What is QA (Quality Assurance)?

Quality Assurance (QA), more fully Software Quality Assurance (SQA), is a set of policies applied to every stage of the software engineering process that are meant to ensure high-quality production methods. Quality assurance is in place to ensure that all updates, product launches, and patches are rolled out to exact standards and with no service disruption.

SQA is distinguished from Software Quality Control (SQC) in that the former concerns implementation of production methods that tend toward a resultant quality product while the latter refers to an actual end-of-the-line inspection of the products themselves.