Quality Control (QC) is a set of processes and procedures aimed at ensuring that products, services, or software meet specified quality standards and perform reliably. In manufacturing and software development, quality control encompasses testing, verification, and validation practices to detect and correct defects before they reach end users. Unlike Quality Assurance (QA), which focuses on creating processes to prevent errors, quality control identifies and addresses issues in the finished product.

The QC process generally includes:

Standards and Specification Setting: Defining the requirements for a product’s or service’s attributes, such as performance, durability, and usability. In software development, standards often include functional specifications and acceptance criteria.
Inspection and Testing: Performing tests and checks to evaluate the quality of the product or software against defined criteria. In manufacturing, this includes physical inspections and tests, while in software, it involves unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing (UAT).
Defect Identification and Correction: Identifying deviations from standards and fixing them. Defects are often categorized based on severity, and solutions may involve rework, redesign, or updating processes.
Continuous Monitoring and Feedback: Gathering data on quality performance and using it to improve QC processes over time. This can involve real-time monitoring of product output or user feedback in software applications.
Quality control plays a critical role in customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and cost reduction. Defective products or unreliable software can lead to customer dissatisfaction, negative reviews, or legal consequences, so maintaining high-quality standards is essential for long-term success. Various quality control frameworks, such as Six Sigma and ISO 9001, provide standardized approaches to ensure consistent quality across industries.

In software development, automation tools like Selenium, JIRA, and TestComplete streamline quality control processes by running tests and tracking defects efficiently. Quality control is also often part of CI/CD pipelines, enabling regular and automated testing throughout the development cycle, ensuring that new code doesn’t introduce new defects.