17.3 Quality Assurance

Quality assurance covers validation and verification of a system. Management should set up quality goals with the person responsible for quality. Quality assurance should be part of project planning.

Validation answers the question "Have we made the right thing?" This is answered by, among other things, analyzing tracing reports , to ascertain that all requirements have been met, or by usability assessments, to determine the usability of the system.

Verification answers the question "Have we made it properly?" Here, activities depend on what is to be quality-assured. Verification may include activities such as review, inspections, walkthroughs, and tests. In this section, only non-test activities are discussed.

Quality assurance produces documents. Items that might be placed under configuration management are the quality assurance plan, quality assurance reports (review reports, audit reports, and the like), item approvals , and event registrations. Except for a high degree of formalism, with highly critical systems, it's rare for this to include anything but the quality assurance plan.

Connection with Other Processes

A person responsible for quality assurance may prepare the quality assurance plan, but it may also be the project manager. Quality assurance interfaces with configuration management in connection with approval of items to be placed in storage, auditing of configuration items to be released for usage, and reporting and handling of observations. Quality assurance produces, among other things, item approvals and event registrations, both of which are input for configuration management. Such items are rarely placed under configuration management.