Hi All,
Quality Assurance and Quality Control
Being a Test Professionals we should know about QA and QC. What we are doing is actually Quality Control related stuff and what people involved in bringing up CMMI, ISO standards are Quality Assurance. Quality Assurance is more likely related to maintain the process in any given Project or Programme. Quality Control is nothing but giving the right product by verifying the requirements are covered and working as expected.
We know there are multiple levels of testing methods are spoken in the testing world and we have the methodology by which we need to execute them like System Test, Integration Test etc., and Methodology like Water fall, Iterative etc.,
Quality Assurance:
Let me explain what I know and aware of Quality Assurance:
There 3 different roles who will be responsible for assuring the process in any projects.
- PQA – Project Quality Analyst
- CC – Configuration Controller
- DPA – Defect Prevention Analyst
Project Quality Analyst – PQA role
A person who involved in this role needs to know the pre-defined industry standards of that Organization.
PQA’s Roles and Responsibilities
- Documents Naming Convention met as per the Industry Standard
- Names of who prepared , reviewed , approved the deliverables
- Reviews happened across all the Customer facing documents
- Review defects are found, fixed, verified and captured for Metrics
- Checking whether all the deliverables are kept in a Common place where the stake holders can access
- Checking all the necessary deliverables are prepared by the project team
- Checking the actual project delivery date and the date mentioned in the documents are same
- Checking the Stake Holders names, document owner names are mentioned correctly in all customer deliverables
- Differentiating the Customer facing deliverables and Internal audit specific deliverables are as per the industry standards
- Verifying the Entry Criteria and Exit Criteria of any Levels in SDLC are met and collecting the proofs for the same
- PQA’s will be involved in all levels of SDLC
Business Analyst Teams will have separate sets of Deliverables like Business Requirement documents, Business Understanding Documents, Requirement Traceability documents etc.,
- Development teams will have separate sets of Deliverables like High Level Design, Low Level Design , Functional Specifications etc.,
- Testing teams will have separate sets of documents like Test Plans, Test Conditions
The PQA should validate all the documents that supposed to be delivered to the Clients and maintain for internal audits
CC – Configuration Controller
Configuration Controller who controls the versions and the placement of the documents in tools like VSS – Microsoft Virtual Source Safe or Documentum etc.,
Configuration Controller Roles and Responsibilities
- CC’s are responsible of Creating the folder structures in VSS or Documentum
Like, in any Projects the following folders will be created to maintain the projects deliverables
- Project Kick off
- Minutes of Meeting
- Requirements
- Review Log
- Development
1.1. High Level design
1.2. Low Level Design
1.3. Issue Log
1.4. Emails
6. Testing
1.1 Unit Testing
1.2 System Testing
1.3 System Integration Testing
1.4 User Acceptance Testing
6.Production Support
CC’s will have the Admin rights to Grant and Revoke access to folders.
Developers should not have access to the folders related to Testing and vice versa
- CC’s will maintain the Check in and Check out of the documents that goes into VSS
- CC’s will maintain the relevant documents are kept in corresponding folders in VSS
DPA – Defect Prevention Analyst
Defect Prevent Analysts will maintain the defects across the SDLC. For any raised defects the work flow should be maintained. Proper comments for those defects should be given when they are created. All high severity defects should be fixed from one Phase to next phase to being with.
As testers when we raise defects we need to concentrate on applying Defect Cause and Defect Type in any Defect Management tool. This will help DPA’s to classify the defects and comes up prevention tips.
Defect Cause – What is the root cause of the defect that is,
- Is the defect caused because of the Upstream Source Data or Test Data
- Is the defect caused because of Incomplete of Missing requirements
- Is the defect caused because the Inconsistent Requirement
- Is the defect caused because of the Code discrepancy
- If you find any anomalies in any Documents then raise the defects to Artefacts
- If any of your defects leads to Changes in the Requirement then please raise them as Change Request – CR can be on the Actual Business Requirement or on Design Changes.
Defect Type – Classifications of the Defects that is,
- Is the defect related to Data Error
- Is the defect related to Application Code
- Is the defect related to Work Request
- Is the defect related to Change Request
- Is the defect related to Deployment
- Is the defect related to Specification
- Is the defect related to Artefact
- Is the defect related to Production
- Is the defect related to Process
- Is the defect related to Environment
- Is the defect related to Specification
- Is the defect related to Requirements
- Is the defect related to Reviews
DPA’s most prominent work is to prepare the CAPA – “Corrective Analysis and Preventive Actions”
DPA roles and Responsibilities
- DPA’s will collect the Metrics related to Defects in a periodic manner – Weekly, Monthly or Ad-hoc
- DPA’s will collect the defects by Defect classifications like in a given period of time how many defects are raised in Reviews, Code, Requirement Change and collects the cause of the defects
- Then using the metrics that was retrieved from any Defect Management tools, they design the Fish Bone diagram by filling the necessary details
- Using the Statistical tools like Minitab, they calculate the Defect Density of the defects from each phase
- Then they will create the Prevention actions on the areas where the Defect Density is above to the threshold limits.
Suppose if your Organization has the Defect Density threshold limit as 0.5 and your Defects under Review defect type is more than 0.5 then they will ask the Reviewers to do their work better to minimize the review defects at any levels of SDLC.
Cheers – Asik
