How do QC, QA, and QE work together in your Quality Journey?

Although the terms QC, QA, and QE are incorrectly used interchangeably, all three play distinct roles in ensuring the quality of delivery.

Quality Control

The primary focus is on testing and inspecting the final product or service. It involves verifying if the product meets specific quality standards. It typically occurs at the end of each development phase to verify the work’s quality.

Quality Assurance

It deals with the planning, implementation, and maintenance of quality systems. It’s about creating processes and procedures to prevent defects from occurring in the first place. Furthermore, it ensures the adherence to processes and standards throughout the entire development lifecycle

Quality Engineering

It integrates elements of both quality control and quality assurance, highlighting a proactive and engineering-focused methodology. It focuses on building quality into the product from the beginning, rather than just catching defects later. Not only that, but it takes a more proactive role, influencing the development process from the beginning and providing technical expertise.

Quality Type	QC: The Final Checkpoint	QA: The Process Guardian	QE: The Proactive Engineer
Focus	Verifying the plugin’s functionality, compatibility, and performance.	Establishing processes and standards to ensure consistent quality throughout the development lifecycle.	Building quality into the plugin from the beginning and providing technical expertise.
Activities	Testing the plugin on various WordPress installations, themes, and browsers to identify compatibility issues.	Enforcing coding conventions to improve readability and maintainability.	Writing automated tests to streamline the testing process and ensure continuous feedback.
	Ensuring that all features work as intended and meet the specified requirements.	Ensure implementation of a version control system to track changes and manage different plugin versions.	Implementing CI/CD pipelines to automate the build, test, and deployment processes.
	Evaluating the plugin’s impact on website load times and resource usage.	Participating in regular code reviews to identify potential testability issues and improve code quality.	Identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks to improve the plugin’s speed and efficiency.
	Identifying and addressing potential security vulnerabilities.	Creating comprehensive documentation to guide users and developers.	Adhering to security best practices to protect the plugin and its users from vulnerabilities.
Example	A QC team would test a new plugin on different WordPress versions, popular themes, and mobile devices to ensure it functions correctly and doesn’t cause performance issues.	A QA team would contribute to the development of a coding style guide for the plugin development team and implement a code review process to ensure that all code adheres to the established standards.	A QE team would develop automated tests to verify the plugin’s functionality and compatibility with different WordPress environments, and would implement a CI/CD pipeline to automatically build, test, and deploy new versions of the plugin.

All three practices are crucial, and they complement each other. Quality is a journey, not a one-time activity. Organizations can take baby steps, starting from QC, maturing into QA, and finally adopting a full-fledged QE approach. No matter where you are on this journey, we are here to help you achieve tangible outcomes as you grow your quality practices.