There’s an interesting thread on Linked In regarding the best techniques for conducting QA audits. The two popular methods under discussion are Checklists or Intuition. Which is “better”, use a checklist to rigidly guide your QA staff to ensure all audits are performed identically; or allow them to use their experience and intuition. The group consensus from the discussion seem to be that both are best.
Checklists are essential to provide a skeleton of repeatability to the appraisal process. They should be developed from the data collected from running projects. The checklists should be targeted toward processes that the data show the organization has trouble with (doesn’t follow, follows poorly, excessively tailors, seeks waivers, etc.). This way the checklists focus on the problematic processes without spending too much time on the processes that are OK.
On the other hand, QA should not just be a mechanical box checking exercise. While conducting a QA audit, your experienced and curious QA people will naturally go beyond the boundaries of the standard checklists. Afterall, that’s just the kind of people they typically are (we like that). Their extracurricular (outside the checklist) activities should be monitored, and if they are turning up additional areas for investigation, a process improvement request should be written against the standard checklist. This provides leverage to assist the other QA people in conducting more effective QA audits and once again reintroduces repeatability and similarity to the audit process.
