Quality Assurance is focused on monitoring the quality of requirements and software product. Software quality can often be difficult to measure, but best practices have evolved to make this not only possible, but repeatable.  Good Quality Assurance practices help your organization make sure that the correct business functionality is being delivered.  This focus on quality reduces the cost of development and maintenance.

Quality Assurance and ALM

In the application lifecycle, Quality Assurance touches activities from the planning activity through the release and maintenance activities.  Quality Assurance is about making sure the application being built is a correct representation of the requirements.  Quality Assurance is also verifies that unexpected results do not make their way into the final product.