How to measure software Quality assurance progress???

First, quality assurance is a vast area to moot and testing is just one of the ways by which one can determine the quality. Do cognize that if the stakeholders are waiting till the testing stage to determine the quality, then the project is already lost. Measurement is to happen right from the initiation of the project till its completion. Some of the metrics that you can look at are:
In-process measures - Review effectiveness, Number of review cycles, in-process defect density, effort spent on rework and defect prevention activities etc.

Testing is not just about counting the number of test cases that needs to be run. There is a lot of other activities including determining how many number of test cases are required, the strategy behind testing, effort spent on review and correction of test cases, automated vs manual testing, etc. Test specific metrics can include:
Number of test cycles, no. of failed test cases, no. of test cases not run, no. of defects detected etc.

Its a huge arena and depending on just test metrics are not the right way of looking at measuring QA process.

Software Quality Assurance may not just mean Getting pass/fail/no run results of test cases. I can assure its more. Quality is measured from each artifact that is a part of that software project. TCD is just a part of it. But even tough your test cases are all pass, but if the release document for the project is not right, it wont sell. The documents which define the arch, design and V&V process are all important. Now the question is to measure it.

One easy way to measure it by having a periodic internal audits. Getting boolean answers, true or false. the time lines for audits to be set and deliverables at those timelines defined for quality assurance. If those artifacts meet the goal at the time of audit, they are pass, else fail.

QA effectiveness can be basically measured on cost of quality. Basically COQ consists Cost of good quality and cost of poor quality. We can say QA is effective when our cost of good quality is better then cost of poor quality. Cost of good quality includes all proactive measures like reviews, unit testing, audits etc. These activities reduces the rework as defects/issues are fixed at the stage of origin itself. So if rework is reducing is an indication tto show that our cost of poor quality is coming down which itself is an indicator to show that QA activity is moving in right direction. Apart from this the process capability baselines (PCB)carried out periodically shows how are we performing on process front. Continous and steady improvements on PCB also shows that process defined as part of QA is helping the projects to acheive the set targets in right direction. Apart from this various metrics like Review effectiveness, in process defect density ,Requirement volatility etc showing an improved trend shows the effect of QA.

Measuring Software Quality assurance has two angles to it:

- Doing the right thing

- Doing it right

Throughout the lifecycle of a project, quality assurance activities have to be planned, executed, monitored through the various metrics and corrective and preventive measures have to be taken whenever there are variances. So QA is not merely testing or traceability matrix but a much broader activity covering every aspect of project management. To measure the success of Software quality assurance it is important that

- all the stakeholders like the customer, team, sr management are aware and on the same page on the project progress

- All the critical deliverables are reviewed and accepted and all the key decisions whether technical related or mgmt related are discussed and arrived at unanimously. Critical differences within the team have to be sorted out before they are presented outside the project team.

- Quality of a software is achieved when all the criteria for success as laid down by the stakeholders during the planning phase are met

Documentation is boaring , but worth .. starting from project initialisation to project closure meeting .. if documented every minute details .. Best QA acheived with best Quality product . 

Second , companies should adhere to CMM Standards , which cross verifies to deliver best products in market.

Test coverage (tracability matrix) w.r.t to each and ecery functioanlites

This is one way by which one can determine whether your QA process is progressing in the right manner, one must be able to  track how many test cases are awaiting their run, how many have passed and how many have failed. With a graph representing these criteria, which can be produced using a spreadsheet or your test case management tool. The trending would be like:

1. The test cases awaiting run have decreased over the past 2 weeks, indicating that we are allocating the correct amount of resources to running test cases.

2.  Test cases that have passed are increasing over the past 2 weeks, which is desirable.
3.  Test cases that have failed are decreasing and almost at zero, which means that quality has improved over the 2 week cycle.

It was really hard to put the graph here, so i hope you guys got it.....

In my opinion, Quality Assurance should not be limited to measurement of metrics or defects (review & Test) and localized to project and testing team.

Defects is Quality control not assurance. Effectiveness of a given project\product should be checked from Business development\Sales stage.

We can ironout 80% of issues and changes through effective QA in BD & Requirement stage.