project management glossary
quality assurance (qa)
QA may refer to either
- The process of evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards, or
- The organizational unit that is assigned responsibility for quality assurance.
All those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate
confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for
quality.
The design and implementation of design features and procedures to ensure
that performance specifications can be verified. This includes performance
specification analysis, quality engineering for inspectability and testability,
manufacturing process control, and the use of techniques and training to
implement the measurement and testing process.
In Contract/Procurement Management, planned and systematic actions
necessary to provide adequate confidence that the performed service or supplied
goods will serve satisfactorily for its intended and specified purpose.
In management, the development of a comprehensive program which includes
the processes of identifying objectives and strategy, of client interfacing and
of organizing and coordinating planned and systematic controls for maintaining
established standards. This in turn involves measuring and evaluating
performance to these standards, reporting results and taking appropriate action
to deal with deviations.
