Quality Assurance for Information Systems
The phrase "Quality
Assurance" covers the development of policies, the
procedures that are followed to "meet" the policies and the work
methods and standards used in undertaking the procedures to produce
what's required.
Quality Control, on the
other hand, is the process that measures or analyses what's been
produced (the deliverable) versus the standards,
work methods or procedures that were to be followed in producing the
item.
Quality Assurance
documents how something gets done - Quality Control
checks against this documentation that this has been done.
Quality Assurance brings a
structured approach to a task so that nothing is missed or overlooked
in its production. Formalising tasks
such as Project Initiation (what has to be done before a project gets
off the ground) means that everybody knows how to start up a
project, who to get authorisation from, who will make the decision and
what the cost benefit of doing the project is. With all the
deliverables from the Project Initiation task available, an informed
decision can be made based on them.
So how can we help?
We will help you create or
formalise the policies you have in "running"
your business, and, work out with your
staff the procedures to cover how these policies should be achieved -
it's important that the staff have input into the procedures produced.
One way, just as an
example of what can be done, is the analysis of
Fault Logs or Help Desk Calls looking for patterns and answering the
question, "What can be done to avoid this happening again". If you
aren't recording into Fault Logs or Help Desk Call Logs then I can help
in the development of Procedures and Work Methods that works out what
to do when a call is received, who to refer the call to, and the path
to follow for each categorised call.
Typically, you start out
with a form to do your recording upon of the
details you want captured or analysed. Following on from this, you can
replace the forms with a computerised one - the advantage of
the progression from forms to a "system" is that
you already have the details of the requirements for your new system
which can be used to provide the scope of what's needed.
The "capturing of the
details" is really only half
the job; the main point from a Quality Assurance perspective is the
analysis of the captured information. This becomes part of the function
of the Fault Logs or Help Desk Calls process and the responsibility of
someone to
perform this on a regular basis would be defined in the developed
procedures.
The procedures are going
to document "how-to" and
"what-to-do" to meet the defined business policy.
If required, Work Methods can be documented to create low-level
instructions to achieve the standard(s) required.
Each Procedure has a
measurable or deliverable defined for it so that
you know what you have to produce - this is also
what's used to check against to see if the procedure has been
completed.
Give us a call to discuss your IT and systems development requirements ...