ginson

 Profile Answers by ginson Questions by ginson

• Jun 14th, 2007

 

First Thing, you have to check whether the company is following any particular process. (ie. like cmmi process, iso..) If there isn't any QA process followed, it will be difficult for the QA people to know how process life cycle is going in the entire software development.

You need to determine:

1. Documentation of work products applicable to every phases
2. schedule according to Project Plan & QA plan

sbgeek

 Profile Answers by sbgeek 

• Jul 17th, 2007

 

As a QA person your responsibility is to ensure that a project's performance meets the baseline.
If the company has set standard process like CMMi, then it would be easier to do this.
You need to go through project related documents, specifically those related to Project Performance metrics to understand what performance metrics are being used & measured and what are the baseline values set for these metrics. You can go for a sampling approach, wherein you can pick up some past projects and compare their performance data with baseline values to understand how they have faired in terms of meeting those values. Based on your sampling data you can infer on QA process effectiveness.
Probably, you can find Sampling Plan and other Quality related documents if the company has set Quality process, and you can start from there.

kurtz182

 Profile Answers by kurtz182 Questions by kurtz182

• Dec 22nd, 2009

 

If you have just joined an organization as a QA person, what would you look for to determine whether their QA processes work or not? 

How does a company know whether its QA processes are working?  There are a number of things I might do (certainly not an exhaustive list):

1) I would first define my criteria for knowing what is meant by a "QA process that works or not".

2) I would talk to key and expert members of the organization to learn their opinions.

3) I would do some research in the quality management database or another resource to determine the number and severity of defects found after products have been released to production.  What is the company's track record?  Does the company have a history of releasing applications that require patches or unplanned updates?
 

4) How satisfied are customers or clients with the company's products?  There may not be many blatant defects, but do products perform in the manner that customers and clients want them to? How does the company obtain this feedback?

5) I would analyze metrics such as the number of defects per test cycle by severity and priority to evaluate trends over the entire test process.  This research will help determine whether or not an inordinate number of high priority defects are found in later test cycles.