Quality Assurance

T&H considers the scope of quality control and assurance to begin at the onset of the project and extend through the life cycle of all tasks, products, and deliverables. Our quality control and assurance process begins by applying qualified and experience staff. We then develop and document a process, action plan, and a description of performance measures relevant to the specific task.

T&H Quality Assurance Methodology

During each project, the T&H QA Manager assists the Project Manger in incorporating QA and management practices into the Project Plan. They leverage the T&H CMMI process asset library (PAL) and T&H's organizational set of standard processes (OSSP) to quickly integrate quality into each project's life cycle. Together, they develop and document a process, action plan, and a description of performance measures relevant to each specific task. We promote group storyboarding techniques to outline the content of work products and obtain early buy-in from all stakeholders.

Throughout the work product development process, an iterative approach is used to continuously verify, validate, and improve the quality of work by the T&H team. Our QA processes incorporate proven quality control techniques including walkthroughs, inspections, and reviews to identify and resolve quality defects in a proactive manner. All deliverable documents will undergo a T&H internal Peer Review before being delivered to the client. Comments gathered from internal peer reviews will be incorporated before a product is delivered. We will use these multiple levels of review to inspect work products and identify and remedy non-conforming items prior to delivery.

T&H uses an Iterative Approach to Contract Quality Monitoring

To prevent quality defects, T&H gathers, records and communicates product information as it relates to enterprise business processes, impacts, risks, applications, and technology. The PM and the QA Manager perform periodic assessments of each task to ensure that specific QA activities are being implemented and are working effectively. QA results are posted on the T&H Management Portal for review by all T&H Team members. The PM and Task Leads review QA results with the client to identify process improvement to be incorporated into current and future tasks or projects.

Risk Mitigation

T&H's integrated risk management protocol includes a formal process for anticipating, ranking, and mitigating any task risks, and is designed both to minimize the risk and to assure the client of receiving high quality, on-time deliverables. T&H's approach to mitigating project and program risk uses the following steps:

1. Risk Identification -- T&H is consistently looking at changes in resources and the internal and external programmatic and technical environments to identify potential risks before they become problems. In addition, our project management approach anticipates typical risks and builds mitigation/elimination strategies into our overall operations.

2. Risk Analysis -- Technical, task, and client business risks are analyzed and ranked by determining the probability of a negative event as measured against the likely severity of that event and its potential impact on the project or client operations. In addition, we examine potential mitigation strategies and their cost and impact.

3. Prioritization -- Based on our analysis, T&H prioritizes risks and presents the results, recommended mitigation strategies, and rationale to the client management. Our presentation includes full documentation of the process.

4. Contingency Planning -- As part of the mitigation effort and our overall project management approach, T&H develops contingency plans to anticipate typical risks, such as office closures, non-availability of staff due to illness, or other common risks. These plans are updated as project needs, resources, or standard procedures change.

5. Mitigation -- We implement the mitigation strategy, following the prioritized plan.

6. Monitoring -- Our documentation, reporting activities, and open lines of communication promote continuous monitoring of progress performance, including the effectiveness of mitigation strategies in preventing and responding to risks.

Communications

T&H believes that the best way to assure quality is through effective communications. For each project, T&H facilitates communication with client stakeholders by implementing protocols to address formal and informal communications. Working with the client, the PM develops an informal communications plan detailing audience, messages, communication artifacts, risks, and effective facilitation communication methods. To do this, T&H leverages years of experience in facilitating high-profile meetings, joint application development (JAD) sessions, and meetings to successfully facilitate and coordinate any working group meetings. We leverage the use of our proprietary GroupWare Solutions^TM Methodology within the EA-CoE Collaboratory to facilitate meetings that yield measurable outcomes, consensus, and clear direction on next-step activities. This technology is not designed for all meetings. Thus, T&H carefully assesses the goals of each meeting prior to deciding whether or not to utilize Groupware Solutions^TM. T&H has successfully leveraged GroupWare Solutions^TM for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, and other Defense, civilian, state and local agencies.