Quality Assurance

A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that the product optimally fulfils customers' expectations, i.e. that it is problem-free and well able to perform the task it was designed for.

The QA of a commercial product usually involves {alpha testing}, where an early version of the product is tested at the developer's site, and is then improved accordingly. Then, an almost complete version of the product is made available for {beta testing} by (selected) real users. Faults identified during beta testing should be fixed before the product is released for full scale manufacturing and distribution.


Related terms: quality, software testing