quality-assurance

name	quality-assurance
description	Quality assurance and continuous improvement for software projects. Covers Deming's 14 Points for Management, PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act), Six Sigma DMAIC, total quality management (TQM), quality metrics (defect density, code coverage, MTBF), testing strategies (unit, integration, system, acceptance), verification and validation (V&V), peer review and inspection, continuous improvement (kaizen), root cause analysis (5 Whys, fishbone), quality gates, definition of done, technical debt management, and Hamilton's priority display concept from Apollo as error prevention through system design.
type	skill
category	project-management
status	stable
origin	tibsfox
modified	false
first_seen	"2026-04-12T00:00:00.000Z"
first_path	examples/skills/project-management/quality-assurance/SKILL.md
superseded_by	null

Quality Assurance

Quality is not a phase. It is not something you test into a product at the end. It is a property that emerges from how you work — from design decisions, process discipline, feedback loops, and the organizational culture that either surfaces defects early or buries them until production. W. Edwards Deming spent his career demonstrating that quality and productivity are not trade-offs — improving quality improves productivity by reducing rework, reducing waste, and building trust in the process.

Margaret Hamilton's Apollo guidance software team embodied this principle. Their "priority displays" concept — designing the computer to recognize overload conditions and autonomously shed non-critical tasks — was not a testing strategy. It was a quality architecture. The system was designed so that certain classes of errors were structurally impossible, and those that remained were handled gracefully. The most powerful quality assurance is the error that cannot occur because the system will not permit it.

Agent affinity: deming (quality/process), hamilton (systems engineering, error prevention through design)

Concept IDs: bus-business-planning, bus-business-ethics, crit-problem-analysis, crit-evidence-evaluation

Quality Framework Overview

#	Framework	Core idea	Scope
1	Deming's 14 Points	Management creates quality	Organizational
2	PDCA Cycle	Iterative improvement	Process
3	Six Sigma (DMAIC)	Statistical defect reduction	Process / product
4	TQM	Everyone owns quality	Organizational
5	V&V	Verification vs. validation	Product
6	Testing pyramid	Layered confidence	Product
7	Peer review	Human defect detection	Code / design
8	Kaizen	Continuous small improvements	Organizational

Framework 1 — Deming's 14 Points for Management

Deming argued that 85% of quality problems are caused by the system, not by workers. Management creates the system; therefore, management is responsible for quality. His 14 Points:

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service.