Quality Assurance Practices in Website Development

The provided report is about the quality assurance practices used in the development of the Birch box website. The use of quality standards has been employed to ensure efficient planning and scheduling of processes involved in the website development process. A work breakdown structure, precedence diagram, and Gantt chart are also included to demonstrate the project management approach. The assignment discusses the importance of managing dependencies in project management and highlights potential risks associated with implementing quality standards.

Quality Systems in IT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Question 1........................................................................................................................................1
a) Industry of interest .................................................................................................................1
b) Real world organisation..........................................................................................................1
c) Brief description of Birchbox.................................................................................................1
d) Address of website..................................................................................................................2
Question 2........................................................................................................................................3
a) Use of Quality standards.........................................................................................................3
b) Assessment on risk associated with development of the website...........................................4
c) Quality assurance practices.....................................................................................................5
Question 3........................................................................................................................................6
Work breakdown structure..........................................................................................................6
Precedence diagram....................................................................................................................7
Gantt chart...................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Beauty sector can be considered as one of the best and trending topic to take as people
are very interested in analysing the new beauty regimes and products. Birch box from the beauty
sector can be selected as this deals with marketing and sales of the beauty products (Robitaille,
2010). Along with it, Birch box focuses on giving their customers various offers and that too on
a regular basis. The report is about the description of Birch box and the involved quality
standards and risks. It also includes various quality assurance practices that the Birch box can
make use of at the time of development of each stage of the Birch box website. Also, it includes
a work breakdown structure, precedence diagram and a Gantt chart of the whole project of the
website development of the Birch box.
Question 1
a) Industry of interest
The chosen sector here is beauty sector as this can be considered as one of the trending
topics these days and it is obvious enough that there is a huge importance of these beauty
essentials, specially for women. The sector has been selected because out of all the going
industries, make up and beauty essentials is trending very much and it attracts a huge amount of
people as well. There are various chances of employment in this sector as new products are
launched after new experiments of the ingredients ( Kapferer, 2017). A very efficient feature of
the company is that it sends a box full of beauty essentials to its customers which is a very
attractive feature for the company. Also, after sending it, it makes sure to take proper feedbacks
so that if the product lacks in some area then, the company can modify it as soon as possible. The
range can be classified on a huge basis as there are organic products, products that are made up
of chemicals etc., so the person according to their interest can work in this sector as this is not a
boring job, even it is considered as a very interesting thing to do and the person itself can learn a
lot from doing this.
b) Real world organisation
As a beauty sector was chosen, so Birch Box-UK can act as the best and suitable
example. It has been selected because dealing with cosmetics and beauty essentials is considered
as a very interesting area that can create the level of interest in the person itself. Unlike boring
jobs, one cannot get bore in this field. Along with this, it is trending as well. Women's are likely
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to stay more interested than men about the beauty essentials. So, according to these facts,
Birchbox, a beauty sector has been selected.
c) Brief description of Birchbox
Birch box is an online retailer which deals with the marketing and sales of beauty
essentials and the speciality of the e commerce website is that it often sends the beauty boxes to
its customers which consists of various beauty products. After sending the beauty boxes to its
customers, they also take proper feedback from them as if in the box, they are not satisfied with
any product or any other issue related to the products such as the allergic reactions etc. It all is
being done so that if there are any issue occurring, they can resolve it as soon as possible. It
involves all the beauty care products such as sun screens, lotions, creams, essentials for lip etc.
They deliver products online. All of it is being done online. The customers check out the online
website of Birch box, selects and then places an order ( Łopaciuk and Łoboda, 2013). Within a
few days, Birchbox delivers the same to the customers. An essential feature to note is that after
the delivery, the company takes regular feedbacks from the customers whether they liked the
product or not. If any customer seems not satisfied with the product, in that case, the Birch box
ensures to replace the product as soon as possible.
d) Address of website
The web address of the following firm is given as under :
https://www.birchbox.co.uk/
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Question 2
a) Use of Quality standards
A quality standard is considered as a detail of all the needs and factors that are required,
guidelines and other factors that are essential to meet its quality. It helps in establishing a
framework. These standards play an important role as they help in satisfying the customers to an
extent. While developing the website for the Birchbox, the company must have followed some
quality standards. Some very common and well known examples are discussed as under :
ISO 9000
ISO 9000 is considered as a group of international standards that are based on the quality
assurance as well as management. It is being developed in order to provide help to the companies
as it must have supported the Birch box as well for documenting the factors and elements of the
system very appropriately and efficiently. So, at the time of implementation of the website of
Birch box, ISO 9000 must have helped the company very much as it is usually considered as a
process oriented approach. It involves a various number of guidelines that can help Birchbox in
the implementation of the website and the following standards. It has been certified by
International organisation for standardization (ISO)
ISO 9001
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Any organisation that applies for getting the certification of ISO 9001 is first being
analysed on some basis. The factors that it is being based involves the functioning, products,
services etc. It is because if after the whole analysis, there seems to be some errors related to
some products or in case of servicing, then the certification is not being provided to the company
(Fields and et.al., 2014). At the time of analysis of the Birchbox, all of its products and services
are being analysed. After the verification of each and every product, it has been given the
certification of ISO 9000 and ISO 9001. So, these certifications are being given after a proper
analysis only.
There are some specific goals of ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 and these are discussed as
under :
 It tries to meet the requirements and needs of all the stakeholders such that by any means,
they do not get disappointed, so it assesses before certifying the specific company.
 Also, this ensures that it should be usable enough by every small, medium or large
organisation.
 Also, it focuses on staying simple and elegant in its own way that the competitors also try
to involve some of their features for getting the specific certification.
 Another, very important factor is to connect the management of quality with all the
processes of the system.
b) Assessment on risk associated with development of the website
While the implementation of the website of Birchbox have been done, it is obvious
enough that they have faced some risk factors as well. So the factors along with the management
of them is discussed as following :
ISO 31000 helps in giving all the principles and specific guidelines for managing the risk
factors. The advantage of it is that ISO 31000 is being used for providing very basic guidelines
that the Birchbox can make use of and it can also provide various benefits to the company
(Juneja, Ahmad and Kumar, 2011). It however, decreases the rate of risks which can be better
element for the current and future generations. It manages the functions, operations, products and
all the services that the Birch box goes through. It means it tries to prevent these known features
of the Birch box such as marketing and sales of the beauty essentials to the customers and also in
the process of taking feedbacks from the customers.
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c) Quality assurance practices
There are various quality assurance practices that are need to be applied at the time of
development of the website. These practices are discussed as under :
Review of the needs
It is very essential to check what are the requirements of the website. It means analysing
all the essential features which are to be included in it is important. This is considered as an
important step because checking the needs is must before in order to face any failure after. So, it
is a good practice if Birch box has also done this before the development of the website.
Test planning
When all the needs have been analysed and implemented, it must be go through a test as
well. It is because going through it through a test can help in checking whether there is some
error in it or not. If any error or failure has been found, then it can be resolved as soon as
possible. So, the Birch box should also consider on regular tests so that the customers may not
have to face any failure or issue regarding the shopping and delivery.
Unit testing
After single units are being tested, then the whole unit goes through it. It is because this is
a very important procedure to test the whole unit because it helps in representing all the errors
whether they are related to any bullets or with any other issue. So, unit testing is also very
essential to done along with the testing of the sub units.
Regression testing
In this testing, a system is there which helps in detecting all the bugs and errors in the
website of Birch box. Also, it checks that whether the software is running smoothly or not
because of any viruses or bugs ( Dobb, 2013). If any found in the system, they are being
removed and the firewall is being upgraded as well so that it can block such viruses and spams
from next times.
Performance testing
In the performance testing, it is to make sure that the specific application or website is
being tried by a few customers so that the company can get an analysis from the customer's point
of view. It is to be done in order to gain information that what according to customer's is lacking
in the specific website, such as of Birch box only. If there are some feedbacks from the
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customer's side, then in that case, the company tries to resolve it as soon as possible by
modifying the specific product or service.
Question 3
Work breakdown structure
The above is represented as the work breakdown structure of the development of the website of
Birchbox. All the steps are discussed as following :
Design
The designing of the website is very important because whenever customers will visit the
specific website, if it is not presentable, this point only will minimize the interest of the people in
shopping from the same. So, designing plays a very important role. The process of designing
includes three main steps which involves selecting the layout, designing of the graphics and
styling of the website. The styling can be done by CSS or any other styling tool which can make
the representation of the website better.
Content
Another important factor is the content which is to be included in the website. It will
involve all those factors which are essential for the Birchbox such as few bullets involving Shop,
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Illustration 1: Work breakdown structure for Birch box

box, gift, surprise etc. These are the main bullets of the home page by which people will be able
to move for investigating and shopping the stuff. The main components of the content is the
portfolio and the site copy.
Testing
Testing is the process in which the whole website is being checked. Two types of testing
is done, alpha and the beta testing. First, the alpha testing is the testing which acts as an early
alarm that helps in detecting the errors in the software products whereas beta testing is the
second part of the testing which completes the overall testing ( Brink, 2010 ).
Hosting
Hosting is considered as the web hosting which considers the housing, managing and
controlling the files of some or more specific websites.
Development
The development of the website of Birch box can be classified in two factors, main page
and the portfolio page. In the main page, logos are created and in the portfolio page, prototypes
of pages are developed. The logo acts important and it should be impressive enough that by
viewing it, people may want to search for it that it represents what, what are its components.
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Precedence diagram
The precedence diagram can be used because it provides a sort of visual representation of the
plan that has to be implemented in the website development. There are four types of
dependencies which are finish- start, start -start, finish – finish and the start – finish. This
diagram helps in depicting all the activities that are involved in the complete project and that are
necessary for the implementation in the development of the website.
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Gantt chart
The Gantt chart can help in making an efficient planning and scheduling of all the processes that
are being used in the website development process. It helps in making an assessment that how
much time, the specific project can take. Also, it includes all the resources which are involved
and all the activities are being orderer in a planned way and that is to be followed in the project
for getting efficient and appropriate results. Along with this, it also helps in managing all the
dependencies within different tasks.
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CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from the report that Birch box is considered from the beauty sector
and the topic has been chosen because it is a trending area and people are much interested in the
same. Although women are likely to be more interested in it than men, but it is classified as an
interesting industry. The use of quality standards have also been used while the implementation
of the website of Birch box. While using the quality standards, there were various risks as well
which are connected to it. So, these should be considered as well. There are various quality
assurance practices as well that are being applied at all the stages of the development of the
Birch box website. A work breakdown structure representing the stages of the development of
website are also included along with the precedence diagram and the Gantt chart.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Brink, C., 2010. Quality and standards: Clarity, comparability and responsibility. Quality in
Higher Education, 16(2). pp.139-152.
Dobb, F., 2013. ISO 9001: 2000 quality registration step-by-step. Routledge.
Fields, P. and et.al., 2014. What is quality? a management discipline and the translation industry
get acquainted. Tradumàtica. (12). pp.0404-412.
Jha, M., 2015. The global beauty industry: Colorism, racism, and the national body. Routledge.
Juneja, D., Ahmad, S. and Kumar, S., 2011. Adaptability of total quality management to service
sector. International Journal of Computer Science & Management Studies. 11(2). pp.93-
98.
Kapferer, J. N., 2017. Managing luxury brands. In Advances in Luxury Brand Management (pp.
235-249). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Khoja, S.A. And et.al., 2010, November. Quality control and risk mitigation: A comparison of
project management methodologies in practice. In Education and Management
Technology (ICEMT), 2010 International Conference on (pp. 19-23). IEEE.
Łopaciuk, A. and Łoboda, M., 2013, June. Global beauty industry trends in the 21st century.
In Management, Knowledge and Learning International Conference (pp. 19-21).
Robitaille, D. E., 2010. ISO 9001: 2008 for Small and Medium-sized Businesses. ASQ Quality
Press.
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