What is the primary focus of quality assurance?

The primary focus of quality assurance (QA) is providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. This involves establishing and maintaining a systematic process to ensure that the products developed meet the desired standards and specifications throughout the development lifecycle. QA emphasizes proactive measures, including defining quality standards, creating and implementing processes and methodologies, performing audits, and continuously improving those processes to mitigate risks before they affect the final product.

By focusing on fulfilling quality requirements, QA helps organizations establish trust in their product's reliability and performance, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction. Ensuring that quality is built into the process from the beginning reduces the number of defects and issues that may arise in later stages, thus saving time and resources.

In contrast, ensuring quality is distinct from merely fixing defects, which is a reactive approach that addresses problems after they occur. Managing project timelines is more aligned with project management than with the specific goals of quality assurance. Similarly, while user acceptance testing is important for validating that a product meets user needs, it is just one of many activities that contribute to QA and does not encapsulate its primary focus.