Quality Mgmt Frameworks

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Quality Mgmt Frameworks SEI CMM
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Some Major Quality Frameworks

• ISO 9000 family of standards
• A general international standard for
  organizational quality systems
• Oriented towards assessment and certification
• Malcolm-Baldrige assessment discipline
• A set of criteria for the (US) Malcolm-Baldrige
  quality award
• Designed to encourage and recognize excellence
• SEI CMM (Capability Maturity Model)
• A software-specific model for improving the
  maturity of software development practices
• Oriented towards self-assessment and improvement
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• A philosophy and practices for improving quality
• Focuses on building an organizational quality
  culture

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Quality vs. Quality frameworks

• A major point to note is that all these are about
  Quality Systems, and not directly about the
  actual quality of the product
• The difference between excellence in quality
  control for an assembly line car and producing a
  handmade Rolls-Royce (work of art)!
• The principle is that an organization with a
  culture of focusing on quality and on continuous
  improvement will consistently produce good output
• Remember also continually optimize achievement
  of multiple objectives that is what systems do

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Systems dont produce quality, People do

• Would you agree?
• What does this say about the need for quality
  systems?

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Value of the frameworks

• Optimize across all project and organizational
  objectives is too open-ended
• Frameworks provide models of what needs to be
  addressed
• Primary value from these frameworks is
• Defining the specific set of areas to address
• Defining specific criteria for determining
  whether the areas are being addressed well
• Providing basic structures to ensure continuing
  focus
• Defining appropriate processes and metrics
• Mechanisms for continuous improvement, so that
  processes keep improving and evolving as needs
  change
• Assessment mechanisms, to check that all this is
  happening

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Which framework to use?

• Different frameworks address different needs
• Also, there are many other frameworks, and many
  additions/variations to each
• Organizations design their own quality management
  approaches (or it just evolves without design!),
  possibly using one or more frameworks as a
  starting point
• Anyway, frameworks only supply goals, and suggest
  some ways to achieve goals
• Each organization needs to adapt the framework(s)
  to their needs, and decide how to achieve the
  goals
• It is common for organizations to go through
  multiple different assessments, for different
  purposes
• If used well, any of the frameworks are good
  enough
• If used poorly, none of them will help! (In
  fact, they will hurt)

Just another tool
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Why do you care about all this?

• General knowledge
• As a software engineer, people will expect you to
  know a little bit about these models
• Understanding the big picture helps, before we
  start to focus on specific metrics and techniques
• Understanding the philosophy and limitations
  helps you to get a more balanced picture of the
  quality area
• And yes, it will be on the exam!
• But only the concepts, not the specifics of each
  model

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Malcolm-Baldrige

• An award for companies that excel in quality
  management and quality achievement
• Broad areas, organization-level focus
• Looks at Approach, Deployment, Results
• The value is in its assessment of quality focus
  and excellence in all aspects of an organization
• Not just engineering

• Leadership
• Quality results

• Human resource utilization
• Customer satisfaction

• Information and Analysis
• Strategic quality planning

• Quality assurance of products and services

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Do you think it helps to have such awards?
Preparing for a Malcolm-Baldrige evaluation takes
a company dozens, maybe hundreds of staff months.
Is it energy well-spent?
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ISO 9000

• A standard for certifying that organizations
  follow procedures for ensuring quality
• Heavy focus on processes and evidence of
  compliance (documentation)
• Some focus on statistical techniques and
  processes for improvement
• ISO 9000 is about procedures
• assure minimum standards of operation
• existence of quality systems and commitment to
  them
• Complementary to other quality management
  frameworks limited value in itself

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What are the advantages disadvantages of a
quality system that is heavily procedures and
documentation-oriented?
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TQM

• Not really a framework, more a philosophy and set
  of practices
• Very strongly oriented towards building a
  quality culture
• Major points of emphasis
• Human aspects
• Quality is the responsibility of every employee
• Empowering employees to take actions to improve
  quality
• Management commitment
• Metrics analysis
• Continuous improvement of process quality
• Customer needs, customer satisfaction
• Most successful quality management programs
  incorporate all these aspects

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The culture approach is not really about
compliance at all
It is about building an environment where
focusing on project and organizational objectives
(Q) is part of what it means to get work done
and to deliver

• Is such an approach good? Is it workable?
• What are the barriers?

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CMM

• Created by the SEI (Software Engg Institute) to
  drive process improvement in software
• Defines a series of maturity levels so that
  organizations can incrementally put software
  quality systems in place
• Self-assessment the idea is to help
  organizations create the most appropriate quality
  system for themselves
• Focused (relatively) narrowly on the software
  development process
• Defines a set of Key process areas and goals
  for each area
• There is now also a CMMI, that expands CMM to
  cover system engineering aspects
• Useful when project scope includes system design

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Frameworks as Knowledge Bases

• (Look at the CMM 1.1 doc on the course website)
• It is really a knowledge base
• What areas do we need to address if we want
  projects to be successful?
• How do we keep everyone aware of good ways to
  accomplish tasks? (define processes and
  practices!)
• What are common sources of problems? What
  structures can we put in place to reduce the
  chance that they will occur?
• What structures do we need to ensure that the
  organization will keep trying to improve its
  processes and practices?
• How do we ensure that good processes lead to
  good results? (define appropriate metrics)
• How we can we figure out when things arent
  working and how to fix them? (metrics
  interpretation, causal analysis, prevention)
• An organizations quality management system is
  its own knowledge base of the best answers to
  these questions!)

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Limitations of CMM

• It is heavily oriented towards optimization of
  repetitive tasks, especially at higher maturity
  levels
• NOT appropriate if projects differ significantly
  from one another
• There is a fundamental assumption that being
  highly structured is a good thing
• But structure is not free! (Effort, flexibility)
• It might run counter to the desired
  organizational culture
• Organizations need to decide how much maturity is
  right for them in each process area
• The more recent continuous model addresses this
• It only works well if the organization has an
  underlying commitment to quality and structure as
  the road to results

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Assessments

• Assessments are massive exercises
• Value Feedback on whats working, opportunities
  for improvement
• Cross-fertilization of ideas
• Problems
• Easy to create evidence for the assessment
• Passing means at best that systems are in place,
  not that results are superior
• Assessments easily become exercises in PR (public
  relations)
• Over-focus on avoiding mistakes can take energy
  away from excellence
• It would be a mistake to read too much into the
  results
• Being assessed at high maturity levels or
  receiving a quality award does NOT guarantee that
  the organization will be more successful or
  produce better products it just means that they
  have structures in place to keep trying to do
  better

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Do you think quality management frameworks and
quality management systems are necessary? Do
they add more value than they cost? Which is
better the culture route, the systems route,
or is it possible to get the best of both worlds?
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My opinions

• Culture is always the best approach
• But systems have their place and value
• Less is more
• Small organizations may not need very much formal
  quality management
• Know the theory. As problems are perceived,
  incrementally put in only what is obviously
  useful
• When designing a system, think carefully about
  what the needs of the organization are and what
  is appropriate (start with the objectives and
  preferences)
• Processes tend to grow with time. Quality people
  should spend as much energy deleting
  unnecessary process as adding process

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Conclusion

• There are many quality management frameworks,
  appropriate to different needs
• They provide good starting point for creating
  quality management systems

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Project Q Mgmt picture

• Exercise Develop a detailed picture of your
  project situation, from a Q Mgmt perspective
• This is a creative exercise!
• Fill in details about what the situation in the
  organization is, and what the needs are
• You are free to develop the situation in any way
  you want
• Suggestion Make it as real as possible
• Split into 2 teams of 3 people each
• Each subteam can develop the situation in its own
  way
• You can serve as reviewers for each others work,
  and also learn from each other

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Starter questions

• What are the product characteristics?
• Language, platforms, code size, dependencies on
  external hardware/libraries
• What are the customer characteristics?
• What do they use the product for, where are they
  located, level of sophistication
• What problems do they have with the existing
  product? (if any) How frequent are support
  requests?
• How urgently do they want the product? How often
  do they make requirements changes? How flexible
  are they?

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More questions

• Team characteristics
• What processes are they currently using?
• (You can either say that they are already using
  this QM system that you are defining, or that you
  are defining a new/improved system for them)
• What are their normal work processes?
• What is their attitude to process? Preferences?
• Is there a lot of turnover?
• What problems do they face?
• Organization characteristics
• What is the culture? What is their business
  approach?