What is quality engineering?
Applying quality checks to a product at various stages of production is known as quality engineering. This frequently means that each member of a development team tests the end product while working on their component of the project. Software developers, for instance, might test their code before moving it to the following stage of development.
This enables staff members to address issues as they arise rather than waiting until they are all discovered after a project is complete. Additionally, it increases productivity by motivating all team members to work carefully because, at each stage of a project, they are directly accountable for its success.
Quality engineering vs. quality assurance
It’s important to keep in mind that, depending on your situation, both concepts—quality assurance and quality engineering—can be beneficial for your product development team. Before delivering their goods, companies frequently use quality assurance, also known as QA. This is particularly valid for technology companies that hire experts in quality assurance for the last stages of production.
Quality engineering, or QE, is a more recent idea that seeks to include quality checks throughout the production process rather than just at the end. It is possible to determine whether a QA or QE procedure would be more beneficial for your production and delivery goals by understanding your team, their needs, and the needs of your customers.
What is quality assurance?
Before delivery, qualified QA experts inspect a product to make sure it complies with predetermined standards. After completing a quality check, a QA specialist or their team sends the findings to the production team and requests changes for a product to help improve its quality and appeal. QA checks that a product is prepared to be sent to customers, and experts typically make this determination using a checklist or rubric to help them make decisions.
When there are few teams working on a project and a short production cycle, methods that delay quality checks until the end of production can be helpful. Instead of requesting changes from multiple teams in these circumstances, the QA team can quickly check a product and send it back to a single development team.
Key differences between quality engineering and quality assurance
Examine the following distinctions between QE and QA in order to better comprehend how these concepts differ from one another:
Team involvement
Due to the fact that QA only needs a single point of quality checks while QE requires integration with the entire production process, different teams may choose to engage in QE and QA in different ways. Your production team must frequently participate in the quality checking process when using QE for development. Employees at all levels typically review their own work to accomplish this and make sure each component of a product they work on is successful at that point in its development.
When using QA, a separate team is frequently needed to check the product’s quality during the last stages of development. After your team has finished their work, quality assurance specialists may examine the final product to determine whether it satisfies your company’s standards and customer demands. When using a QA procedure, your development team may only be involved in the creation of the product and the correction of any errors the QA team finds; they are typically not actively involved in the quality checks themselves.
Purpose
The goals of each of these quality assurance techniques also differ, with QE attempting to incorporate quality checks into every stage of production while QA merely verifies a product’s quality prior to delivery. Establishing QE processes for your development team enables team members to evaluate the quality of their work as they complete it, accelerating production and preventing time- and money-consuming redesigns.
Utilizing a QA team to inspect the quality of your products allows your development team to concentrate on their own work while allowing quality assurance specialists to examine the condition of your product. Using this method, rather than checking a product at each level, you can ensure that it is prepared for delivery in all respects. A devoted QA team can identify flaws and bugs in products that developers might have overlooked, enabling your team to address them before delivering to customers.
Starting point
Each kind of quality control procedure necessitates examining a product at various stages of production. The creation of the product, in which your team completes the initial steps of the product and evaluates the results, serves as the starting point for quality checks with QE. From there, they keep checking to make sure the item complies with company and customer standards all the way through the creation process. As a result, QE becomes a continuous process with a head start in your production timeline.
When your team has finished the product and is at the end of the production timeline, QA checks can begin. QA experts assess the quality of a finished product and give your development team recommendations for improving it rather than checking throughout development. The group can then return and make the required alterations or redesign their product to more effectively meet customer expectations. Since QA started later than QE, it is more like a production stage than an integrated quality measurement system.
Specificity
When performing quality assurance, your team may need to examine each individual component of a product and how it functions at every stage of development, whereas QA experts frequently examine a product’s functionality as a whole. The specificity of QE techniques motivates your team to review and test each stage of a product as it is being built. Since the people reviewing the work are also the ones who completed it, this frequently allows them to assess the quality of the product by looking more closely at how it operates at a particular level.
QA experts examine a finished product based on a set of metrics rather than examining each distinct stage of production or the individual work of employees. For instance, they might make sure that all of the features a customer requests are functional, but they are unlikely to examine the specific layers of those features unless there is a problem and they need to decide how to fix it.
Flexibility
When compared to using QA procedures, QE frequently enables development teams to work with greater flexibility. QE can assist your team in changing the product’s design or features during development rather than waiting until the end because it mandates quality checks at various points during production. Developers don’t have to go back and fix everything once they discover an error or decide to change the course of production. This is particularly helpful for lengthy projects with numerous features that might need to be changed.
However, because QA requires the development team to finish a project before returning to make requested changes, it is typically less adaptable. QA procedures are helpful for products with short production cycles and few development stages, even though there may be less room for change and updating a product. The reduced flexibility enables developers to concentrate on their work’s objectives and rely on the QA team for their expert assessment of a product.
Time
Even though it requires each developer to spend more time running tests on their portion of a product, using QE can often speed up your production time. Developers who regularly inspect the quality of their work are better able to address issues as they arise and guarantee a smooth production process from start to finish. Projects using QE can finish faster than those using QA because they can handle problems on their own and are frequently very familiar with the work their team performs.
Because developers may need to completely redesign their product or look for a specific place where an error occurs before they can send it back to the QA team, QA projects may take longer. Developers must go back and fix errors discovered by QA specialists at the end of production, which frequently takes longer than if the error was fixed as soon as it was discovered. This in particular prolongs production if a single error results in additional errors throughout the entire product because the developer team might need more time to address the issue.
Supplier Quality Engineer vs Supplier Quality Assurance (SQE vs SQA)
FAQ
Is quality assurance the same as quality engineer?
Quality engineering is about processes. It’s a strategy that seeks to integrate quality throughout the product lifecycle by creating and putting into practice procedures to accomplish that objective. On the other hand, quality engineering includes a process called quality assurance.
What is quality engineering and assurance?
The business process of making sure that quality control measures and checks are integrated at every stage of product or software development is known as quality engineering and assurance (QEA), and it is one of the components of quality management.
Which is higher QA analyst or QA engineer?
However, “QA Engineer” is a better title to have than “QA Analyst” when it comes to the titles themselves. Although it’s not always the case, the analyst job title is sometimes linked to positions that are more entry-level.
What is the difference between QA specialist and QA engineer?
Before any technical risks are even considered in the development of an app, a QA engineer can do so. For instance, at Koombea, we assist our clients in spotting risks at very early stages. On the other hand, a QA Analyst is unable to do so because of a lack of technical knowledge.
