QA Plan

Overview

Our quality assurance plan covers both code and documentation components.

While we do have clear roles determining who is responsible for quality control at each step of the process, we also hope to have a culture in which any member of the team feels comfortable stepping in at any point and improving our artifacts. Our rule is that any member can contribute to any part of the project at any time; however, there is always a member whose duty it is to make sure that part is finished on time.

Testing

The user interface will be tested manually. These manual tests should cover key use cases to make sure both that these use cases are working properly and that they are exposed to the user through the user interface.

Every other code component should be tested in an automatic fashion so as to avoid regressions when new code is tested. This will also guarantee that code is tested in a consistent manner by eliminating the possibility of human error in the testing process.

We will be using Travis-CI to run our test suite every time code is checked in. The build status will be visible on Travis’ website as well as in the README on our GitHub page. We will also keep track of our test suite’s coverage of our code, based on lines executed during testing. We will be using the tool coverage along with the software as a service provided by coveralls.io. Our code coverage will be visible on coveralls.io as well as in the README on our GitHub page.

Code will not be considered thoroughly tested until coverage is above 80%. Furthermore, all use cases must be manually tested using the user interface.

Reviews

For non-code artifacts, we must consider how to ensure the quality of all documents produced. For each piece of documentation produced for the project, we will have a primary and secondary writing assignee. Who is assigned for each document is based on the roles we have each selected. The duty of the primary assignee is to make sure that the document is thorough where necessary, concise where possible, and completed on time. After this time, it is the duty of the secondary assignee is to review the document thoroughly. The reviewer should eliminate typos, make grammar corrections, clarify vague sections, and guarantee the completeness of the document. After the initial completion of the document, the secondary assignee will have one week or until the project is due, whichever is less, to complete the review.

Once a review is complete, the artifact should be in a completed state. Due to this constraint, we recommend our reviewers to begin their review early since it is ultimately their responsibility to make sure that any flaws in the artifact are corrected within the allotted time.