Test Engineering vs. Quality Assurance

In every organization I have worked and in many conversations with people inside and outside of the software industry, I have met a misunderstanding of Test Engineering versus Quality Assurance.

I am a professional Test Engineer. My job is look for bugs and validate that the product functions as the business wants it to function.

Software development teams must have a mindset of Quality Assurance.

What does that mean?

If I find a bug in a piece of software, I write up a defect and report it to the developer. In the writeup, I identify how high of an impact I believe it has on the product and make a recommendation that it be fixed now or later.

If the bug is fixed, then I validate that the software now works as originally intended and no new bugs were introduced in the code change that fixed the original issue.

Done.

Did I assure that the product was of a high quality?

No.

I merely found a bug and told the developer about it.

The dev did not need to fix it, and indeed not all bugs found during testing get fixed prior to release.

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance happens when I identify a bug, the project/product owner triages it and requires it be fixed prior to general release, a developer fixes it, a test engineer tests it, and the fix gets merged into the increment of code that is released.

It is a team effort.

A Test Engineer is a professional that looks for flaws in a product. Quality Assurance is a mindset.