Question

Explain how the following three terms related to each other: Quality planning, quality assurance and quality control

Answer 1

First, let me explain each term in short:

Quality planning as the name itself suggests is a plan which includes documents that specifies the standards, practices, resources, specifications, and sequence of activities that are relevant to a product, service, project or contract.

Quality assurance is simply put assurance of having the quality requirements fulfilled. It has activities that comprise of a set of actions that makes sure that quality standards are met and fulfilled.

Quality control is having appropriate steps in place so that activities are monitored regularly for the quality standards to be maintained.

Each of these activities is inter-related as they all focus on one thing, which is quality. Without quality planning which has the panning activities involved, you would not have an overview of what the expectations would be. Only when you have a plan in place you would be able to implement that plan which becomes part of quality assurance. Now that the activities have been implemented, you need to make sure that the quality standards are being met and that there are no defects. If there are defects they are being repaired as soon as possible.