Nonconformity (quality)
Nonfulfillment of a requirement / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In quality management, a nonconformity (sometimes referred to as a non conformance or nonconformance or defect) is a deviation from a specification, a standard, or an expectation. Nonconformities or nonconformance can be classified in seriousness multiple ways, though a typical classification scheme may have three to four levels, including critical, serious, major, and minor.[1][2][3][4]
While some situations allow "nonconformity" and "defect" to be used synonymously, some industries distinguish between the two; a nonconformity represents a failure to meet an intended state and specification, while a defect represents a failure to meet fitness for use/normal usage requirements.[2] This can be seen in the international software engineering standard ISO/IEC 25010 (formerly ISO/IEC 9126), which defines a nonconformity as the nonfulfillment of a requirement and a defect as the nonfulfillment of intended usage requirements.[5]