Re: Do you do QA?

[Karen Otto <KAREN_OTTO -at- HP-SPOKANE-OM2 -dot- OM -dot- HP -dot- COM>]

Item Subject: cc:Mail Text
     EVERYBODY does QA on my present project. We have 50 people on our QA
     list (only about a dozen are designers of this product).
     Subject Matter Experts write the test cases (I did the test cases for
     the manual), and groups of people get assigned different sets of cases
     to write.

     One big change for this project in comparison to previous projects is
     that the manual *actually* gets tested. Previously, it was just
     firmware, but now it's FW, HW, manual, and eventually SW that will all
     be QA'd.
     We expect to go through three QA cycles. One cycle is one week
     testing, 1-2 weeks fixing. We're in the test phase of our second
     cycle.

     I find it extremely valuable, because now no one is designing in a
     vacuum. In exchange for the time I spend finding bugs in FW, someone
     else is spending time finding procedural or syntactical errors in the
     manual.

     Of course, it also helps that everyone concerned is an engineer or
     technician, and can do most of these QA tasks interchangeably.

     For the manual, of course, that's only part of real QA. Long before
     the QA started, this manual has been through a professional edit for
     structure, grammar, and the like. The outline and one specific chapter
     has been inspected. These are things I would never leave to the rest
     of the design team.

     In summary, I favor being on the QA team. But I expect as much in the
     way of manual QA as I do for FW, HW or SW QA. This time, I'm getting
     it.

     regards,
     Karen Otto, Learning Products Engineer
     Hewlett-Packard, Spokane Division
     karen_otto -at- hp -dot- com

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