Quality Assurance

Definition: Quality Assurance is the whole of activities implemented as part of quality management to ensure that the quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled.
It is the systematic measurement, comparison with a standard, monitoring of processes and an associated feedback loop that confers error prevention, using such techniques as Statistical Process Control.
QA focuses on the processes that lead to the end result (product), unlike quality control, which is focused on the testing of the end products.

More on quality assurance. More on quality control and management: 14 Points of Management, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Quality by Design, Quality Circle, Quality Control, more...