Re: Do you do QA?

Subject: Re: Do you do QA?
From: Karen Otto <KAREN_OTTO -at- HP-SPOKANE-OM2 -dot- OM -dot- HP -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 11:35:01 -0600

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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