Which actually makes me wonder how does companies in 2025 or in the past have conducted “Quality Process Audits?” either internally or hired someone externally?
I would encourage everyone to share their thoughts and even if its not a common practice:
How do you ensure your ‘quality process is meticulous’?
What do you think a Quality Process Audit should look like?
Whats the expectation out of this audit?
I appreciate every QA keeps monitoring their processes, mistakes and learn from that, I hope people here will get ideas from other people to ensure stability in their day-to-day activities and each one of us actually learn something new!
In my experience, the Quality Process Audits can vary widely from the very basic to the very thorough, based on the maturity of the organization and its QA culture.
Internally, many teams rely on retrospectives, test coverage reports, defect leakage analysis, and process checklists done every once in a while. Such internal audits may focus on aspects such as consistency and traceability of tests with respect to test cases, test environments, and test reporting, with business objectives.
Along with cleansing businesses internally, audits provide an external viewpoint giving recommendations on everything relevant: Consultants will check not only test artifacts but also the integration of QA into the development lifecycle, shift-left testing, CI/CD alignment, risk-based testing practices, and compliance with some standards (like ISO or CMMI).
For me, a good Quality Process Audit is about:
Finding any gaps, communication-wise, between the dev, QA, and product.
Show inefficiencies like redundant tests and flaky automation.
Give suggestions that act. They will undoubtedly help with test reliability, traceability, and effectiveness.
The outcome is more than just a report; confidence-building in the product and accountability in the process are the other two elements in the entire process. The team also needs to be aligned in their view as to what quality means for your organization.
Thanks for starting this conversation, it’s something we don’t talk about enough!
I suspect quality process audit means different things to different teams with that old confusion of QA process management vs QA the management of product quality processes or even more confusing when they get blended together into something different.
I’ve been on CMMI boards before with a lot of quality process audits before, this had almost nothing to do with product testing apart from helping the testing team just like the development team or the management team select the right process for the job at hand, support them in implementing it and being a catalyst for improvement. The audit here was often a compliance activity for a certain CMMI rating. Banks, big financials, government and regulated companies may still do these but I’ve not seen them in a while.
The narrow what is our testing process and how does it fit in with product quality audit is less rigid. We do quality plans that have a significant bias towards testing activities, the audits tend to take the form of keeping it a live document and revisiting it regularly throughout the project. This is product specific.
Our test guild also has a light version of generally agreeing what our testing practices should look like, tool and training reviews and a level of consistency across projects. Not so much an audit but a lot of collaboration on testing practices and process in general.
I would suggest looking at Value Stream Mapping as a way of carrying out a quality process audit because it enables you to see and evaluate your process. Chapter 2 of Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones gives examples of how to do this.
Hello,
I’ve recently been promoted to Product Quality Manager at my company in order to oversee all quality processes.
After 17 years at the company including 14 as QA Manager of different groups, I think internal vs external audit have each pros & cons. It’s the deep company knowledge, but bias vs independent high expertise but out of context (and $$$).
For now we’ve started with internal evaluation.
Using knowledge of our current QA processes in all our teams, what are working and what not, and evaluating different QA maturity models in the industry (from DORA, ANSI to CMMI/TMMI); I’ve created a 100+ questionnaire based on three pillars: People, Process, Tools/technology. The Process pillar is divided in 5 sub-categories. For each question, it’s a Yes, No, Partial (%). Comments are taken on partial to see why only % of the practice is being followed.
I’m in the middle of the evaluation and for now most teams (mostly the managers) really appreciate the discussion it trigger as they have a clear idea on where to focus to improve their quality process.
I’m also providing high level key metrics that measure quality of our SDLC process and quality in production that will, hopefully, show improvement as team starts to improve their QA maturity.
It’s all new and beside positive comments from the teams, I don’t have more to share. I might post something in a year or two if it’s been a huge success or not.
Hi, first of all congratulations on the promotion! and thanks for sharing the valuable insights.
Whats actually amazing to read that categorization you have performed i-e: People, Process and Technology. This is exactly the path I have chose to describe a ‘Quality Roadmap’ because often companies struggle with the question: What? Who? When? How?
And the model new 3 amigos (People, Process & Technology) really gives answers to these questions. I had established that roadmap last Oct’24, and its going good so far.
I really wish you success and looking forward to hearing your success in 2 years time!
Internally, many teams rely on retrospectives, test coverage reports, defect leakage analysis, and process checklists done every once in a while. Such internal audits may focus on aspects such as consistency and traceability of tests with respect to test cases, test environments, and test reporting, with business objectives.
and thanks for sharing the valuable insights.
(People, Process & Technology) really gives answers to these questions. I had established that roadmap last Oct’24, and its going good so far.