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SQA-QC-Checklists/qc-governance.md

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Quality Criteria: Governance / ARB Workflow

Metadata

Key Value
ID QC-GOV-001
CrossReference QC-BC-001, QC-SA-001, QC-BPMN-001
DomainLanguages IT Professional English

Version History

Date Status Author Reviewer Change Commit
2026-10-01 Accepted Jens Tirsvad Nielsen S07 First public release (1.0.0) —

Allowed Status values: Proposed, Accepted, Rejected, Deprecated. The latest reviewed row is Accepted; the row before it is Deprecated.


Purpose

A governance document defines who reviews what, who decides, and how disputes are settled. A gap in it (an unowned artifact type, a step with no actor, an unworkable independence rule) turns into unreviewed or contested artifacts. This checklist supports the decision to accept a governance or ARB workflow document as the basis for real reviews.

Quality Criteria Checklist

Level: Mandatory criteria are the baseline every instance must meet; Optional criteria are advanced and may be deferred.

# Criterion Level ISO/IEC 25010 Characteristic(s) Notes
1 Purpose states what is governed and traces to the Business Case's governance and traceability objectives (a framework-level document that cannot cite project artifacts traces to the governance document it supports instead) Mandatory Functional Suitability, Maintainability
2 Workflow steps are ordered, and every step names the role that performs it Mandatory Functional Suitability, Usability A passive step with no actor is a defect
3 The RACI covers every in-scope artifact type, with exactly one Accountable per category Mandatory Functional Suitability, Reliability Compare against the Business Case scope list
4 Roles are stakeholder IDs taken exactly from the Stakeholder Analysis; no invented role names Mandatory Maintainability
5 Each verdict (Go, Go-with-conditions, No-Go) defines the resulting artifact status, using only allowed status values Mandatory Reliability, Maintainability
6 Disputed or No-Go verdicts have an escalation path to a named stakeholder Mandatory Reliability
7 The reviewer-independence rule can be applied: a named alternate exists when the reviewer is the author Optional Reliability
8 Review cadence is stated for artifact instances and for the checklists themselves Mandatory Maintainability
9 The document links the process artifacts it relies on (traceability matrix, review process, process model) Optional Maintainability, Usability
10 Written without duplicated words or unexplained abbreviations Optional Usability

Common Defects

  • A workflow step written in the passive voice with no responsible role
  • An in-scope artifact type that appears in no RACI category
  • Two Accountable roles for one category, or none
  • Status outcomes that use a value outside the allowed set, or leave a verdict's outcome undefined
  • An independence rule with no one to reassign to
  • Cadence stated for instances but not for the checklists

Traceability Rule

  • Backward: Business Case checklist (QC-BC-001) for the governance and traceability objectives; Stakeholder Analysis checklist (QC-SA-001) for the roles used in the RACI
  • Forward: BPMN Process Model checklist (QC-BPMN-001) for the process model drawn from the workflow