A technical review and examination that is conducted on a specific platform describes what term

D. Mechanical and Dynamic

The Mechanical, which deals with the organization structure, and the Dynamic, which deals with the integration of the human factors into the organization structure.

Project scope is the part of project planning that involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. The documentation of a project's scope is called a scope statement or terms of reference. It explains the boundaries of the project, establishes responsibilities for each team member and sets up procedures for how completed work will be verified and approved.

During the project, this documentation helps the project team remain focused and on task. The scope statement also provides the team with guidelines for making decisions about change requests during the project. Note that a project's scope statement should not be confused with its charter; a project's charter simply documents that the project exists.

Large projects tend to change as they progress. If a project has been effectively "scoped" at the beginning, then approving and managing these changes will be easier. When documenting a project's scope, stakeholders should be as specific as possible to avoid scope creep. Scope creep is a situation in which one or more parts of a project end up requiring more work, time or effort because of poor planning or miscommunication.

Effective scope management requires good communication. That ensures everyone on the team understands the extent of the project and agrees upon exactly how the project's goals will be met. As part of scope management, the team leader should ask for approvals and signoffs from stakeholders as the project proceeds, ensuring that the proposed finished project meets everyone's needs.

The importance of defining a project's scope

Writing a project scope statement that includes information on the project deliverables is a first step in project planning. The benefits a project scope statement provides to any organization undertaking a new initiative include the following:

• articulates what the project entails so that all stakeholders can understand what's involved;
• provides a roadmap that managers can use to assign tasks, schedule work and budget appropriately;
• helps focus team members on common objectives; and
• prevents projects, particularly complex ones, from expanding beyond the established vision.

Establishing project scope ensures that projects are focused and executed to expectations. The scope provides a strong foundation for managing a project as it moves forward and helps ensure that resources aren't diverted or wasted on out-of-scope elements.

How to define the scope of a project

Defining project scope requires input from the project stakeholders. They work with project managers to establish the key elements of budget, objectives, quality and timeline.

To determine scope, project managers must collect requirements for what the stakeholders need from the project. This includes the following elements:

• the project's objective and deliverables;
• when the project must be completed; and
• how much the stakeholders can pay for it.

The goal is to gather and record precise and accurate information during this process, so the project scope reflects all requirements. Doing this improves the chances for project leaders to deliver products that meet stakeholder expectations on time and on budget.

Writing a project scope statement

A project scope statement is a written document that includes all the required information for producing the project deliverables. It is more detailed than a statement of work; it helps the project team remain focused and on task. The scope statement also provides the project team leader or facilitator with guidelines for making decisions about change requests during the project.

The project scope statement establishes what is not included in its initiatives, either implicitly or explicitly. Objectives and tasks not listed in the scope statement should be considered out of scope. Project managers can also list specific work that will not be part of the project.

As such, this statement establishes the boundaries of a project. Project leaders must take those requirements and map what should happen and in what order those items should occur. This leads to the creation of a work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS breaks down planned work into smaller, defined portions and required tasks.

A well-articulated scope statement is a critical part of effective project management. Project scope should be determined for every project, regardless of what project management method is used. Stakeholders for the project should review the project scope statement, revise it as necessary and approve it.

Once the project scope statement is completed and approved, project managers can assign tasks and give their teams directions on what they need to do to meet the target timelines, budget and goals.

Scope planning and management

Updates and changes are part of the project management process. As work progresses, managers must carefully control what changes are made to the project scope and document them. This requires strong project management skills.

The change management process also requires that project managers and stakeholders adhere to the project scope statement. They must recognize what elements are within the project scope and what requests are out of scope.

Change management processes help project managers determine how to evaluate requests for updates and alterations to the project. Distinguishing between needed requests and ones that are out of scope enables organizations to avoid scope creep.

Scope creep is when more work is tacked onto a project while it is underway. It can add costs and unnecessary work, while distracting from the objectives and threatening the quality of the intended deliverables.

Project scope example

Scope statements attempt to provide key stakeholders with all the information they'll need. The following are some elements that should be included in a scope statement:

• Introduction. This defines the what and why of a project. An example would be "This content creation and marketing project is being undertaken by the company RealContent Inc. to distribute articles on its blog and social media sites to raise brand awareness and increase traffic to the website."
• Project scope. This defines the project requirements. It sets the general goals for the project schedule and tasks and identifies who will be involved. In the content creation example, it mightstate: "The project will include research, writing, content strategy and search engine optimization, and publishing on the company's website and social media profiles, in March of 2021. John Smith, RealContent content director, will oversee these tasks. Staff and contract writers will create the deliverables."
• Deliverables. The deliverables section defines what will be provided at the end of the project and specifies a submission date. In our example, "Deliverables for the project will include a well-researched, 2,000-word article to be delivered no later than Feb. 28, 2021. Ten related and linkable articles, expanding on points in the main article will be delivered on that same deadline."
• Acceptance criteria. This describes the project objectives and the metrics that will be used to assess success. For example, "The main article will gain 3,000 cumulative pageviews within six months of publication and generate two new leads."
• Exclusions. This describes what will not be included in the project. For example, "The project will not need the creation of multimedia to go with the articles."
• Constraints. This lists hard limits of the project and things that cannot be changed. Project constraints may pertain to the project schedule, project budget or technical issues. For example, "The project has a hard submission date of Feb.28, 2021, and a firm budget of $5,000 dollars."

Project scope vs. product scope

Project scope should not be confused with product scope. Product scope defines the capabilities, characteristics, features and functions of the deliverables at the end of the project.

Project leaders should create a separate product scope statement. They should use both the project scope and the product scope statements to support each other and establish a clear understanding of what every project aims to achieve.

The takeaway

Defining project scope is an important step in project planning and management. Before a project begins, project managers need to understand what the scope of the project is to determine what must be done and what falls outside of the project.

Project scope is defined in the scope statement, a document that provides the objectives, schedules, tasks and deliverables of a project. Scope statements align stakeholders' expectations and give projects a framework for success.

Once a project is underway, it is important to keep it on track and within scope. Various project management tools and strategies are available to help teams do that.

Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements.

QA establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. A quality assurance system is meant to increase customer confidence and a company's credibility, while also improving work processes and efficiency, and it enables a company to better compete with others.

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is a driving force behind QA practices and mapping the processes used to implement QA. QA is often paired with the ISO 9000 international standard. Many companies use ISO 9000 to ensure that their quality assurance system is in place and effective.

The concept of QA as a formalized practice started in the manufacturing industry, and it has since spread to most industries, including software development.

Importance of quality assurance

Quality assurance helps a company create products and services that meet the needs, expectations and requirements of customers. It yields high-quality product offerings that build trust and loyalty with customers. The standards and procedures defined by a quality assurance program help prevent product defects before they arise.

Quality assurance methods

Quality assurance utilizes one of three methods:

• Failure testing, which continually tests a product to determine if it breaks or fails. For physical products that need to withstand stress, this could involve testing the product under heat, pressure or vibration. For software products, failure testing might involve placing the software under high usage or load conditions.
• Statistical process control (SPC), a methodology based on objective data and analysis and developed by Walter Shewhart at Western Electric Company and Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1920's and 1930's. This methodology uses statistical methods to manage and control the production of products.
• Total quality management (TQM), which applies quantitative methods as the basis for continuous improvement. TQM relies on facts, data and analysis to support product planning and performance reviews.

QA vs. QC

Some people may confuse the term quality assurance with quality control (QC). Although the two concepts share similarities, there are important distinctions between them.

In effect, QA provides the overall guidelines used anywhere, and QC is a production-focused process – for things such as inspections. QA is any systematic process for making sure a product meets specified requirements, whereas QC addresses other issues, such as individual inspections or defects.

In terms of software development, QA practices seek to prevent malfunctioning code or products, while QC implements testing and troubleshooting and fixes code.

History of ISO and QA

Although simple concepts of quality assurance can be traced back to the Middle Ages, QA practices became more important in the United States during World War II, when high volumes of munitions had to be inspected.

The ISO opened in Geneva in 1947 and published its first standard in 1951 on reference temperatures for industrial measurements. The ISO gradually grew and expanded its scope of standards.

The ISO 9000 family of standards was published in 1987; each 9000 number offers different standards for different scenarios.

QA standards

QA standards have changed and been updated over time, and ISO standards need to change in order to stay relevant to today's businesses.

The latest in the ISO 9000 series is ISO 9001:2015. The guidance in ISO 9001:2015 includes a stronger customer focus, top management practices and how they can change a company, and keeping apace of continuing improvements. Along with general improvements to ISO 9001, ISO 9001:2015 includes improvements to its structure and more information for risk-based decision-making.

Quality assurance in software

Software quality assurance (SQA) systematically finds patterns and the actions needed to improve development cycles. Finding and fixing coding errors can carry unintended consequences; it is possible to fix one thing, yet break other features and functionality at the same time.

SQA has become important for developers as a means of avoiding errors before they occur, saving development time and expenses. Even with SQA processes in place, an update to software can break other features and cause defects -- commonly known as bugs.

There have been numerous SQA strategies. For example, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a performance improvement-focused SQA model. CMMI works by ranking maturity levels of areas within an organization, and it identifies optimizations that can be used for improvement. Rank levels range from being disorganized to being fully optimal.

Software development methodologies have developed over time that rely on SQA, such as Waterfall, Agile and Scrum. Each development process seeks to optimize work efficiency.

waterfall is the traditional linear approach to software development. It's a step-by-step process that typically involves gathering requirements, formalizing a design, implementing code, code testing and remediation and release. It is often seen as too slow, which is why alternative development methods were constructed.

Agile is a team-oriented software development methodology where each step in the work process is approached as a sprint. Agile software development is highly adaptive, but it is less predictive because the scope of the project can easily change.

Scrum is a combination of both processes where developers are split into teams to handle specific tasks, and each task is separated into multiple sprints.

To implement a QA system, first set goals for the standard. Consider the advantages and tradeoffs of each approach, such as maximizing efficacy, reducing cost or minimizing errors. Management must be willing to implement process changes and to work together to support the QA system and establish standards for quality.

QA team

A portion of careers in SQA include job options like SQA engineers, SQA Analyst and SQA test automation. SQA engineers monitor and test software through development. An SQA Analyst will monitor the implication and practices of SQA over software development cycles. SQA test automation requires the individual to create programs to automate the SQA process.

These programs compare predicted outcomes with actual outcomes. This work is used for constant testing.

SQA tools

Software testing is an integral part of software quality assurance. Testing saves time, effort and cost, and it enables a quality end product to be optimally produced. There are numerous software tools and platforms that developers can employ to automate and orchestrate testing in order to facilitate SQA goals.

Selenium is an open source software testing program that can run tests in a variety of popular software languages, such as C#, Java and Python.

Another open source program, called Jenkins, enables developers and QA staff to run and test code in real time. It's well-suited for a fast-paced environment because it automates tasks related to the building and testing of software.

For web apps or application program interfaces (APIs), Postman will automate and run tests. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and it can support Swagger and RAML formatting.

QA uses by industry

The following are a few examples of quality assurance in use by industries:

• Manufacturing, the industry that formalized the quality assurance discipline. Manufacturers need to ensure that assembled products are created without defects and meet the defined product specifications and requirements.
• Food production, which uses X-ray systems, among other techniques, to detect physical contaminants in the food production process. The X-ray systems ensure that contaminants are removed and eliminated before products leave the factory.
• Pharmaceutical, which employs different quality assurance approaches during each stage of a drug's development. Across the different stages, the QA processes include reviewing documents, approving equipment calibration, reviewing training records, reviewing manufacturing records and investigating market returns.

QA vs. testing

QA is different from testing. QA is more focused around processes and procedures, while testing is focused on the logistics of using a product in order to find defects. QA defines the standards around testing to ensure that a product meets defined business requirements. Testing involves the more tactical process of validating the function of a product and identifying issues.

Pros and cons of QA

The quality of products and services is a key competitive differentiator. Quality assurance helps ensure that organizations create and ship products that are clear of defects and meet the needs and expectations of customers. High-quality products result in satisfied customers, which can result in customer loyalty, repeat purchases, upsell and advocacy.

Quality assurance can lead to cost reductions stemming from the prevention of product defects. If a product is shipped to customers and a defect is discovered, an organization incurs cost in customer support, such as receiving the defect report and troubleshooting. It also acquires the cost in addressing the defect, such as service or engineering hours to correct it, testing to validate the fix and cost to ship the updated product to the market.

QA does require a substantial investment in people and process. People must define a process workflow and oversee its implementation by members of a QA team. This can be a time-consuming process that impacts the delivery date of products. With few exceptions, the disadvantage of QA is more a requirement -- a necessary step that must be undertaken to ship a quality product. Without QA, more serious disadvantages arise, such as product bugs and the market’s dissatisfaction or rejection of the product.