Wiki suggestions

[Jay Turner]

On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 13:05 -0500, Todd Denniston wrote:
> Adam Williamson wrote, On 02/06/2009 09:33 AM:
> > On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 18:51 -0500, Christopher Beland wrote:
> 
> <SNIP>
> >> To be honest, I prefer the current copy of
> >> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA to the Johannbg draft.  Splitting up
> >> activities into "Quality Control", "Quality Assurance" and
> >> "Development" does not seem helpful, especially since "Quality
> >> Control" and "Quality Assurance" sound like synonyms to many people,
> >> and the latter has no content in that draft.  And as far as I can
> >> tell, "Development" (actually fixing bugs) is outside the scope of the
> >> QA subproject.  
> > 
> <SNIP>
> > And yes, I think you're right in that the difference between QC and QA
> > is not something people arriving at this page should be expected to be
> > comfortable with. I think Johann has a hold on a good principle here. I
> > think the principle is, the 'QA' subproject does rather a lot of
> > different things and we need to distinguish between them. But I think we
> > can find a better way of expressing that.
> > 
> <SNIP>
>   From my training/experience Layman's summaries:
> QA = plan (make policies & procedures) how to build the repeatably produce the 
> product with as few (to none of the) parts as possible failing QC, and take 
> feed back from QC to improve those plans.
> QC = check the produced and in production line parts for defects, and do other 
> quality monitoring, including feed statistics back into the QA process.
> 
> So to me http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA is annoying because it is using the 
> definition of QC and calling it QA.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_assurance#Quality_assurance_versus_quality_control
> 
> 
> and if I understood "Re: QA Certification?" Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:33:41 
> -0500, by Adam Williamson, and Leam Hall's reply to it,
> then using the correct words with the correct definitions is the way you 
> should go.  Because getting the definitions reversed could cause significant 
> question missing on an exam.

Adding some color.  Take it, leave it, tell me I'm insane.

As can be seen in my sig, Red Hat has a "Quality Engineering"
department.  In this department we have a majority of "quality
engineers" (shocking, isn't it) as well as a handful of "quality
assurance" folks.  We tend to lump quality control in with quality
assurance around here which is made easier by the fact we're working on
software and not manufacturing.  So what does this all mean?

QA - execution of tests, processes, procedures necessary to demonstrate
confidence software will fulfill defined quality requirements
QC - operational techniques and activities used to fulfill defined
quality requirements
QE - analysis of software development at all stages to maximize the
quality of the software

Put in more real-world examples, try this on for size.  Quality
Engineering is analyzing software, determining what is necessary to
ensure defined quality and crafting software, processes and procedures
in support of the effort.  Quality Assurance comes along and executes
the testing, processes and procedures, submitting results.

As I mentioned above, most of the Red Hat QE team actually have a hybrid
role, flipping back and forth from QE to QA depending on needs.  We do
have a team in China that are solely tasked with QA.  It is through
these activities the associates become familiar with linux, increase
their knowledge level and gain the experience necessary to move on to QE
tasks.

Does this help clarify things in any way?

- jkt

-- 
--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
Jay Turner, Director, QE          jkt at redhat.com             Red Hat, Inc. 

        "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human 
        stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
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