The purpose of the Quality Assurance Team in software development

by Gene Michael Stover

created Saturday, 2009-11-14 T 09:02:03Z
updated Tuesday, 2013-01-29 T 14:55:13Z

I sometimes hear that the purpose of the Quality Assurance Team is to break things. That's wrong.

I often hear that the purpose of the Quality Assurance Team is to ensure that only high-quality product reaches the customer. That's effectively correct, but it's such a soulless answer.

So here's my analogy to explain the purpose of the Quality Assurance Team on a software development project.

My analogy

• An application exists in a space described by its features & bugs. The space is multi-dimensional & too complex for a human to imagine, but for the moment, imagine a map of a landscape with hills, grass, mountains, forests... standard map stuff.
• The application exists on that map.
• By providing us with Requirements, the users specify a location on that map. That's where the users want the application to be.
• By creating & modifying code, the programmers have the power to move the application around the map.
• By measuring the application, the QA team determines the location of the application on the map.
• By taking all this into consideration & thinking ahead, the project manager tells the programmers which direction to move the application & tells the users when the application will arrive.

Details, details

• Users rarely give us requirements directly. So where I say that users give us requirements, we really get those requirements from their representatives: UI designers, architectures, visionaries.
• Where I say "measuring the application", we usually say "testing".

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