## What is QA?
Quality Assurance (QA) is the practice of preventing bugs and ensuring software meets quality standards before reaching users. QA teams test software, identify issues, and work with developers to fix them.
Think of QA as the final safety check before shipping a product. Just like cars get inspected before leaving the factory, software gets tested before release.
## QA vs Testing
**Testing**: The act of checking if software works correctly.
**QA**: The entire process of ensuring quality - planning tests, documenting issues, verifying fixes, preventing future bugs.
Testing is one part of QA. QA is the broader quality culture.
## What QA Teams Do
**Manual Testing**: Clicking through the application like real users. Finding issues that automated tests miss.
**Test Planning**: Deciding what to test, how to test it, and what success looks like.
**Bug Reporting**: Documenting issues with steps to reproduce, screenshots, severity levels.
**Regression Testing**: Ensuring new changes do not break existing features.
**Collaboration**: Working with developers to understand features and prevent bugs early.
## Types of Testing QA Performs
**Functional Testing**: Does the feature work as designed?
**UI/UX Testing**: Is the interface intuitive? Any visual bugs?
**Performance Testing**: How does the app perform under load?
**Security Testing**: Are there vulnerabilities?
**Compatibility Testing**: Works on all browsers/devices?
## Why QA Matters
**User Experience**: Bugs frustrate users. QA catches them first.
**Cost Savings**: Fixing bugs in production is 10x more expensive than catching them early.
**Reputation**: Quality products build trust. Buggy products lose customers.
## QA in Modern Teams
QA is not just a final gate. Good teams involve QA from the start:
- Review requirements before development
- Test features as they are built
- Automate repetitive tests
- Collaborate closely with developers
## Common Tools
**Test Management**: Jira, TestRail
**Bug Tracking**: Jira, GitHub Issues
**Automation**: Selenium, Cypress, Playwright
**Performance**: JMeter, LoadRunner
## The Reality
Perfect software does not exist. QA minimizes bugs and ensures acceptable quality. The goal is not zero bugs - that is impossible. The goal is no critical bugs in production.
Good QA saves time, money, and reputation. Every successful product has strong QA behind it.
