The Department of Quality Assurance

QA is an activity that should be organizationally independent of the producing organizations QA functions are best performed in an discrete. QA testing environment by organizational entities that are separate from the ones doing engineering or management activities Administratively, the QA organization should report to top corporate management and interface with the project manager.

The reason for this separation of function is that the QA organization is the arm of management that assures that standards are met and that procedures are followed. If QA is not independent of the development activity, clear and impartial assessment will be difficult. Additionally, organizational independence helps ensure that testing will be requirements-driven and not influenced by the design or coding details.

Staff devoted purely to QA activities is usually small compared to the project staff, but it is important to have people with specific QA responsibilities. Too often, the axiom “quality is everybody's business” becomes “quality is nobody's business” if specific QA responsibilities are not assigned.