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Software testing and quality assurance (QA) are two different things that seem to overlap in what they do. However, there are some major differences between these two fields of work. In this blog post, we will go over the main differences between software testing and QA so you can get a better understanding of each one.
QA is a process that ensures that the product is ready to be released.
That means before anything gets released, it has to go through an extensive process where people check the quality of the software and make sure it is good enough for release. With software testing, their primary focus is on finding bugs or other errors within the software before releasing it publicly; there’s also no guarantee that they’ll find any bugs.
Software developers strive to find the errors and fix them. Software testing takes two forms: manual and automated testing. With automated testing, free programs, and available software scan through the software to detect any problems. Since the process is automated, developers often go through a quick automation testing tutorial, and they are good to go. Manual testing, on the other hand, requires the developers to go through the code manually. This process can be time-consuming and repetitive.
QA is not a process that ensures the product is ready to be released, but rather it checks if everything in the software works correctly before releasing it for public use.
Software testing involves breaking down the software into its components and identifying any possible errors.
QA is more about making sure that everything in the software works and runs properly. For example, if there’s a button within the application to move forward or backward, QA would test out both buttons instead of just one. On the other hand, software testing involves breaking down components such as individual features and checking for errors with them.
Orientation
QA is process-oriented, while software testing is product-oriented.
Orientation refers to the way QA and software testing are conducted. With QA, everything revolves around process because it’s all about checking if what they do works out properly before releasing it for public use. On the other hand, software testing means that testers will focus on what the product is and does rather than what they need to do.
Activity Type
While QA focuses on preventive measures, software testing is more focused on post-release evaluation and corrective actions.
QA focuses on making sure the product is good enough before it gets released, whereas, with software testing, they focus more after releasing something to public use. Testers carry out post-release evaluations once the application has been released for general use, which means that QA activities include both the pre-release and post-release components.
Aim
The purpose of QA is to assure the quality of the product, whereas software testing is mainly to find bugs and errors (to control the quality).
QA ensures that everything in a program works properly before it gets released for public use, while with testing, they focus more on finding any error or bug within an application once it’s been launched publicly. QA focuses on preventing problems from happening instead of fixing them after the fact.
QA work can sometimes overlap with software testing, depending on the company’s needs and policies.
For example, if a company is looking for ways to find bugs within their software before publicly launching it, QA will focus on doing that instead of checking everything else. If the main goal were to make sure all features work properly, that would be more testing-oriented than quality assurance-oriented. However, there is a lot of overlap between the two in most cases, which means they share some similarities.
The differences between software testing and QA are mainly on the objectives of each process. This means that QA is more about checking for errors before something gets released publicly, while with software testing, it’s all about finding any problems once a product has been launched for public use.
