NSI QA Best Practices: Frequently Asked Questions
For Frequently Asked Questions about certification against the NSI Quality Assurance Best Practices, please see the NSI Certification FAQ.
General Questions |
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| • | Do you offer training on how to implement the NSI QA Best Practices? |
| • | How can we request a change to a published Best Practice? |
| • | Can we waive a requirement of a Best Practice? |
| • | Can we waive the process for certain projects? |
Requirements Definition Best Practice |
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| • | Section 4.3.2.1 indicates that the system design and the system design components must map to the functional requirements in the Requirements Specification. Can the system design be specified in a separate document? |
Development Process Best Practice |
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| • | What is the Vendor responsibility in regards to Section 4.3.4.1, Acceptance Test Readiness Review? |
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General Questions |
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| No, the NASPL Standards Initiative does not offer any training at this time. |
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| You must submit a formal Change Request in accordance with the NSI Corrigenda Process. Current documentation on the NSI Corrigenda Process can be found on the NSI Publications page. |
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| No, there is no process in place to waive mandatory requirements. The requirement levels are set such that the "must" requirements represent the minimum set of requirements that must be done by all certified parties. Requirements that the Working Group felt an organization might need to effectively waive were given a requirement level of "should". Though there is no waiver of a requirement for an individual organization or on an individual project, if you believe a requirement level is incorrect and needs to change, you may request a change to the Best Practice, which (if approved) would apply globally to all organizations and projects. |
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| No. Once an organization achieves certification against the NSI Quality Assurance Best Practices, the team of people covered by the certification must fully meet the requirements of the respective QA Best Practices for all projects they do that are "related to the creation or updating of hardware and/or software systems for or on behalf of any NASPL lottery". Thus, you may not waive the process for certain projects, unless they fall outside the above scope - hence are not being performed for a NASPL lottery. |
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| Yes. The best practice defines what must be documented but does not require any set document structure, as indicated in the last paragraph of Section 4.1 |
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| The vendor responsibility with the Acceptance Test Readiness review is really to hold the meeting, prepare the vendor deliverables (test summary report & open defects and issues), and agree with the lottery on when the solution is ready to handover to the lottery. So, that is what the assessors would be looking for during the assessment process. The Lottery Acceptance Test Plan is not a document that necessarily gets reviewed by the assessors as part of the Development Process certification - meaning that you don't need to provide it as one of the docs you upload - but you must realize that assessors can always ask for additional information during the on-site assessment. So, the Lottery Acceptance Test Plan is not a vendor responsibility and as long as the assessors don't uncover something that indicates that a vendor somehow inhibited a lottery's ability to produce an acceptable Acceptance Test Plan, there would be no impact on the vendor's certification. |
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