Quality products and services to customers make an important contribution to long-term revenue and profitability and it is critical to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty and reduce the risk and cost of replacing faulty goods. Your customers expect you to deliver quality products. If you do not, they will quickly look for alternatives.

Quality assurance is any systematic process to ensure that the end product or service being developed is meeting the specified requirements, its intended use, to fully satisfy customers’ needs and expectations, and is produced consistently with zero defects. It is a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers. Quality obviously is influenced by the complexity of the end product, the number of processes required to make the product, and the exactness with which those individual processes are defined and controlled.

Software Quality Assurance consists of monitoring software engineering processes and methods used to ensure quality and can include ensuring conformance to standards and regulatory compliance. It provides confidence that quality requirements are fulfilled.

Two main principles included in quality assurance are: “Fit for purpose” (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose); and “right first time” (mistakes should be eliminated).