Imagine a home chef doing a happy dance as they realize their new stainless steel cookware is exactly what they wanted: a sturdy pan that evenly distributes heat. Home cooks gravitate toward truly innovative products that solve everyday pain points, and rigorous quality assurance (QA) keeps those breakthroughs reliable.
This kind of reaction is possible because of rigorous testing to ensure the cookware’s durability and performance, statistical process control to maintain consistent manufacturing standards, and thorough inspections to guarantee a flawless finish. These steps are all components of a quality assurance process with an end goal of delivering products that meet customer expectations.
Read on to learn about various QA methods and how to establish and maintain a robust quality assurance program.
What is quality assurance (QA)?
Quality assurance (QA) is a framework for reducing defects and maintaining consistency that is involved in every stage of the product development process, from production to delivery.
It ensures that every technical and managerial process is optimized for efficiency and consistency. By investing in QA, you can proactively address quality concerns, minimize errors, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and strengthen brand loyalty.
Quality assurance vs. quality control
Although quality assurance and quality control (QC) are often used interchangeably, they serve different purposes in maintaining product standards. Understanding how they work together—and how they differ—can help you build a more effective quality management system. Embedding QA into your broader product strategy keeps every department aligned on what “good” looks like.
QA and QC similarities
Quality assurance and quality control share the same goal: to deliver high-quality products that meet customer expectations. Both ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. Both also rely on measurable benchmarks and documented processes to maintain consistency, trace performance, and drive continuous improvement.
QA and QC differences
While quality assurance and quality control work toward the same goal, they take different paths to get there. Here’s how they differ:
- Focus: While QA focuses on building reliable processes to prevent issues down the line, QC focuses on evaluating the final product to ensure it meets quality standards.
- Approach: Quality assurance is a proactive process that aims to prevent defects before they occur. Quality control, on the other hand, is reactive—it identifies and corrects defects or inconsistencies after the product has been produced.
- Methodology: QA uses tools like process audits, detailed documentation, and standard operating procedures to maintain quality. QC relies on inspections, product testing, and reviews to catch and resolve defects.
- Objective: QA ensures every step of production supports consistent quality. QC ensures that the final product is free of defects and ready for customers.
- Timing: Whereas QA spans every step of production, QC happens after production but before delivery.
History of quality assurance
3000 BCE–300 BCE: Early civilizations and quality standards
Ancient civilizations used early forms of QA to shape some of humanity’s greatest achievements, including the pyramids of Egypt, the precision of Grecian architecture, and the engineering of Roman aqueducts.
900s CE–1600s: Guild masters in medieval Europe
During the Middle Ages, skilled artisans across Europe formed guilds to regulate trade quality. Guild masters enforced strict standards for craftsmanship, training apprentices, and conducting inspections to ensure that goods met expectations.
1760s–1900s: Mass production in the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution introduced mass production, and with it, the need for systematic quality control. As skilled guild work gave way to factory labor, consistency became harder to maintain. Mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the principles of scientific management, promoting process standardization and performance measurement. His work helped shape modern QA practices and the emergence of industrial quality systems.
1920s–1950s: The development of the PDCA cycle
While working at Bell Telephone Labs, physicist-engineer Walter Shewhart used his knowledge of the scientific method to create one of the first formal systems of quality control. Expanding on Shewhart’s work, statistician W. Edwards Deming created what’s now commonly known as the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle:
- Plan: Establish quality objectives and develop a detailed action plan for how to achieve them.
- Do: Implement the plan, documenting all steps and collecting relevant data for analysis.
- Check: Evaluate the data collected during the “Do” phase against the quality objectives. Identify quality issues and their root causes.
- Act: Take corrective actions to address quality issues, standardize changes, and communicate improvements to relevant stakeholders.
Today, the PDCA cycle remains a cornerstone of quality assurance, helping businesses across industries embed quality into every phase of development.
1990s–2010s: The rise of software quality assurance
As software development accelerated, traditional quality assurance models—designed for manufacturing—proved too rigid for the industry’s fast-changing needs. Software quality assurance (SQA) emerged as a more tailored approach, initially relying on heavy documentation and linear workflows to ensure consistency.
But these methods often slowed progress, prompting a shift toward agile software development. Agile emphasized flexibility, short development cycles (sprints), and continuous testing, allowing teams to embed quality checks throughout the process and deliver better software, faster.
Why is quality assurance important?
Quality assurance focuses your attention on developing a systematic process to ensure quality, reducing overall spend, increasing customer trust, and staying ahead of regulations and risks.
Reduces costs
QA reduces the risk of expensive recalls, updates, or reworks. It keeps development on time and on budget. Additionally, if you have good quality assurance in place, you’ll keep QC costs to a minimum. By spotting issues early and uncovering fresh product opportunities, QA lets you allocate resources where they matter most.
Creates reliable products
Quality assurance keeps your product and brand aligned. It helps ensure every touchpoint—from materials to performance to packaging—meets your internal standards, so customers get a consistent experience no matter when or how they buy from you.
Increase buyer trust and loyalty
At a minimum, customers expect the products they buy to be reliable, safe, and secure. If those expectations aren’t met—even once—it can lead to lost trust, negative reviews, and a damaged brand reputation. And with word of mouth moving faster than ever, a single bad experience can quickly ripple through your audience.
Complies with industry regulations
Many industries have strict guidelines around safety, labeling, data security, and manufacturing practices. QA helps businesses stay compliant with these regulations by embedding checks into the production process. That reduces the risk of costly fines, product recalls, or legal issues—and saves time by preventing compliance problems before they happen.
Mitigates business risk
Quality issues can lead to customer dissatisfaction, reputational damage, or even legal challenges. By embedding QA into your processes, you reduce business risk and build a stronger foundation for long-term success.
Quality assurance roles
A successful QA program involves several key roles, each contributing to product consistency and performance:
- A quality assurance manager oversees the entire QA strategy, setting quality standards and ensuring that processes align with company goals and regulations. They also manage the rest of the QA team.
- A quality assurance engineer is in charge of designing and implementing the tools that feed directly into the company’s overarching product development strategy.
- A quality assurance analyst reviews data and QA procedures to identify trends, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement in both products and workflows.
- A quality assurance tester performs the testing necessary to identify bugs, usability issues, or performance problems before a product launch.
Quality assurance methods
Businesses can employ QA methods so their products or services meet the desired quality standards. The method you choose depends on the nature of the product or service, industry regulations, and your company’s specific quality goals.
Failure testing
With failure testing, you deliberately subject a product to extreme conditions or stresses to identify potential weaknesses or failure points. This method helps you determine the limits of your product’s performance and durability, allowing you to make necessary improvements.
Example: A retailer might conduct failure testing by exposing its footwear to various weather conditions, impact tests, and stress tests to ensure the shoes can withstand normal wear and tear.
Statistical process control
Statistical process control (SPC) uses data to monitor and control the quality of a product or service during the production process. By collecting and analyzing data at various stages, you can identify any deviations from the desired quality standards and take corrective actions.
Example: A clothing retailer might use SPC to monitor the consistency of garment sizes, fabric quality, and stitching accuracy throughout the production process.
Total quality management
Total quality management (TQM) is a comprehensive approach that integrates quality assurance principles into every aspect of your business, from product design to customer service. TQM emphasizes continuous improvement, employee involvement, and customer satisfaction. By adopting TQM, you can foster a culture of quality throughout your organization.
Example: Gogo Sweaters is a handmade luxury knitwear brand based in Calgary, Canada. It creates stunning sweaters sold at retailers like Free People, Revolve, and Holt Renfrew. To maintain its standards, the team has worked with a single partner supplier for a decade, sourcing the best quality wool from Italy.
Despite working with a large team of local knitters, the company has developed guidelines to ensure uniform quality control, like avoiding “overwork” on knits. It’s also integrated technology into its production process to improve each sweater.
“We do production on apps now, where the knitter gets their order to their phone,” president and designer South Van Deer Lee says on the Shopify Masters podcast. “I try to inspire the knitters to do their best, because this is their work. This is a product they have made themselves. It’s not a machine that made this.”
Process and product quality assurance
Process and product quality assurance (PPQA) ensures the quality of the production process and the final product. This approach involves establishing quality standards, monitoring compliance, and identifying opportunities for improvement. By implementing PPQA, you can prevent defects, reduce waste, and improve efficiency.
Example: A furniture retailer might use PPQA to ensure its manufacturing processes adhere to industry standards like ISO 9001, raw materials like wood and fabrics meet specific quality grades, and finished products undergo rigorous inspections for workmanship and structural integrity before being shipped to customers.
Industry-specific ISO standards
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops structured frameworks that help industries meet regulatory requirements and maintain consistent quality. Its ISO 9001 standards aim to improve processes across all sectors, but the global organization also creates standards for specific industries, such as ISO 13485 for medical devices and ISO 22000 for food safety. These standards often serve as the baseline for regulatory compliance and demonstrate a business’s commitment to quality, safety, and continuous improvement.
Example: A retailer selling custom protein powders should follow ISO 22000 to align their packaging and production workflows with international food safety standards.
Capability maturity model integration (CMMI)
The CMMI is a performance improvement framework originally developed for the US Department of Defense to assess its software contractors. Since then, it has been adapted for broader use across industries like manufacturing, health care, and finance. Unlike other quality assurance methods, CMMI focuses on evaluating an organization’s process maturity across five distinct levels to offer a structured path toward continuous improvement.
Example: A new app developer might start at Level 1, fixing bugs as they come up. As the business grows, they begin standardizing workflows and documenting best practices—moving to Level 3. Eventually, with stable systems in place and performance data guiding decisions, they reach Level 5, where they’re continuously improving and innovating.
Quality assurance process
Below are the key steps involved in putting a QA program into practice:
1. Define goals and objectives
Before anything else, get clear on what success looks like. Set quality goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) you can actually measure to help guide decisions later on.
Back those KPIs with solid product research and a quick feasibility study so you know the targets are realistic. Do a risk assessment to spot the areas most likely to cause issues so you know where to focus your efforts.
2. Develop a QA plan
Map out your approach. Assign roles, make sure everyone knows what quality looks like, and build simple, repeatable procedures. The key is to set your team up to catch issues early, not to react when something goes wrong.
3. Conduct QA testing
Now it’s time to test your processes and products. Are they doing what they’re supposed to? Gather data, run checks, and schedule audits every couple of months to stay ahead of problems.
4. Analyze test results
You don’t want to only identify what’s not working—you also want to acknowledge what is. Use the data to validate product ideas before you commit to a full production run.
Celebrate the wins that the test results reveal with the rest of the QA team and leave time to reflect on why. Then, move on to working with the QA analyst to identify new opportunities to improve quality.
5. Make changes
Use what you’ve learned to make smart updates to your processes. Maybe that’s tweaking a procedure, switching up training, or refining a tool that’s not doing its job.
6. Improve continuously
Whether you’re following the PDCA cycle, the agile software development system, or one of the many other QA systems, all of them require committing to continuous improvement. That means you’ll go through the QA process many times over the course of your business.
Tips for successful quality assurance
Implementing a successful quality assurance program requires careful planning, execution, and continuous improvement. By following these best practices, you can establish a robust quality assurance system that helps you consistently deliver high-quality products to your customers.
Establish clear quality objectives and standards
Define measurable, achievable, and relevant quality goals that align with your customers’ expectations and industry benchmarks. These objectives may include product performance, customer satisfaction rates, defect reduction, or compliance with specific regulations or standards.
Your quality objectives will vary based on your industry and customer needs. For instance, an ecommerce business selling handmade jewelry may focus on consistent craftsmanship, timely order fulfillment, and responsive customer service. Meanwhile, a medical device manufacturer would prioritize compliance with strict regulations, such as FDA standards, product reliability, and safety. Run your numbers through a profit margin calculator to be sure quality improvements don’t erode profitability.
Document quality control measures
Developing a comprehensive quality system that outlines the processes, procedures, and quality control measures will help your team meet objectives. Create detailed documentation, like quality manuals, work instructions, and inspection checklists, to ensure everyone in your organization understands and consistently follows the established quality standards.
Choose the right quality assurance method
Evaluate various quality assurance methods to determine which approach best suits your products, services, and business goals. For example, a company producing outdoor furniture may choose to focus on failure testing to ensure its products can withstand various weather conditions and maintain their structural integrity, while a manufacturer of baby formula may opt for statistical process control to guarantee consistent product quality and compliance with strict industry regulations.
Consider factors like the complexity of the product development process, available resources, and the potential impact on customer satisfaction when selecting a quality assurance focus.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement
Encourage a mindset of ongoing improvement throughout your organization, from product design and development to customer service and support. Through training and resources, employees can understand their roles in maintaining quality standards and identify opportunities for improvement. Establishing a feedback loop will allow for the timely identification, analysis, and resolution of quality issues.
Quality assurance FAQ
What does quality assurance mean?
Quality assurance is the process of ensuring that products or services consistently meet defined standards and customer expectations through proactive planning, monitoring, and improvement.
What is the difference between quality control and quality assurance?
Quality assurance (QA) focuses on preventing defects throughout the production process, while quality control (QC) involves identifying and correcting defects in the final product.
What exactly does QA do?
Quality assurance establishes and maintains a process that ensures products or services consistently meet or exceed customer expectations and comply with industry standards.
What is the purpose of quality assurance and why is it important?
The purpose of quality assurance is to prevent defects, reduce work, and maintain consistency. It’s important because it makes development more efficient and helps build long-term brand trust.
