I work with the regulated drug development industry, and believe there is a useful and important distinction between Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA). I wonder if perhaps this distinction would be useful to software quality too.
QC are the processes that ensure a quality product: things like tests, monitoring, metrology, audit trails, etc. No one person or team is responsible for these, rather they are processes that exist throughout.
QA is a role that ensures these and other quality-related processes are in place and operating correctly. An independent, top level view if possible. They may do this through testing, record reviews, regular inspections and audits, document and procedure reviews, analyzing metrics.
Yes, they will probably test here and there to make sure everything is in order, but this should be higher level - testing against specifications, acceptability and regulatory, perhaps some exploratory testing, etc.
Critically they should not be the QC process itself: rather they should be making sure the QC process is doing its job. QA's value is not in catching that one rare bug (though they might), but in long term quality, stability, and consistency.
QC are the processes that ensure a quality product: things like tests, monitoring, metrology, audit trails, etc. No one person or team is responsible for these, rather they are processes that exist throughout.
QA is a role that ensures these and other quality-related processes are in place and operating correctly. An independent, top level view if possible. They may do this through testing, record reviews, regular inspections and audits, document and procedure reviews, analyzing metrics.
Yes, they will probably test here and there to make sure everything is in order, but this should be higher level - testing against specifications, acceptability and regulatory, perhaps some exploratory testing, etc.
Critically they should not be the QC process itself: rather they should be making sure the QC process is doing its job. QA's value is not in catching that one rare bug (though they might), but in long term quality, stability, and consistency.