Quality Assurance

Definition

Quality assurance is the quality engineering task that ensures the quality of the endeavor-specific process. Quality assurance includes the following subtasks:

• Reviews:
  • Business Strategy Review
  • Initiation Review
  • Construction Review
  • Delivery Review
  • Retirement Review
  • In-Progress Review
• Walkthroughs:
  • Endeavor Debrief Walkthrough

Objectives

The typical objectives of quality assurance are to:

• Evaluate the project process in order to identify defects so that they can be fixed.
• Determine ways to prevent future defects in the project process.

Preconditions

Quality assurance can begin when the following preconditions hold:

• The project process has be produced and documented.

Completion Criteria

Quality assurance is complete when the following postconditions hold:

• The project has completed.

Steps

Quality assurance involves the project teams performing the following steps:

• Not applicable. Steps vary depending on technique used.

Techniques

Quality assurance can be performed using the following techniques:

• Inspecting
• Reviewing
• Walkthroughs

Work Products

Quality assurance results in the production of the following work products:

• Quality Plan
• Process Inspection Checklist

Guidelines

• Quality Assurance should identify both defects in the documented process as well as inconsistencies between the process as documented and the process as actually performed.
• Quality assurance is closely related to the risk management.