This article is intended to be a bridgehead for a wider discussion about the role of quality assurance in software manufacturing processes. I will not try to relate my observations of any particular IT project management methodology (Scrum, Agile, Prince2) or frameworks like ITIL and CMMI. If something does not fit into your system, it will probably be a matter of nomenclature rather than substance. I will not repeat over and over again that quality assurance is still underestimated. Quality assurance department often is regarded as a group of testers, who are sitting in a one big room, such people are often unidentified mass for the rest of the company. They will perform tests at some project stage, with a little amount of time and consequently will take over full responsibility for the error detected on the market time.

You may say that I repeat this sentences, and you probably right, but this is an important subject, this article is another attempt to change the reality. Reality where the quality is not only the expected state at the end of the process, but we are talking about it throughout the application life cycle. Here I will mention IT project stages where, in my view, project manager should receive the commitment of quality assurance department.

I will divide this article into parts so I hope will be less boring :) I must stress that this is not the complete article or solution, I mentioned only those sites that seem most important.

Projects ignition, the idea, the first design documents
When are not yet in formalized team, the fact that the idea creator came to consult the quality assurance manager raises great respect. Although, usually this means that this director is the authority in the company, and not hide behind the good habits and standards.
What can give a qualitative consultation at the moment?

• Outline the quality assurance team to the project, a test consultant and a team of testers
• The complexity, to better estimate the time and budget
• Usability and user interface, allow us to detect difficult applications earlier

Requirements analysis and collecting
If the quality assurance was not present at the birth of the idea, here must be found for sure. Quality Assurance can be a source of requirements in both new projects and in planning future versions. These people have experience with many projects, they know what causes the problem and what the requirements give rise to new requirements. Teams can meet the quality assurance department that are responsible for verifying the analytical and development requirements.

Requirements evaluation and acceptance
What is the requirement? Inscription? A pile of paper? Hundred UML diagrams? The think? Perhaps it is all a little, but in terms of quality, it is important that on the basis of the requirements for the documentation to add the following points:

• Test scenario
• GUI Mockup
• Influences to performance
• Influences to other systems

Release / iteration planning
Time estimation of the project or release is what business is expected, so we must take under consideration all components of the upcoming trial. What can help ensure the quality of the analysis? :

• test plan
• requirements select
• tests time estimation
• test envirioment

Implementation stage
This step often overlooked issue of quality. Test Driven Development brings a lot of good but also can lead to extremes like “Quality we will be great because of the unit tests”. Well, the unit tests themselves do not bring anything, someone has to ensure and diagnose the metrics of such activity. The second important issue is developer acceptance tests, it is also sometimes ignored in the TDD.

• unit tests guard – metric: code coverage
• test scenario consultation with the developer
• user interface consultation – compliance Mockup with the implementation
• developer acceptance tests  – metric: done scenario. Only for atomic scenarios not large.

In next part I will point project stages like:

• Testing
• Release acceptance
• Release deployment
• Release cleanup

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