Last updated on Aug 13, 2024
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Scope and purpose
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Roles and responsibilities
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Methods and tools
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Schedule and budget
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Risks and issues
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Review and improvement
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Here’s what else to consider
A quality assurance plan is a document that outlines the objectives, standards, methods, and responsibilities for ensuring the quality of a product or service. It is an essential tool for any project that involves multiple stakeholders, complex processes, or high expectations from customers or users. In this article, you will learn the steps to define a quality assurance plan that suits your project's needs and goals.
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- RAVI SHANKARNARAYANAN PMP,LEED (BD+C), ESTIDAMA (PQP)- QA/QC MANAGER at VOLTAS LIMITED
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- Tomasz Pachnik QA Producer at Techland
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1 Scope and purpose
The first step to define a quality assurance plan is to clarify the scope and purpose of the project. What are the deliverables, requirements, and specifications of the product or service? Who are the target audience, customers, or users? What are the quality criteria, expectations, and objectives? How will the quality be measured and evaluated? Answering these questions will help you establish the scope and purpose of the quality assurance plan and align it with the project's vision and mission.
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Crafting a Quality Assurance Plan:-Define Objectives: Clearly state quality goals.-Scope It Out: Specify what's covered by the plan.-Team Alignment: Ensure everyone understands roles.-Processes & Standards: Detail QA processes and standards.-Resource Allocation: Assign necessary resources.-Risk Assessment: Identify and plan for potential risks.-Testing & Inspection: Outline testing and inspection methods.-Metrics & Reporting: Define key quality metrics and reporting frequency.-Review & Adapt: Periodically assess and adjust the plan.A well-defined plan is your roadmap to quality success! 🚀
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- RAVI SHANKARNARAYANAN PMP,LEED (BD+C), ESTIDAMA (PQP)- QA/QC MANAGER at VOLTAS LIMITED
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It is to be aligned with Vision and mission of the project. The quality plan should give confidence to the customer that the deliverables will be met to the utmost satisfaction of the customer. Accordingly necessary resources is to be provided to quality team.Especially in construction projects the quality assurance starts from material submissions, approvals, and inspection of material on receipt at site.Next installation inspection , testing commission of the system.At certain phase there will be hold points for clients to witness
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- Krishnam Raju Y.V. ASST.VICE PRESIDENT-QA,EHS at ATC Tires Pvt Ltd (YOKOHAMA GROUP).--Retired.
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To consider the Customer Specific Requirements are Very Important in addition to Product Quality Requirements, Organisational standard Requirements and to look into Customer Delightness etc are to be part of the QAP.
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- AJAY APPUKUTTAN Project Quality Manager : Salalah Ammonia Project 6σ GB ASNT NDT L3 API 510 API 570 ISO 9001 QMS LEAD AUDITOR
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Here are essential elements to include when creating a quality plan for large-scale projects in downstream oil and gas. Project quality plan needs to be revised during concept,FEED,Engineering,Procurement,Construction and Commissioning stages of the project-Refer to Detailed Project Execution Plan and other related documentation- Define Duties and tasks of project teams for quality plan execution-Scaling and Application of the Project's Quality Management System according to the company's opportunity management framework.-Cover project quality metrics, risk handling, guarantees, project quality processes, resource allocation, quality training, and information management for the scope of work.
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We should include a technology component in the quality plan. Technology has been infused every aspect of the quality domain and omitting it from the quality plan would result in an incomplete strategy.
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2 Roles and responsibilities
The second step to define a quality assurance plan is to assign roles and responsibilities for the quality assurance activities. Who will be involved in the quality assurance process and what are their tasks and duties? How will they communicate and coordinate with each other and with other project stakeholders? What are the authority levels, reporting lines, and escalation procedures? Defining roles and responsibilities will help you ensure accountability, transparency, and collaboration for the quality assurance process.
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- Ronanki Ravi Supplier Quality Management , Quality Assurance Professional.
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Establish the QA roles and responsibilities.Who will be responsible for each aspect of the QA process? This includes planning, testing, reporting, and continuous improvement.Develop the QA plan.This should include the following:The overall approach to QAThe specific activities that will be performedThe resources that will be neededThe timeline for completing the QA processThe metrics that will be used to measure quality
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There will be a clear objective and scope shall needs to be set first. which includes the target and the area under the scope. objectives should be SMART enough and deliverable within the scope. respectively we need to set the goals in order to achieve the objectives. here its come the KPI (key performance indicators), which will make sure the clear strategies to achieve each goals. there shall be a unique target/limit for each goals with measurability, time line and appropriate roles/responsibilities. The effectiveness review or verification needs to be set up in the second stage in order to analyze the efficiency of strategies enough to achieve the main objectives.
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- Ahmed El-Deeb
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Well, focus here on external dependencies and protocols with other teams in case that’s the case for your project. Otherwise, this section is useless within your team - who wants a doc to say what is the role of QA or PM or whatever. But if you are working with another team then here you would need to define the engagement and the role of each. Avoid inflating your plan with useless text; just add when something needs to be added or defined for maximum value.
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3 Methods and tools
The third step to define a quality assurance plan is to select the methods and tools for the quality assurance activities. What are the techniques, standards, and best practices for ensuring the quality of the product or service? What are the tools, software, or systems for performing the quality assurance tasks and documenting the results? How will the methods and tools be applied, verified, and validated? Choosing the appropriate methods and tools will help you execute the quality assurance activities effectively and efficiently.
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- Tomasz Pachnik QA Producer at Techland
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It's important to note, that the tools and methods implemented on the project need to be scalable. In software development, no matter how much planning was involved, the scope tends to change through the cycle. A QA process which works on a small project may not be as cheap or easy to maintain on larger scale. Automated processes may grow out of control and require too much upkeep, manual testing may be too laborous and require additional outsourcing. Keep itarating and never assume that if something works now, that it will be as good later on.
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- Nick B. Test Automation Architect
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Best practices and methods probably refer to test design, such as you might use equivalence class partitioning or boundary analysis methods. Remember though, it's more important to find defects early than to write a whole big treatise on how you are 'preparing to plan' for designing tests. Often test strategies are determined on the go and reused or abandoned - so testing is often evolves over cycles of testing as you gain experience and insight - something you don't have up front.
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4 Schedule and budget
The fourth step to define a quality assurance plan is to plan the schedule and budget for the quality assurance activities. When will the quality assurance activities take place and how long will they last? How will they fit into the overall project timeline and milestones? How much will the quality assurance activities cost and how will they be funded? How will the schedule and budget be monitored and controlled? Planning the schedule and budget will help you manage the resources and risks for the quality assurance process.
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There can be different quality assurance strategies for various types of projects. Schedule and budget are highly dependent on number of QAs, Test strategy - Automation or Manual, Test Types, Code movement strategy, quality of code delivered to QAs and every strategy would have certain known factors to be considered. For automation strategies cost can be high initially and for manual cost will be high throughout the lifecycle as it needs more hands for regression and new work.
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- Nick B. Test Automation Architect
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In agile we have units of work that have estimates, so the schedule and budget is probably determined in the agile tools such as JIRA so that you can tune as you go.
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5 Risks and issues
The fifth step to define a quality assurance plan is to identify and mitigate the risks and issues that may affect the quality of the product or service. What are the potential threats, challenges, or problems that may compromise the quality of the product or service? How likely are they to occur and how severe are their impacts? How will they be prevented, detected, or resolved? How will they be reported and escalated? Identifying and mitigating risks and issues will help you protect the quality of the product or service and prevent or minimize damage.
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- Ahmed El-Deeb
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If you tell me what’s the highest value QA can bring to the table it is this: Risks! If QA testing at all, being able to tell the team what are the risks of this feature implementation, that would still be a worthwhile contribution from QA.QA is the highlight of the project. What do they highlight? What could go wrong. Risks.
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- Ronanki Ravi Supplier Quality Management , Quality Assurance Professional.
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Common RisksLack of clarity and specificity: A vague or poorly defined QA plan can lead to confusion and inconsistency in testing. It is important to clearly define the scope of testing, the roles and responsibilities of testers, and the criteria for passing or failing tests.Inadequate resources: A QA plan that does not allocate sufficient resources for testing can result in inadequate coverage or rushed testing. This can increase the risk of defects being missed. Changes to project scope: The scope of a project can change over time, which can necessitate changes to the QA plan. If the QA plan is not updated to reflect these changes, it may become outdated and ineffective.
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- Nick B. Test Automation Architect
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I've seen literature that puts risk analysis first - your whole testing strategy is designed around the idea that the software has crucial failure points where you want to mitigate risk. When you make decisions on what to test, usually you have tradeoffs between how much time and resources you have and what level of risk you can mitigate, so it makes sense to think about this first and rethink about it often. Risk changes as new features are added on top of existing functionality and this will affect your testing strategy. How can you detect a failure as quickly as possible? Think about which failures are the most important to find at which stage of testing?
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- Yasser Elzant Quality isn’t expensive, it’s priceless.
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An escalation mechanism is an essential part of the quality assurance plan.Escalation Mechanisms should always be revised for its effectiveness.
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Risk and Issues should be mentioned in formal documents with priorities and escalation matrix from both internal and external stakeholders should be defined. Release Roadmap should be reviewed if Risks are not getting resolved within defined timelines.
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6 Review and improvement
The sixth and final step to define a quality assurance plan is to establish a review and improvement process for the quality assurance activities. How will the quality assurance activities be reviewed and evaluated? How will the feedback, lessons learned, and best practices be collected and shared? How will the quality assurance plan be updated and improved based on the results and outcomes? How will the quality assurance performance be communicated and reported? Establishing a review and improvement process will help you ensure the continuous improvement and effectiveness of the quality assurance process.
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All metrics should be defined and continuous progress should be seen against a set of lower or upper limits. Cadence for meetings, action plans for deviations, owners for actions and completion dates needs to be established.
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7 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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- Ahmed Hussein Quality Assurance Manager | Food Safety Lead Auditor | Customer Satisfaction Expert | Lean Six Sigma | ISO Standards
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The best practices to Define QA Plan are -You should see the big picture that mean where is the start point and the end point to deployment the plan- What are the area of focus , what we are challenging from the plan like product attributes, critical to qualities, critical to customer,....etc-clear description for each item that we challenge-Adequate resources for implementation-Competent people to set the plan-Assign rules and responsibilities for each step and time frame-develop a plan B in case of failure -Plan is a live document that should be flexible for change, amendments and updating -Review the plan on intervals to ensure the effectivness -Determine the risk and different issues relevant to the products
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- Ronanki Ravi Supplier Quality Management , Quality Assurance Professional.
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Steps to define a Quality Assurance (QA) Plan:Define the scope and objectives of the project. What are the deliverables, requirements, and specifications of the product or service? What are the quality criteria, expectations, and objectives? How will the quality be measured and evaluated?Identify the stakeholders. Who are the people or groups who have an interest in the quality of the product or service? This could include customers, users, managers, developers, testers, and regulators.Document the QA plan.The QA plan should be a comprehensive document that outlines all of the activities and procedures that will be used to ensure quality..
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- Ronanki Ravi Supplier Quality Management , Quality Assurance Professional.
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Here are additional factors for defining a QAP:Get input from all stakeholders. This will help to ensure that the QAP meets the needs of everyone involved.Be clear and concise. The QAP should be easy to understand and follow.Be flexible. The QAP should be able to adapt to changes in the product or service being developed.Be realistic. The QAP should be achievable within the time and budget constraints.
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- Larry Broome High Level Strategic and Business Development Leader,Change Agent, Advisor, Agile Leadership
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An important thing for any quality assurance program to succeed is to be able to duplicate processes and procedures seamlessly. Documentation and training is essential. And inspect inspect inspect before a product leaves your door.
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In some Method of Statements, these documents was also included:- Drawings- Vendor Technical Data Sheets- inspection Checklist- HSE Analysis
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