QA, QC, What’s the Difference?

I liked Jason Yip’s posting: No matter how many times you say it, we still don’t need a QA on the team – it really pins down the definition of the QA/QC terms.

In summary:

Quality Assurance (QA): The design and implementation of processes (roles + activities) to ensure quality in a system/product/service.

Quality Control (QC): The design and implementation of processes (roles + activities) to verify the quality of a system/product/service.

QA = prevent defects; QC = detect defects.