Is Quality a Burden?

Many times I hear people in the organization say that quality initiatives are a burden; strangely enough I heard a comment that quality is overdone in our company. The question I thought was could quality be overdone ever? This brings me to the basic question of what is quality. To me quality is value for money for the end user.

But we have to agree that something is missing in our quality initiatives. Quality delivery needs strong process backing be it ITIL/ISO or BS7799. Another way of putting the same is the fact that the quality cannot be implemented but can be brought by ensuring the right processes within the delivery organisation. Quality is an output. I feel the need is to focus on process implementation and adherence. Why do people feel that processes are burden or overdone.

1. The underlying objectives of the process are not clearly communicated.
2. The buy in from the people who should follow the process is not there.
3. Processes are not designed to suit the delivery organizations.
4. No clear benefits of process adherence are listed.
5. No rewards and recognition are linked to process oriented delivery.
6. Process implementation starts with a big bang but the continued motivation is lacking.
7. Our approach to process implementation may need improvement.
8. Change comes at a cost; we might not want to take the risk.

We need to understand that all the delivery people in our teams are too busy with the day-to-day operational activities and if we ask them time for these initiatives they would not be too happy about the same but if can sell that the process would help them reduce their work load or help in smoother delivery they could be interested.

May be we are dumping the processes on our Delivery teams i.e. selling without the need. As a common man I might buy your product without my need knowing what a great salesman you are but this in no way ensures that I would use the same. Hence before selling let us create a need and have people ask for the same.

At the same time we need to understand that our sales organisation needs to have these certifications and quality standards and that is the reason why the management wants to have it. This indicates that sales organisation realizes the needs and thus has a focus to fulfill their needs; the same need identification has to be done for the Delivery or support organizations.

Here is how I feel we should go about the same:

1. It is difficult to create a need with all the individual support people so we should start with us first and then be responsible for selling the same at lower levels.
2. Before talking about processes we should understand the problems being faced in operations.
3. Match the problems being faced with the process solution.
4. Sell the solutions to the problem and hence the process
5. Ask for team’s full participation, they should not nominate any other people and themselves not be active participants.
6. If the teams say they do not have the time to participate hence want to nominate others believe me he/she is not convinced with your idea. Take more time to sell the need.
7. If time is a constraint tell him you would match his pace but persist with working only with him.
8. Mark the Key performance indicators for the process being worked upon.
9. Measure the results and reward the team not only for excellent delivery but also for process centric delivery.
10. Have the Delivery manager share his success with other Teams.

The bottom line is let's not do selling without need creation or else we won't have satisfied customers internally and externally. The process should not be “must have” but “must use”.