Since years, many software companies have their Quality department, which in many cases implies that they have the responsibility to assess the quality of the releases. This department is typically called QA department (standing for Quality Assurance), but I rather think that they are doing much more of checking releases than to assure the quality and I see a huge difference these two concepts, that is, between a QA engineer and a QC engineer:

• QA stands for Quality Assurance, therefore an engineer that ensures the quality. Every time a new release is being built, the QA engineer ensures that the quality is built in it. The QA is responsible for improving the processes and participates actively in the creation of the testing tools.

• QC stands for Quality Checking or Quality Control. This engineer typically waits for the release to be finished in order to check if the quality is built there. A Quality Checker typically creates a list of test cases based on the requirements themselves and puts them in a tool to plan each of the BTCs. Later he executes all the test cases, in most cases manually and tracks their execution.

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