Measured Quality

Many people take a manufacturing approach to quality - that is, measure the defects, identify the key areas that need improvement, fix & track the changes. Mathematically, even scientifically, this experimental approach works in large-scale production environments.

It breaks down when you don't have scale (lots of things to measure) & you don't have a repeated process or output (measuring the same thing). Even worse, you're not measuring good quality, you're measuring poor quality.

If the focus is on making things less badly than you do now, then there is a limit to what can be improved, & most of the steps are incremental.

If you want to measure good quality, & improve it, then you have to take an entirely different approach - you have to measure something that is good, & achieve a higher measure over time.

When producing goods & services, then customer satisfaction is often the best measure. This is, of course, also the most dangerous, because it's subjective & dependent on who your customers are at that point in time, the last job you did for them, etc.

But, & this is important, if your customers are regular & keep coming back, & every job is to the same exacting standards of high quality, then the customer will consistently see your goods & services as being of high quality, & will continue to be good customers.

Somewhere down the line, if your customer is not an end user, they also do customer surveys that show them how their products & services are working in the marketplace.

The next problem with measuring customer satisfaction is that you generally can't do it yourself - it requires some arm's-length work by another organisation or individual, which costs a lot more to implement than sitting on your production line & counting the reworks or defects.

Nobody said that quality was going to be an easy thing to implement.

It definitely doesn't have to be easy to measure.

The question really is, how meaningful is anything but the subjective response of your customers? You can have the highest auditability of product, with zero defects, & still be commercially in the red because your potential customers don't trust you or your ability.

You won't know that unless you survey them.

No measures of improved processes & lower defects will change their opinion - or affect their satisfaction level.

Quality Moments

Quality awareness links with Agile - as a business model or a methodology. Quality is all about being in the moment, being aware of the current state & what it should be, & knowing how to get from one to the other. Agility is about being able to move quickly & decisively under changing circumstances.

Thus, the best kind of Quality comes when you are Agile.

More to the point, if you don't have Agility, then your Quality is simply assurance, not management. By that, I mean that you can check the quality after the fact, then you have to rework or throw out defects. That's inefficient. That's costly.

Agility means changing things at the point where they happen. It means reacting to the problem. It leads to being able to see the problems that might occur as the environment changes - predicting likely outcomes with experience (rather than prescience).

Agility is being in the moment. Quality is the essence of the moment.

Success is bringing the two together to make better moments now & into the future.

Of course, this all ties in with the idea that quality management is not a slice of the project at some predefined point in the process, or a few key concepts tacked together & learned by rote. Quality, like Agility, is a mindset, & a way of doing business that doesn't come easily.

It's hard work, & it's a constant struggle.

Quality never rests.

Quality is never finalised - it is ongoing.

Quality is never successful - even if it is a continuing success.

Quality is a way of life.

Quality is approaching every moment as an opportunity to ensure that things are as good as they can get, & that things will continue to be good, if not better.

Live in the moment. Be aware of the moment. Prepare for the next moment.

Then, each moment can be a quality moment.