Although “Testing” is more analogous to “Quality Control” it isn’t “Quality Control”.

Quality Controllers have the ability to reject or accept a product based on a set of pre-set criteria (and perhaps a certain amount of their own judgement).

In software teams, in my experience, this is rarely a decision made by the person(s) testing it… and rightly so.

It is a decision made by the ‘product owner’ or ‘product manager’, or others with more visibility of the business concerns.

We are ‘developing’ a product – not manufacturing one. Something being wrong with our product is analogous to something being wrong with the design or entire production line of a manufactured product – i.e. all instances of that product will be affected, not just one at the end of the production line.

All affected stakeholders should have some influence on the decision and it should be decided based on a risk vs. reward basis (relevant to that the business or domain). Testers can tell the business folks what the deficiencies of the product are but the people with their finger on the pulse of the business and its market are best placed to decide whether going live is a risk worth taking.

So, the only variation I would add to the above is to emphasise the word “more” in the statement “Testing is more analogous to Quality Control.” And I’d say “but Testing is not Quality Control”.