Quality Assurance
A primary purpose for testing is to detect software failures so that defects may be uncovered and corrected.
This is a non-trivial pursuit. Testing cannot establish that a product functions properly under all conditions but can only establish that it does not function properly under specific conditions.
The scope of software testing often includes examination of code as well as execution of that code in various environments and conditions as well as examining the aspects of code: does it do what it is supposed to do and do what it needs to do. Software testing may be viewed as an important part of the software quality assurance (SQA) process.
In SQA, software process specialists and auditors take a broader view on software and its development. They examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce the amount of faults.
