Step-by-step guide on how to become quality assurance engineer

Briefly, Software Testing helps find and fix already existing mistakes and Quality Assurance helps avoid them. Both of these processes are important and if you want to meet the best quality criteria, you cannot have one without the other. But a separate QA department in IT is quite rare, that’s why sometimes it’s better to outsource one than build an in-house team.

QA is about making sure that the design meets stakeholders’ expectations, while testing is mainly detecting the bugs or bigger failures Testing focuses on system control and error detection, with product orientation and corrective actions. Testing is about checking the behavior of the application, while quality assurance is about making the overall quality level of the project better each day.

Some may worry about the risks involved in extending the team: every additional tester added in a product development team makes the development cycle more expensive and less competitive than other products that offer the same function.  On the other hand, it is impossible to find a person who would be familiar with all stages of product development at such a high stage that they will be able to competently assess its effectiveness from the start. However, if we look at the product development cycle, it’s obvious that the team with testers that are starting working on a project from the beginning is gaining crucial expertise over time. Therefore, in most cases, Testers can perform Quality Assurance duties, because they are familiar with every aspect of the product and specific conditions such as business logic behind it. This situation is also fairly reasonable because being aware of the problems that emerge in the product development process, it is also easier for team members to pinpoint their main roots in the process of their manufacture.

After analyzing these two concepts, we can compare them according to their purpose, subject matter, definitions, type of action, and orientation. QA controls the testing process and verifies that the software is capable of working under certain conditions. Testing focuses on case studies, implementation, and evaluation. QA means quality assurance and it is common knowledge that quality cannot be “tested” in a product. Therefore, quality assurance is mainly about optimizing the process in such a way that quality is achieved. To track the success of such quality measures, manual tests are often used and their respective reports.

Quality Assurance is the overall management approach to ensuring the successful implementation of a company’s quality objectives. It covers all processes, policies, standards, tools, training, etc. that are necessary to support the successful achievement of quality objectives. Testing is a very small part of a well-integrated quality assurance strategy. A good quality assurance strategy should be both proactive and reactive.

QA and Testing are not the same concepts – QA is the strategy that encompasses Testing but much more and involves a much wider set of stakeholders. While Testing is focused on code quality within a technical arena.

However, they do have the same goal; to ensure development and delivery of a high-quality product to the customer. Yet, when understood and implemented correctly, they focus on different things and use different methods and techniques to reach that goal.

Being aware and observant of these differences enables businesses to create a better understanding of ‘quality’ across a development team and while improving productivity from a wider set of different skills.