QA Working Group (QAWG) Home Page

About the Quality Assurance Working Group

The QA Working Group is one of the bodies of the Quality Assurance activity at W3C, chartered until August 2005.

The mission of this Working Group is stated in its charter : The mission of the QA Working Group is to solidify and extend current W3C quality practices regarding specification editing, validation tools and test suites, and coordination efforts within W3C.
There is more information available on the scope and deliverables of this Working Group.

If you're interested in starting a QA effort in your Working Group, you should have a look at our QA Framework primer, and get in touch with us (www-qa-wg@w3.org or dom@w3.org for a more private contact)!

If you want to support the QA Working Group efforts to bring W3C at the top level of quality, the best is probably to join our Working Group and participate! If you can't make such a commitment, participating to the Interest Group and sending feedback on our documents is of precious help to our work.

Upcoming

Upcoming QAWG teleconference & meeting topics (see also minutes of past meetings)

Tentative agendas:

29 Aug: Conformance clause template, Test Case Data model, QA Primer review, Test FAQ review

(the Working Group meets weekly on Monday at 11:00 am ET ; see also the meeting logistics)

Deliverables & milestones

Current delivery plan of the QA Framework

QA Doc primer: updated mid November; needs some rewrite (Mark and Lynne to review it)
QA Handbook: republished as WG Note end of August
SpecGL: done (Rec!)
Variability in Specs: next publication end of August
Test FAQ: first version released on May 10, 2005
Test Case Data Model: first publication (Note?) end of August)

Resources

WG deliverables and discussion drafts

QA Framework

the QA Framework Primer and Usage Scenarios introduces how the different parts of the QA Framework fit together, who should use them and how.
QA Handbook (formerly OpsGL+Intro)
- WG version
- last published version: QA Handbook Working Group Note, November 22, 2004
SpecGL
- last published version: W3C Recommendation, June 29
Variability in Specifications
- recent WG Draft: running Editors version
- latest published version: 2005-06-29
Test FAQ:
- Released on May 10, 2005, continuously updated in place
Test Case Data Model:
- recent WG Draft: Editors draft
QA Wiki
Assessment & recommendations reports on templates for OpsGL/ET and SpecGL/ET (Jan 2004)

Record of QA Activities in W3C

reviews of W3C Rec using SpecGL LC Nov 2004
Matrix of W3C Specifications (on-going)
Survey of authoring techniques at W3C (September 2002)
Survey of Testing practices at W3C (March 2004)
DOM Test Methodology description (Feb 2004)
reviews of W3C Working Groups and Specifications using 2002/2003 QA Framework

Issues and Action Items

checklist of points to check before TR publication
Last Call 2005 issues ; draft disposition of comments
pre-LC issues on SpecGL / QA Handbook
former Candidate Recommendation Issues for OpsGL/SpecGL
former Last Call Issues of QA Framework 15 October 2003 revisions; see also SpecGL disposition of comments, OpsGL disposition of comments, and QA Framework Intro disposition of comments
former Issues List -- tabulation of QA issues, 30 April 2003 revision.
Action Items for the members of the Working Group.
the Group page has details about administrativia and Working group logistics, worth a visit for the group participants.

Charter

Here is the charter for the QA Working Group.

Communication with and within the group

Mailing-list

www-qa-wg@w3.org is the publicly archived list of the QA WG. Public discussion on topics related to W3C's Quality assurance is welcome on the public, and publicly archived list of the QAIG, www-qa@w3.org. See also the clarifications on communicating with the QA WG posted to www-qa in March 2004.

Meetings of the Working Group

As stated in the charter, the QA Working Group meets both during teleconferences and face-to-face meetings.

The QA Calendar page holds the minutes of the past meetings (teleconferences and face-to-face).

Patent Disclosures

The lists of specifications covered by the W3C Patent Policy and the instructions on how to make disclosures are available from the QA Working Group Patent Policy Status page.

Liaison

The group maintains a number of liaisons with other organization or groups inside or outside W3C for the purpose of the activity.

Contacts

Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>, W3C Conformance Manager, QA Working Group chair

Members of the Working Group

Tim Boland, NIST
Patrick Curran, Sun Microsystems
Dimitris Dimitriadis, DOM test suite
Karl Dubost, W3C, chair
Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C
Lofton Henderson, CGM Open (former co-chair)
Richard Kennedy, Boeing
Lynne Rosenthal, NIST, Co-chair of the QA Interest Group
Mark Skall, NIST