kurtz182

 Profile Answers by kurtz182 Questions by kurtz182

• Nov 15th, 2009

 

For the sake of answering this question, I will say that there is an element of detecting defects in the act of preventing them.  If we begin with this premise, then a Quality Assurance (QA) and Test group can detect software defects at any stage of the software development process.  It is the role of QA to prevent defects, while it is the role of test to discover them.  

QA can get involved very early in the development process and detect potential defects by reviewing software design documents (cross-functional and peer reviews) before software engineers begin developing their code.  QA can maintain its presence and continue to offer feedback throughout the development process until the initial release of the program to test.

Once the program is submitted to the test team, testers will detect defects through every release of new builds as the software defects get fixed.  Testers will conduct their test runs, re-tests, regression tests, exploratory and ad-hoc tests with every new build release until it reaches a degree of quality deemed acceptible for release to public.