# Presentation: 145843

## What is Quality Assurance?

- John M. Bushery
- Planning, Research, and Evaluation Division

## What Is Quality?

- Many definitions:
- Conformance to requirements
- Conformance to mutually agreed-to expectations
- Fitness for use

## What Is Quality?

- Quality is the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.			(PMBOK Guide)
- Quality is getting the job done
- On time,
- Within budget, and
- Satisfying requirements.

## How Much Quality?

- What is the appropriate level of quality?
- Are we trying to deliver “too much” quality?
- Don’t build a Cadillac when a Chevy will do
- 	What exactly do we mean by these statements?

## How Much Quality?

- Survey example – sampling variance
- Lower variance is better
- Lower variance means higher quality
- Lower variance costs more – more sample needed
- 		Therefore . . .

## How Much Quality?

- Higher quality costs more
- Managers must choose between quality and cost

## How Much Quality?

- Wrong!
- 	Confusion of the concept of “quality” with the concept of “grade.”

## How Much Quality?

- Is quality binary? Does a product either have it or not?
- Or does quality fall on a continuum?  Are there different levels of quality?

## How Much Quality?

- Quality has meaning only with respect to requirements.
- So, according to definition, quality is binary.
- But requirements often refer to characteristics measured on a continuum.

## How Much Quality?

- Some characteristics that comprise quality
- Accuracy / errors
- Reliability
- Time needed to deliver the product
- All can be specified as requirements
- If product satisfies the requirement, it has quality
- If not, it doesn’t.

## Quality Versus Grade

- Confusion between quality and grade
- Grade correlates strongly with quality
- Requirements specify grade
- Required Grade = Quality
- Excess Grade
- Exceeds expectations / requirements
- Nice to have if it does not increase cost /schedule

## Quality Versus Grade

- Quality = the totality of characteristics of a product that affect its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.
- Grade = a category or rank given to products with the same functional use but different technical characteristics.
- 						(PMBOK Guide)

## Quality Versus Grade

- In the survey example
- Sampling variance is a characteristic that comprises an aspect of quality
- A requirement must define the acceptable level of variance
- Lower variance = higher grade
- Manager balances requirements (grade) against cost

## QC Versus QA

- Often used interchangeably
- But **not** the same
- QC asks, “Is the product good?”
- QA asks, “Is the process capable of making a good product?”

## QC Versus QA

- QC’s prime purpose
- To serve those directly responsible for conducting operations . . .
- To help them regulate current operations
- QA’s prime purpose
- To serve those not directly responsible, but who need to be informed . . . hopefully, that all is well
- 				       (Juran’s Quality Handbook, 5th Ed)

## Quality Control

- 	QC involves monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identify ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory results.
- 							(PMBOK Guide)

## Quality Control

- QC activities include:
- Inspect intermediate and final products -- testing
- Correct any product defects found
- Identify causes of product defects
- Make changes to remove causes of defects

## Quality Assurance

- 	The purpose of QA is to provide management with the appropriate visibility into the process being used and the products being built.
- 					(Software Engineering Institute)

## Quality Assurance

- QA activities include:
- Verify that standards, procedures, and plans
- Exist,
- Are capable of yielding expected results, and
- Are followed.
- Report deviations from standards, etc. so they are addressed appropriately and resolved timely

## Quality Assurance

- QA is a tool for management.
- QA’s job: review, assess, report, and document
- “no surprises”
- Management’s job: take appropriate action

## What Quality Assurance Needs

- Standards and procedures
- Independent reporting
- Management support
- Cooperation with project team

## Standards and Procedures

- Standard = basis for comparison used to assess quality of an object or activity.
- Two kinds of standard
- Describes the characteristics of the product
- Defines the way the work is performed

## Standards and Procedures

- Procedure
- A defined way to do something
- The steps in a process and how those steps are to be performed to satisfy customer requirements
- 					(Managing the Software Process)

## Standards and Procedures

- Why have standards?
- Common way to perform same tasks makes it easier for staff to move between projects
- Standards promote consistent use of better tools and methods
- Standards are the basis of QA and for decisions on quality issues
- 				(Managing the Software Process)

## Standards and Procedures

- What if standards don’t exist?
- Help the project team develop standards for the project.
- Usually “unwritten standards” exist, even with ad hoc processes, but they are not followed consistently and QA cannot enforce unwritten standards
- Formalize the unwritten standards

## Independent Reporting

- Whom should QA report to?
- Someone with vested interest in quality
- High enough to have influence on priorities and to obtain resources and time to fix key problems
- Generally **not** the project manager
- 					(Managing the Software Process)

## Management Support

- If QA and the project cannot resolve a quality problem, it escalates to higher management.
- Management must demonstrate support of QA.
- Otherwise QA will lose credibility.
- 					(Managing the Software Process)

## Cooperation with Project Team

- QA must partner with project staff
- Maintain attitude of cooperation and support
- Be sensitive to resource and deadline limitations
- Avoid antagonistic, arbitrary behavior
- 					(Managing the Software Process)

## Contention Process

- Quality issues may lead to contention
- Limited time and resources to fix quality problems
- Strong desire to meet the deadline
- Need a process to escalate and resolve issues
- Process must be timely or “default” decision goes against quality

## How Much QA?

- What is the appropriate level of quality?
- What is the right amount of QA?
- Balance cost of prevention versus cost of detection and correction
- Intangible costs – loss of credibility

## Does QA Pay?

- Is QA worth the costs?
- Does it find major errors / problems?
- Effective QA finds small problems early, before they become major
- Early detection reduces costs and saves time
- It is hard to demonstrate the savings realized by preventing problems.

## Challenges

- Resources
- Independence from production
- Possible costs of repair
- Schedule pressures
- Quality versus Grade
- Front-loaded costs
- Contention
- Culture

## Obligatory Power of Process Slide

- Power to the process!
- QA helps protect the process.
- QA helps management make sure that the process is capable of delivering the required product, on time and within budget.

## References

- Humphrey, Watts S., Managing the Software Process, Addison-Wesley, Boston, 1989, p. 137-169.
- Juran, Joseph M., Godfrey, A. Blanton; Juran's Quality Handbook, Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 1999, p. 2.13.
- Paulk, Mark C., Weber, C., Garcia, S., Chrissis, M., Bush, M., Technical Report, CMU/SEI-93-TR-025, ESC-TR-93-178, “Key Practices of the Capability Maturity Model SM, Version 1.1,” February 1993, page O-25.
- Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) 2000 Edition, Newton Square, PA, 2000.