Software testing may be considered a part of a software quality assurance (SQA) process. In SQA, software process specialists and auditors are concerned with the software development process rather than just the artefacts such as documentation, code and systems. They examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce the number of faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called defect rate. What constitutes an acceptable defect rate depends on the nature of the software; A flight simulator video game would have much higher defect tolerance than software for an actual airplane. Although there are close links with SQA, testing departments often exist independently, and there may be no SQA function in some companies.

Software testing is an activity to investigate software under test in order to provide quality-related information to stakeholders. By contrast, QA (quality assurance) is the implementation of policies and procedures intended to prevent defects from reaching customers.




Installation testing
Automated testing
Software quality assurance (SQA)
Black-box testing