Software Testing & Quality
Engineering Chapter 6
Quality
Management
System
Linda Westfall
Quality Press
Objectives
• Quality Goals and Objectives
• Customers and other stakeholders
• Planning
• Outsourcing
Quality Management System
A Quality Management System is a collection of policies, procedures,
plans, resources, processes, practices, and the specification of
responsibilities and authority of an organization designed to achieve
product and service quality levels, customer satisfaction and company
objectives.
Quality Management System - contd
QMS can be viewed in three parts.
1. Strategic planning
2. Deployment of the strategy
3. Information systems for monitoring, analyzing and improving the
deployments.
The difference between strategic planning and deployment is:
• Strategic planning means deciding what to do.
• Deployment means using the best methods to carry out the strategic plan.
1 - Strategic Planning
Identify and define top management’s responsibility for the
QMS, including establishing policies and objectives, setting
organization-wide goals, and supporting quality initiatives.
• Strategic planning usually begins with an analysis phase.
• The strengths and weaknesses of the organization are assessed and forecasts are
generated to predict how market opportunities and competitive threats will change
during the time period covered by the study.
• This analysis is sometimes called a SWOT (the acronym for strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats) study.
• Ideally, strategic planning for quality will address each aspect of the SWOT analysis.
1 - Strategic Planning - Contd
After the SWOT analysis is complete, the organization can develop strategic quality plans. To
discern the effectiveness of strategic quality plans, management should employ a series of
sequentially ordered effectiveness tests.
2. Deployment Techniques
Define, describe, and use various deployment tools in support of the
QMS: benchmarking, stakeholder identification and analysis,
performance measurement tools, and project management tools such as
PERT charts, Gantt charts, critical path method (CPM), resource
allocation, and so on.
Quality improvement does not just happen. It must be planned,
supported, and monitored.
Planning requires ways to identify the specific initiatives to be taken on,
while support and monitoring require methods for tracking and
communicating progress.
2. Deployment Techniques - Contd
• Policy deployment : Policies provide direction to guide and determine present
and future decisions. They indicate the principles to be followed or what is
to be done but not specifically how it is to occur. A documented and
deployed quality policy provides.
• A written guide to managerial action, lending stability to the organization.
• Consideration of quality problems and their effects
• A basis for auditing practices against policy
Deployed policies cascade throughout the organization, directly impacting each
functional area and indirectly affecting events, activities, and outcomes depending
on those functions. If policies do not have this effect, they are not fulfilling their
purpose. Each function and person impacted by the organization’s policy
must align their objectives and procedures to support the policy.
2. Deployment Techniques - Contd
Goals and Objectives: Goals must fulfill the SMART principle.
An example of the hierarchical relationships between strategy, a goal, objectives, and action plans
follows:
Organization strategy: Continually build and retain a loyal customer base.
Organizational goal: Deliver all products to all customers 100 percent on time.
Organizational objective: Given current capacity, improve delivery dates of all future customer orders
from 35 percent to 75 percent on-time delivery by February 2010 and to 100 percent by August 2010.
Functional objectives: The quality department will assign a quality engineer to convene a cross-
functional process improvement team by November 1, 2009. The team will utilize lean manufacturing
techniques to reduce cycle time and will continue its efforts until the production process has achieved
100 percent on-time delivery performance.
Action plans: Detailed plans state how, when, and by whom the objective will be achieved. Action
plans may resemble mini project plans or may be more complex project planning documents as needs
dictate. In either case, action plans influence planning and scheduling.
Performance measurement tools
Balanced Score Card. (BSC)
Traditional reporting framework typically only
look at the financial perspectives.
BSC however proposes four perspectives for
performance measurement.
1- Financial Fundamentals 2- Business Processes
3- Customer 4- Learnig and growth
In a typical scorecard, the objective is listed along with associated measures, targets for
performance, and initiatives that will drive the organization to achieve the objective.
Performance measurement tools
Dashboards: is a visual display of key business indicators. It may include various
charts, numbers or information required for a quick review. The elements in a
dashboard should be linked to the strategic objectives
Customers and Stakeholders
Congruence between policy and results is evaluated through audits that
periodically check for conformance. The stakeholders need to be clearly identified
and their differing needs must be met. If adaptation of a policy must occur, it must
remain within the original intent if the policy is to remain credible to the
stakeholders. Frequent feedback from all stakeholders helps to quickly
identify and correct any disparity. Stakeholders include the following:
• Stockholders, the owners of the company
• The executive group, including the board of directors and the top tier of
managers.
• Employees other than top management
• Suppliers and customers
• The community at large
Planning and scheduling
Plan your work, work your plan.
Work planning requires a clear understanding of the overall goal and the objectives.
The planning process must also take into account how the initiative relates to other projects
(e.g. sharing of resources) and therefore often requires input from or participation by multiple
stakeholders.
