Today, we will identify the 7 essential elements of quality assurance and will explain how valuable a Procedures Manual is in ensuring quality is met and attained throughout your business.
Previously, we defined Quality Assurance as:
All those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality.
Quality Assurance for Project Management
A documented quality system will usually monitor Quality Assurance. In fact, many organisations choose to have these officially reviewed and assessed via the ISO 9001 certification. These systems set out key information about your organisation, including responsibilities, procedures and resources.
QA systems comprise:
- A Policy Manual
- A Procedures Manual
- Project Quality Plans
In this article we will set out the approach to writing a Procedures Manual.
The essence of a Procedures Manual is to keep it simple and document very clearly what you should do. Then all you need to do is follow the plan and record any information which will form your project quality plans. These quality plans are auditable and will be certified by a Quality Assurance Company.
There are the 7 essential elements of Quality Assurance:
- If you do things effectively and efficiently, you will provide better goods or services, more quickly and at a lower cost.
- In many sectors, your customers want PROOF that your systems have been tested independently.
- Written procedures simply state what you do in (or should be doing). This is your opportunity to think about the things that you do!
- Before you do anything with your procedures and systems, take stock of what you already have and to ensure yourself that every action makes a direct contribution to quality.
- Successful organisations regularly review their systems to weed out inefficiencies.
- Keep your systems as simple as possible – you don’t need to create a “paper-chase”. Most people make the mistake of trying to do too much.
- Your business already has systems – the trick is to make them better.