SQA

Software quality assurance (SQA) is a set of planned and systematic activities implemented within a quality system to ensure software products and processes comply with defined quality standards and procedures. SQA focuses on preventing defects by improving the development and maintenance processes, rather than solely testing the final product.

The objectives include establishing and maintaining process discipline, enabling consistent product quality, ensuring compliance with applicable standards, reducing risk, and enabling continuous improvement. Core activities include defining process requirements, conducting process assessments and audits, selecting and tailoring methodologies, providing training and guidance, and measuring process capability and performance.

SQA operates across the software lifecycle. It interacts with development, testing, configuration management, and project management to ensure process conformance and readiness for release. Common standards and frameworks used in SQA include ISO/IEC 12207 for software life cycle processes and CMMI or ISO 9001 for process capability and quality management. Quality metrics may track defect rates, defect containment, process compliance, high-impact risk items, test coverage, and cycle times. SQA distinguishes from quality control and testing by emphasizing process improvement and adherence to standards rather than only product inspection.

Roles and artifacts: an SQA engineer or quality assurance professional designs and implements quality plans, conducts audits and process reviews, monitors compliance, and facilitates continuous improvement. Key artifacts include quality plans, standard operating procedures, process descriptions, audit reports, non-conformity reports, and release readiness reviews.

In modern development, SQA practices adapt to agile and DevOps environments, embedding quality requirements into definition of done, continuous integration pipelines, automated checks, and frequent feedback loops.