Hi
I am new to the quality world. I work for a software company and the QA manager retired and I took on the QA role.
I am quite confused about document approval, ISO 9001 clause 7.5.2 - c.
My question is: Do ALL documents needs to be approved before they are made available for use? My company have some documents that we do not require approval for and I would like to know if this is allowed by the standards?
Here are some examples of documents that have are produced that currently do not get approved before they are made available for use:
1) We produce ballpark quote documents that get sent to customers showing an estimation of how much a piece of software development work will cost. The document is produced by a manager, so he/she is down as the author of the document. But the document does not get approved by another person before it is sent to the customer. Is it acceptable to not have an 'approver' on this document? Isn't it enough to see that the author of the document is a manager?
2) Once a piece of software has been developed, a developer will complete a unit test document. So the author of the document is the developer. But again we don't require the unit test document to be approved, so again, there is no 'approver' on the document. The manager just needs to see that a unit test was done and the details of that unit test. Is it acceptable to not have an 'approver' on a unit test document?
It seems as though requiring every single document to be approved before it is allowed to be distributed, is adding a layer of complexity and delay into the process of getting a task completed. What is the need to have a ballpark quote document or a unit test document approved when the people preparing these documents are trusted people and the people best placed to complete these documents.
As you can see I am having trouble understanding the approval concept.
Any feedback/clarification would be much appreciated.
I am new to the quality world. I work for a software company and the QA manager retired and I took on the QA role.
I am quite confused about document approval, ISO 9001 clause 7.5.2 - c.
My question is: Do ALL documents needs to be approved before they are made available for use? My company have some documents that we do not require approval for and I would like to know if this is allowed by the standards?
Here are some examples of documents that have are produced that currently do not get approved before they are made available for use:
1) We produce ballpark quote documents that get sent to customers showing an estimation of how much a piece of software development work will cost. The document is produced by a manager, so he/she is down as the author of the document. But the document does not get approved by another person before it is sent to the customer. Is it acceptable to not have an 'approver' on this document? Isn't it enough to see that the author of the document is a manager?
2) Once a piece of software has been developed, a developer will complete a unit test document. So the author of the document is the developer. But again we don't require the unit test document to be approved, so again, there is no 'approver' on the document. The manager just needs to see that a unit test was done and the details of that unit test. Is it acceptable to not have an 'approver' on a unit test document?
It seems as though requiring every single document to be approved before it is allowed to be distributed, is adding a layer of complexity and delay into the process of getting a task completed. What is the need to have a ballpark quote document or a unit test document approved when the people preparing these documents are trusted people and the people best placed to complete these documents.
As you can see I am having trouble understanding the approval concept.
Any feedback/clarification would be much appreciated.