redesign of QA Framework

QA Interest Group --

At our QAWG/IG face-to-face [1] during the Tech Plenary 2004, we have 
decided on a complete remodeling of the QA Framework (QAF).  This follows 
our trial implementation experiences during CR, as well as comments and 
feedback from Working Groups and individuals.

We have decided to go Lite and to redesign the whole QA Framework:

* Ops Guidelines (combined with Introduction) will become a useful "QA 
Handbook", to help chairs and staff contacts manage and organize their WGs' 
quality practices.
* Spec Guidelines will have a diet and become lighter: Spec GL Lite [2]
* Test Guidelines will have a diet too and become lighter as well: Test GL 
Lite [3]

Our goals in this redesign are to:

- reduce the size, complexity, and perceived burden on scarce resources of 
the WGs;
- make QAF more useful and usable by including lots more practical tools 
and examples;
- make the language simpler and clearer;
- synchronize the (Lite) QAF components at a common stage of usability and 
maturity.

The QAF documents will go back at the WD stage.  For this next phase, we 
will use the QA wiki [4] as a participation tool for other WGs or external 
people to participate and suggest tools or needs.  We hope this will give 
more ongoing review and feedback, between our publishing milestones.

In retrospect, the theoretical work that we have developed around the QAF 
in the past two years has nailed down a lot of important issues.   It 
should provide a solid foundation for the new, lighter-weight QAF.  The 
challenge now is to combine the best of that into "A Kinder, Gentler QA 
Framework", as it was described [5] at Technical Plenary.

Regards,
-Lofton
(for QAWG)

[1] http://www.w3.org/QA/2004/03/f2f
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2004Mar/0028
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2004Mar/0015
[4] http://esw.w3.org/topic/QaFramework
[5] http://www.w3.org/2004/Talks/tp2004-test-pc/