Definition
Assurance is the process of reviewing and testing products to ensure that they satisfy their intended requirements and to detect faults early in the requirement, development and roll-out lifecycle.
Comment
Effective assurance finds critical faults quickly and efficiently. Despite being seen as an overhead and a cause of delay to deployment, the truth is the opposite. Effective assurance reduces the overall lifecycle development and maintenance costs. Effective assurance reduces the time required to deploy new products and services.
On many programmes and large projects, testing will take up a significant portion of the budget. But it will receive less management attention than an activity of this size warrants.