What is a Quality Assurance Strategy?
A Quality Assurance strategy plan is a comprehensive, and integrated planning process focused on increasing the value for the customer by achieving a competitive advantage. Such a strategic template will help with anticipating future demand for Quality Assurance services and resource management.
What's included in this Quality Assurance Strategy template?
- Quality Assurance Strategy statement
- 4x Quality Assurance Strategy Values
- 4x Quality Assurance Strategy Focus Areas
- 12x Quality Assurance Strategy Objectives
- 15x Quality Assurance Strategy Projects
- 18x Quality Assurance Strategy KPIs
Who is this Quality Assurance Strategy template for?
Such a template is useful for all industries, as most end outcomes for companies are to provide some sort of service or product. A few industries such a strategy template can be targeted at are the food/ hospitality industry, engineering, and automation. Most departments or larger organizations have some form of a quality assurance department or a quality assurance officer who is in charge of this role.
How is this Quality Assurance Strategy template relevant to your organization?
Ultimately Quality assurance is relevant in helping a business meet the demands and wants of the client. With an ultimate purpose to detect, solve and identify problems in the quality of a product or service before it is launched or provided to the target user, quality assurance ensures ongoing customer loyalty and trust.
1. Define clear examples of your focus areas
A strategic focus area is a set of categories that your organization creates with an end goal of achieving long-term targets. Within this focus area, this quality assurance template has objectives, KPIs, and projects associated with achieving that focus area.
An example of a focus area within this quality assurance strategy template is: Production and Efficiency or Markets and Consumers
2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area
A strategic objective is the big picture goals of a company. Objectives are used as broad measurable targets to provide your company with direction to achieving challenges in the set focus area.
Within this Quality Assurance template, it is important to ensure each focus area has at least 2-4 objectives set to help align the company in achieving its targets.
An example of an objective within the focus area 'production and Efficiency' can be: Ensure comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) through the supply chain
3. Set yourself key performance indicators (KPIs) to tackle the objective
The next step would be to set yourself KPIs that fall under that specific objective. KPIs are measurable targets that have a time frame to give your business direction and hold individuals accountable for tasks at hand.
An example of a KPI that could be implemented for the objective area 'Ensure comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) through the supply chain' could be but is not limited to: Increase the percentage of process optimization by 20%.
Find out more about what KPIs best link to your organization from Cascades's useful article centralizing on 84 Key performance indicators.
4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs
The fourth step within this Quality Assurance template will be to come up with respective projects to action out that will assist in achieving the objectives and for gathering data to measure out and track the KPIs
Projects are carried out with careful planning to achieve an end aim. Whilst they aren't always quantitative, they do have time frames that can be in place also to ensure your company is taking steps to achieve your end vision.
An example of a project within the Quality Assurance strategy plan can be: Employ regulators to manage and assess ethical and sustainable acts or Have a Declaration of Quality Assurance Activity in place
5. Utilize Cascade tools to track and visualize performance.
Now the display of the data! Cascade believes in the importance of visualizing your data to improve your attention to detail ad ability to stay engaged with your tasks at hand. The creation of the cascade dashboard can help your organization better plot out your quality assurance KPIs or projects to keep tabs on who is in charge of which targets as well as visually track the progress towards the end goal.