Quality Assurance

Use this skill to guide a project, portfolio, release, or feature through an ISO 9001-aligned quality assurance workflow. The goal is to determine whether project execution is controlled enough to deliver a quality product, then turn gaps into corrective actions.

This skill supports readiness and evidence gathering. It does not certify the organization, replace an accredited auditor, or reproduce ISO standard text.

ISO baseline

As of 2026-04-28, ISO 9001:2015 remains the current published ISO 9001 requirements edition, with ISO 9001:2015/Amd 1:2024 listed by ISO and ISO/FDIS 9001 under development for a future edition. Use clause labels and the team's own evidence questions; do not copy standard text.

Reference: https://www.iso.org/standard/62085.html

Phases

Review dimensions

Tailor every checklist to the scope, but keep these dimensions visible:

• Context and interested parties.
• Leadership, roles, responsibilities, and quality policy alignment.
• Planning, risks, opportunities, and quality objectives.
• Support: resources, competence, awareness, communication, documented information.
• Operation: requirements, design, development, controls, suppliers, release readiness.
• Performance evaluation: monitoring, measurement, internal review, customer satisfaction, audit evidence.
• Improvement: nonconformity, corrective action, continual improvement.

Checklist item format

Every check uses this evidence-first shape:

- [ ] QA-<AREA>-NNN — <question>
  - ISO 9001 area: <short label only>
  - Evidence required: <file, command, meeting record, approval, metric, or checklist>
  - Status: open | satisfied | gap | nonconformity | not-applicable
  - Severity: S1 | S2 | S3 | S4
  - Owner: <role/person>
  - Due: YYYY-MM-DD | n/a
  - Evidence: <links or "none yet">
  - Notes: <short rationale>

Procedure

0. Intake gate. List inputs/ non-recursively before scoping. Surface every item via a single AskUserQuestion: "I see N items in inputs/. Which are relevant for this quality review?" Common QA inputs: prior audit reports, supplier evidence packs, customer complaints, regulator letters, certificate copies. Never auto-extract archives. Cite paths into inputs/ from quality-plan.md and checklist evidence fields. Full contract: docs/inputs-ingestion.md. Decision: ADR-0017.
1. Start. Establish scope, product/service boundary, interested parties, applicable lifecycle/project artifacts, quality objectives, and evidence locations. Record whether this is internal readiness, supplier assurance, release readiness, or formal audit preparation.
2. Plan. Create a quality plan and checklist set. Derive checks from scoped artifacts instead of using only generic ISO labels.
3. Check. Execute checklist items against evidence. Run deterministic verification where available. Record gaps plainly and keep open items visible.
4. Review. Summarize readiness, nonconformities, risks, and evidence gaps. Use ready, ready-with-conditions, not-ready, or blocked.
5. Improve. Convert findings into corrective actions, assign owners, define effectiveness checks, and link actions into the active project/spec/release artifacts.

Severity guide

• S1 — delivery should stop: missing product requirements, uncontrolled release, severe compliance/security/data risk, or no owner for a critical nonconformity.
• S2 — delivery at risk unless corrected before the next gate.
• S3 — manageable gap with an owner and follow-up date.
• S4 — improvement opportunity or minor documentation cleanup.

Reporting

Report:

• quality review path,
• readiness verdict,
• S1/S2 findings count,
• verification commands run,
• corrective actions opened,
• remaining evidence gaps.

For a deterministic KPI snapshot before or during the review, use the quality-metrics skill or run:

specorator quality:metrics

Do not

• Do not claim ISO certification or external audit approval.
• Do not quote long ISO text or embed copyrighted standard content.
• Do not hide a gap by marking it not-applicable without a rationale.
• Do not close corrective actions without an effectiveness check.