Quality Assurance (QA) is crucial to ensuring that the full project life cycle of activities are repeatable and produce expected results. USIT's dedication to quality can be clearly seen through the success of our quality control initiatives and plans in place on current Navy, Department of Defense (DoD), and commercial projects. Our Quality Control Plan (QCP) is a four-step framework developed for monitoring contract performance and a systematic approach for conducting quality surveillance. USIT's QCP provides for continuous quality and process improvements and is a simple, yet effective way to ensure consistently high quality work products. Our plan consists of:
At the core of our framework are CMMI and ISO 9001 industry best practices, which ensure our ability to implement and execute our plan. In doing so, we refine processes creating a more efficient organization, ready to meet the expectations and requirements of our customers. The purpose of our QCP is to define the techniques, procedures, and methodologies that will be used on each project to provide timely delivery of the software that meets specified requirements within project resources.
The basic elements of our process include items such as controls, job management, adequate processes, performance, and integrity of product criteria.
USIT's QCP best practices have been successfully employed extensively to maintain a high level of quality and can be best described as a program based on self-assessment or benchmarking using ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 guidance. Our software QA includes monitoring the software engineering processes and methods to ensure optimum quality in all aspects of the software development process including definition, software design, coding, source code control, code reviews, change management, configuration management, testing, release management and product integration.
The USIT QCP defines the roles and responsibilities required at all levels; establishes process guidelines; describes the tools and techniques used; and describes the process for problem identification, prioritization, monitoring, resolution and documentation in the areas of quality control, performance management and process improvement.
The purpose of the QCP is to support the reduction and elimination of defects, and to describe the metrics and surveillance methods that USIT will provide. The QCP defines the quality standards USIT will follow, as well as the methodology and approach to continuous process improvement to ensure quality end-to-end program-wide. All members of Team USIT, including teaming partners, subcontractors and consultants understand and perform in accordance with all quality standards and procedures developed and implemented by USIT. This includes the requirements of our QA provisions. USIT ensures that all current team members and any new team members throughout the life of a particular program receive training on the QCP as soon as possible after task order award.
The purpose of USIT's QCP is two-fold. The first objective is to provide customer leadership with an objective evaluation of the quality processes and work products for each task order contract. The second objective is to provide regular feedback to our team establishing a mechanism for continuous improvement.
QA involves reviewing and auditing the work-products and activities to verify and report that they comply with the applicable definitions and standards. To achieve this goal, USIT verifies that the following tasks are systematically and consistently performed:
Specific areas of QA employed in our program efforts are:
USIT uses product inspections and peer reviews to self-inspect the technical aspects of the project. Additionally, corporate reviews of the project that track schedule, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction are performed by the program management personnel. The specific Program program-specific QCP describes the metrics and surveillance methods that a particular customer will use to determine and evaluate the successful performance of USIT in fulfilling the requirements of the customer. USIT communicates with the customer representative at least monthly to review performance and survey the quality of products and services provided. The customer is provided with sufficient evidence to evaluate our performance based on the metrics provided in the customer's requirements document.
In addition to providing an evaluation of the project's performance of its defined processes, QA will also be used to review work products. The work products that will be reviewed include both items that are going to be delivered to the customer (e.g., design documents, planning documents, project monitoring documents, test plans, and CM records), as well as non-deliverable items that will have an impact on the quality of the deliverables. Artifacts will be defined and maintained within the project QCP.
To ensure QA activities are conducted, they will be identified and included within the project schedule. The project schedule will include separate tasks for all of the QA process audits and QA document reviews/approvals. USIT will conduct re-audits if after deficient projects items are discovered.
Standard process and work product evaluations are performed by our Software Developers, both on a periodic and event-driven basis through the use of product/process inspections, sometimes identified as audits. These inspections evaluate the processes and work products against the documented procedures, requirements, and specifications.
The purpose of peer reviews is to find and remove defects early in the life cycle. Peer reviews are performed incrementally as work products are being developed. It is important to note that peer reviews are structured evaluations of the work product and are not management reviews. The focus of the peer review should be on the work product in review and not on the person who produced it.
Preparation activities for peer reviews typically include identifying the staff that will be invited to participate in the peer review of each work product; identifying the key reviewers; preparing the materials to be used; and scheduling the peer review.
Peer reviews are conducted in a professional manner and systematically step through the product allowing reviewers to raise their previously identified deficiencies, questions, and comments.
An additional advantage to peer reviews is that, not only to improve the quality of work products, but also act as a knowledge transfer tool disseminating expertise throughout the team.
Our plan includes a practical Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and corrective action system. This system will effectively find root cause through routine and regular audit by directing corrective measures at root causes, the problem recurrence and therefore risk is minimized. The primary aim of our RCA is to identify the root cause of a problem in order to create effective corrective actions that will prevent that problem from ever re-occurring.
