From Ascgroup
Develop Quality Assurance (QA) Plans
NOTE: ASC Group, Inc. offers 2 and 3 day training courses that are designed to assist in the development of QA Plans and overall SeeSOR configuration. These courses include facilitated QA Plan development workshops.
The basis for all inspection and results reporting is the QA Plan. The QA Plan is designed to establish an objective measure and quantification of inspections. The QA Plan provides the basis for complete documentation of the inspection. The QA Plan should be developed for each performance requirement in the Statement of Requirement (SOR). NOTE: The SOR may be referred to in many ways and includes SOW (Statement of Work), PWS (Performance Work Statement), SLA (Service Level Agreement), among others. The use of the term SOR throughout this document refers to any document that defines the service or output requirements of a contract or agreement.
There are four parts to the QA Plan in SeeSOR:
1. Frequency and Scheduling - To establish the basis for setting frequency of inspection and for adjusting the frequency based on quality of performance (to optimize the efficiency of the inspection resources).
2. Administrative - To identify the characteristics of the requirement to include its relative importance to other requirements (Primary and Alternate Value), Method of Inspection, expertise of inspectors and estimated time to complete the inspection.
3. Sampling Procedures - Sample size and selection procedures.
4. Checklist and Analysis of Results - Checklist(s) that correspond the all performance standards or other measurable outcomes of the service to be delivered. Each checklist will have a specific and objective description of the scoring criteria.
To input a QA Plan select Requirements>QA Plans from the menu bar (see below).
Select the Section and the Line Item for the QA Plan to be developed.
Upon first opening the QA Plan all elements (QA Plan, Frequency and Checklist Items) are displayed in sequence. The user may select a tab to work with just one element at a time.
Complete the Line Item Details:
- Active - Activate the QA Plan only when ready to begin inspecting.
- Locked - Lock the QA Plan when all reviews are complete and configuration control of the plan is to begin.
- Method of Inspection - Select the method of inspection that is most applicable for how this QA Plan will be inspected.
- Area of Expertise - Select the expertise of the inspector to conduct the inspection (the list is user configurable to the expertise categories applicable to the project).
- LI Primary Value - Input a number that represents the relative importance of this requirement to all other requirements.
- LI Alternative Value - Input an alternative number of the relative importance for some other purpose of analysis (eg., if there is a bonus payment schedule for certain requirements).
- Time to Inspect - Input the estimated time (in hours or decimal of hours) that represents the total average time to perform this inspection including allocating travel and preparation time. This will be used to estimate the level of effort for a given area of expertise to perform all inspections.
- Sample Size - Define the size of the sample the inspector is required to take upon which to make their assessment.
- Sample Selection Procedure - Describe exactly how the inspector is to select the sample. Sufficient detail is to be provided to ensure that any inspector would conduct the inspection in exactly the same manner.
- Additional Information (not shown) - Add any additional or clarifying information that is useful for the inspection to be conducted consistently.
- Auto-adjusted Frequencies/Fixed Inspection Dates:
- Select the frequency associated with each level of inspection and select the value (0 -10) that will represent a highly acceptable level of performance (High) and a value that will represent a less than acceptable level of performance (Low). Note: If at "Decreased" level there is no higher level of performance so "High" is not applicable (conversely for "Low").
- Select the fixed dates SeeSOR is to schedule inspections.
Create Checklist (See screen below):
- Select the "Add" button to add an new Checklist and Scoring Criteria box (the Scoring Criteria box appears immediately below the Checklist input box (top). Note: the Checklist description is limited to 150 characters.
- The boxes can be resized by positioning the curser over the shaded area below each box then right click and drag the box to the desired size.
- Enter the relative importance of each checklist item in the box to the right of the checklist box (eg. selecting a 1 and a 2 means that the checklist with a value of 2 will be twice as important in the weighting of scores as the checklist weighted as 1).
- Add Additional Instructions (eg. conditions under which to create a Corrective Action) that may be generally applicable.
- Click "Save". Please note the warning that the checklist has not yet been saved without clicking the save button before leaving the QA Plan screen.
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