Project Management: Foundations to Practice · Quality Management
Quality Assurance vs Quality Control
These terms are used interchangeably in casual conversation but describe genuinely distinct disciplines. This chapter draws the line clearly.
Quality assurance and quality control are often used interchangeably in casual conversation but describe distinct activities. Quality assurance is process-focused: it involves auditing the processes used to create a deliverable to confirm they are being followed correctly and are capable of producing the required quality level in the first place, before any specific output is even inspected.
Key Takeaways
- Quality assurance is process-focused, auditing whether the process used to create a deliverable is sound and repeatable.
- Quality control is product-focused, inspecting the specific finished output against defined standards.
- A sound process (QA) can still occasionally produce an inconsistent output, which QC exists to catch.
- Relying on QC alone catches defects too late to prevent, since it addresses symptoms rather than the process weakness that caused them.