Work on Conformance and Quality Assurance is being managed as part of W3C's Quality Assurance Activity (QA).
W3C creates the technical specifications regarded by the Web community at large as Web standards. In order for these standards to permit full interoperability and access to all, it is very important that the quality of implementation be given as much attention as standards development. There has always been and still is a strong demand from the Web community, including end users, Web agencies, organizations, and software developers, for better support and better implementation of W3C specifications in both commercial and non-commercial products.
As of November 2002, W3C has published about 46 Recommendations. As our family of specifications gets more complex, their acceptance and deployment on the market becomes an ongoing challenge. Past experience with HTML, CSS and more recently SMIL, all implemented with various degrees of conformance by vendors, were strong incentives to start the QA Activity with due diligence.
The Quality Assurance (QA) Activity at W3C has a dual focus: to solidify and extend current quality practices, and to educate by sharing our understanding of coordination, certification, funding, and tracking of the quality of products and services related to W3C technologies. The mission of the QA Team is to improve the quality of W3C specification implementation in the field. In order to achieve that end, the QA Activity:
Several W3C Working Groups, as well as individuals from the W3C Team and the Web community have started to assemble test suites, produce validation tools and follow good QA practices (see the QA Matrix). In addition, external organizations such as NIST and OASIS, and individuals have been active in the field of conformance and testing of W3C technologies, with varying degrees of W3C Working Group coordination.
These existing efforts are important and serve as a basis for future work as we move forward in the life-cycle of our QA Activity at W3C. In order to be really effective, however, QA work for W3C technologies must be driven from inside W3C and must coordinate with all W3C Activities.
QA is absolutely necessary in order to ensure interoperability and usability and also to have consistency between the specifications W3C produces. The Web community, industry, and Members will benefit from the QA Activity as a guarantee of interoperable products, which is the core mission of W3C.
The QA Activity applies to all W3C Activities and is itself unattached to a particular W3C Domain. Daniel Dardailler acts as Domain Leader and Activity lead. The QA Activity is currently chartered through August 2003.
A diagram made at the first QA workshop (held at NIST in April 2001) uses concentric circles to describe the kind of work foreseen for the QA Activity. The innermost circle (Specifications Development: Assertions, Reviews, etc.) describes work on improving W3C specifications, which serve as the basis for further test development. The next circle is about test development (Tests Development: Guide, Change Control, External Coordination, Common Harness). Together they form the basis for the Working Group. The last circle outlines the Interest Group (Tests Use: Metrics, Communication, Certification).
The mission of the QA Working Group is to organize and unify the work done within W3C groups in building and designing test suites, and to ensure that W3C's validation tools are fully operational, useful and educational. The Working Group also defines the terms of QA using a glossary and a taxonomy file, and creates "how-to" guidelines for writing better specifications and building test material. The Working Group charter is public.
The QA Interest Group's objective is to have W3C, its Membership and the Web community involved in QA at large share their understanding of Web certification, branding, education, funding models, etc. The Interest Group focuses on good practices and public awareness of W3C's resources for quality. The Interest Group charter is also public.
The QA Working Group is mainly working on a framework of documents to help W3C Working Groups and external bodies achieve quality with regards to our specifications. The list of The Seven Framework Documents is available and updated regularly. Four parts of this framework, the QA Framework: Introduction, the QA Framework: Operational Guidelines, the QA Framework: Operational Examples and Techniques, the QA Framework: Specification Guidelines were published as Working Drafts. A roadmap of the publications is now available to help you follow the next milestones of the WG.
The Activity home page is http://www.w3.org/QA/. It is the portal to QA developments at W3C, the Working and Interest Groups' home page, recent news, and meeting announcements.
The QA Interest Group has already produced materials in the form of short articles to help people address issues they have with the applications related to W3C technologies. Olivier Théreaux and Lynne Rosenthal are the co-chairs of this group. The mailing-list public-evangelist has been opened to host discussion about outreach and education
Documents maintained by the QA Working Group and Interest Group, and QA Team include:
We also maintain an up to date issues list and action items list.
We have held four face to face meetings since the start of the Activity.
Test development is expected to be decentralized and done primarily in W3C Working Groups, with the QA Working Group monitoring the process to ensure consistency and timeliness.
The QA Working Group is working on the publication of new drafts for the entire QA Framework, and has has started to review materials and organization of other W3C Working Groups to improve its own material and to help WG define a better QA strategy.
The QA Team and the QA Interest Group are working on resources and tools (like MUTAT, a framework for test) to help people who want to promote best practices. The HTML Validator has been taken under the responsibility of the QA Team. A growing list of tutorials is collected. We have started to maintain liaisons with external user groups (like the WASP) to improve education and outreach.
We expect to hold our next face to face meeting January 2003 in Seattle, USA.
Last modified $Date: 2011/12/16 02:57:04 $
