) Preventive only
(b) All three from the above
(c) Preventive and Appraisal
(d) Preventive and Failure

22. Identify which participant roles are used during a formal inspection?
(1) Moderator, (2) Author/producer, (3) Reader, (4) Inspector, (5) Recorder
(a) 1, 2 and 3
(b) 2, 3 and 4
(c) All 5 from the above
(d) 4 and 5 only

23.If you found during testing in the software project 70 bugs, you would state:
(a) The code was poorly implemented.
(b) You do not have enough information to make an opinion.
(c) There is no statistical control for this project.
(d) The software testing for this project was done.

24. What are some of the common misconceptions during implementation of an automated testing tools for the first time?
(a) Regression testing phase will be shortened.
(b) Existing testing processes can be used and all testers will have the skills to learn the new tool
(c) During a ramp-up period, testing will take longer.