Quality Assurance vs Quality Control
Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements.
QA establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. A quality assurance system is meant to increase customer confidence and a company's credibility, while also improving work processes and efficiency, and it enables a company to better compete with others.
Quality Assurance vs Quality Control
Quality assurance and quality control are sometimes confused with each other.
One of the key quality assurance principles that differentiates it from quality control is that quality assurance is performed during the project to help make sure the product meets the quality standards. For example, creating a Project Quality Management Plan, following a quality assurance process, and performing audits.
Quality control, on the other hand, evaluates whether the resulting product produced by the project met the quality standards. Quality control activities are performed after a product has been created to determine if it meets the quality requirements. The results of the quality control process are used by the quality assurance process to determine if any changes are needed to the quality assurance process.
Hopefully you are now able to answer the question, "What is Quality Assurance?" using the definition of quality assurance presented here as well as distinguish between quality assurance and quality control.