Quality audit and approach

A quality audit is a structured, independent process to determine whether project activities comply with organisational and project policies, processes and procedures. It is a tool of Perform Quality Assurance. Audits may be scheduled or random, and carried out by internal auditors, an independent QA team or third parties (external auditors for certification).

Objectives

• Identify all good and best practices being implemented.
• Identify all non-conformity, gaps and shortcomings.
• Share good practices in the organisation.
• Offer assistance to improve implementation of processes.
• Highlight contributions of each audit in the lessons learned repository.
• Confirm corrective action implementation.

Approach to a quality audit

Plan -> Notify -> Opening meeting -> Examine
   -> Findings -> Report -> Corrective action -> Follow-up

1. Plan the audit: define scope, objectives, criteria (standard or procedure), schedule, team.
2. Prepare: review documents, prepare checklist, notify the auditee.
3. Opening meeting: explain purpose and schedule.
4. Conduct the audit: collect evidence by document review, interviews, observation and sampling of records.
5. Analyse and record findings: classify as major or minor non-conformance, observation, or good practice.
6. Closing meeting: present findings and obtain agreement.
7. Audit report: written report with findings and recommendations.
8. Corrective action: the auditee prepares an action plan with owners and dates.
9. Follow-up: verify corrective actions and close the audit.

Benefits

Improves compliance, reduces defects, supports certification (ISO 9001), spreads best practice.

Example: An auditor checks whether all code in a project underwent peer review as required, finds 3 of 20 modules missed, raises a minor non-conformance and verifies the fix one month later.