Assure delivery quality

What is delivery quality assurance?

The processes undertaken to ensure that whatever is delivered through the transformation meets specified quality criteria. In local government quality assurance tends to be most associated with software delivery.

Essential for:

• All types of transformation, particularly those that create or make changes to a product or a service.

Knowledge

• Understanding of how to plan, control and assess quality metrics.
• Knowledge of quality management frameworks.
• Knowledge of quality management tools, templates, and techniques.
• Understanding of how to apply quality metrics in different types of delivery (e.g. Waterfall and Agile).

Skills

Able to:

• Manage stakeholders: Ensuring the right inputs are obtained in the creation and assessment of quality metrics. 
• Collaborate: Work with stakeholders to gain inputs to quality planning and to include quality assurance actions within wider plans.
• Define quality standards: Ensure appropriate metrics are in place to objectively determine quality, including making clear the thresholds that must be met in terms of quality coverage and quality targets (e.g. 100 per cent of ‘must have’ deliverables must be sampled and must meet a 100 per cent acceptance threshold).
• Prioritise: Ensuring that the metrics that are defined are prioritised against overall strategic objectives (i.e. The differences between ‘must haves’ ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’ are clear and both quality coverage and quality metrics reflect the order of priority).
• Plan effectively: Define the processes and resources required, creating a Quality Management Plan.
• Implement effective governance and controls: Embed quality management within the overall control framework to ensure effective tracking and quality assurance as an integral part of delivery. Objectively verify that outputs meet the defined standards.
• Create and maintain effective documentation: To define, monitor and track quality, including reporting.
• Communicate: To engage stakeholders in the quality management process and to report back on progress, in both written and verbal form.
• Train, support, and coach others: Where others may be involved in assessing quality (e.g. testing), create and provide training to ensure that the quality assurance framework and everyone’s role within it is clear. This includes training on quality assurance or test processes and how to record outputs.
• Manage risks: Identify and manage risks associated with quality management.
• Manage defects / quality improvements: Ensuring a standardised and prioritised approach to the management of defects / improvements is embedded within the control framework.

Behaviours

• Adaptable and pragmatic
• Collaborative
• Accountable
• Analytical
• Tenacious
• Customer-focused
• Empathetic
• Solution focused
• Committed to continual learning