Quality Assurance

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance (QA) is a systematic process for determining whether a product or service meets the requirements and standards you've set for it. The key difference between QA and quality control? QA is proactive. Instead of catching defects after they happen, you're building frameworks that prevent them in the first place.

Think of QA as the collection of planned activities within a quality system that gives you confidence things will actually work as expected. That means defining processes, setting standards, running regular audits, training your team, and keeping documentation that helps everyone execute consistently. Good process documentation isn't glamorous work, but it's the foundation that keeps departments aligned.

The numbers tend to back this up. Organizations with solid QA frameworks have seen bug reductions of around 75% and faster delivery times. The World Quality Report 2023-24 found that 60% of organizations now prioritize QA automation to get better speed and quality. Research also suggests that mature QA practices can cut development costs by up to 40%.

Key Characteristics of Quality Assurance

• Proactive Prevention: QA is about stopping problems before they start. Rather than waiting for defects to show up, you design processes and build frameworks that establish quality from day one of the product lifecycle.
• Process-Oriented Approach: QA focuses on how work gets done, not just what comes out at the end. It ensures the right procedures are followed through development, production, testing, packaging, and delivery.
• Strong Documentation: Test plans, standard operating procedures, quality manuals, audit trails. QA relies on this documentation to keep things consistent and to create accountability when questions arise.
• Continuous Improvement: Good QA frameworks aren't static. They include feedback loops and regular reviews that help you refine processes and methodologies as your organization grows and changes.
• Standardized Frameworks: Many organizations adopt recognized frameworks like ISO 9001, Six Sigma, or CMMI. These provide structured methodologies for managing quality that work across different industries.

Quality Assurance Examples

Example 1: Software Development QA

Say a software company adopts an Agile QA methodology where testing is woven into every sprint cycle. The QA team writes test plans, runs automated regression tests, reviews code, and documents their testing approaches and bug tracking. By catching issues early and often, they keep defects from reaching production and maintain consistent software quality across releases.

Example 2: Manufacturing Quality Framework

A pharmaceutical manufacturer builds a QA framework around ISO 9001 standards. This covers raw material inspection, production line monitoring, environmental controls, and batch documentation. The QA team runs regular audits, keeps Standard Operating Procedures up to date for every process, and ensures FDA compliance through thorough compliance documentation and training. Nothing flashy, just the kind of systematic work that keeps things on track.

Quality Assurance vs Quality Control

Both are part of quality management, but QA and QC do different things at different times.

Here's a simple way to think about it: QA sets the strategy for achieving reliability, while QC confirms you actually got there. Together, they form a feedback loop that sustains consistency and drives ongoing improvement.

QA Methodologies and Frameworks

Common QA Methodologies

Waterfall Model: The traditional, linear approach. Each phase wraps up before you move to the next, and testing happens after development is complete. Predictable, if sometimes slow.

Agile Testing: An iterative approach that weaves testing into the development process from the start. The emphasis is on collaboration and continuous improvement rather than big-bang releases.

DevOps: Brings development and operations together with continuous integration and testing. The goal is keeping software in a releasable state at all times.

Six Sigma: A data-driven methodology focused on eliminating defects. It uses statistical analysis to identify and remove sources of variation in products, processes, or services.

QA Frameworks

ISO 9001: Probably the most recognized Quality Management System out there. It provides a systematic approach to managing processes based on the plan-do-check-act cycle.

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration): A performance improvement framework that evaluates how mature your organization's processes are across five levels. Good for companies serious about process improvement.

Lean: Focuses on eliminating waste, improving continuously, and standardizing where it makes sense. The aim is optimizing processes to deliver more value with less friction.

How Glitter AI Helps with Quality Assurance

Glitter AI makes it easier to create and maintain QA documentation. You can capture testing procedures, quality control checklists, and standard operating procedures through screen recording that automatically turns into step-by-step visual guides.

The benefit? Your QA documentation actually reflects what people do in practice. That matters because about 30% of workday time gets lost searching for information. With centralized, up-to-date documentation, teams have audit trails when they need them, stay consistent across departments, and meet compliance requirements without scrambling.