The ESPRIT project INFOQUALITY has developed a Web-based tool that provides project teams and organisations an efficient way to implement quality assurance practices in projects, regardless of distance and platforms used by the project members. It provides project oriented support to most practices and norms required by quality systems, like those based on ISO9000.
The INFOQUALITY tool supports Quality Assurance and Project Management. It can be used with most modern Web browsers. The tool allows people in different locations, working in the same projects, to follow a defined quality procedure specified by the project manager and based on a Quality Assurance system. The person respnsible for quality can check conformance with the Quality Assurance procedures using event monitoring facilities provided by the tool.
The main characteristics of INFOQUALITY are:
Some of the most important functional features of INFOQUALITY are: Internet Based - Client applets are downloaded by the corresponding Web browser and use their corresponding virtual machine, so that no installation is needed in the client side.
The product can be used as documentation management tool for any kind of project, simply by defining the deliverables to be included for each project tasks, which can be entered or accessed by project members.
The user can also perform project management activities by checking the dates of insertion or actualisation of different project deliverables and comparing them with the scheduled dates for the task they are contained into. Also project management activities can be maintained in the database by defining management events like meetings, appointments, etc.
The structure necessary to perform project management is easily definable through the creation of projects and subprojects, the appointment of responsibles for them, the inclusion of tasks and scheduled events to be performed in any project item in a broken-down tree style. Metrics can be obtained either on development, management or quality information, and for all types of deliverables. This approach to Quality Assurance in projects can be very useful in a range of different types of projects. For example: software development, telecommunications, engineering, consulting. INFOQUALITY supports management of electronic document versions, states of revision and sharing of project results.
INFOQUALITY is scalable. Small companies can use it on simple projects with the help of the tutorial and documentation provided, although more complex applications might benefit consultancy support.
The only requirement for a user interested in applying the product is to have Internet or Intranet communication between the group of users (project members), and to configure their firewall to allow traffic for the specific protocol used by INFOQUALITY. Given this, users only need to have any platform and Web browser supporting Java applets.
Further information can be obtained from the project partners. They are also looking for regional distributors for the product.