Question

You have been tasked to evaluate the effectiveness of ISO 9001 systems in your organization. Write a report to management on the performance of the system, the shortfalls and recommendations for improvement.

Answer 1

Solution –

The quality management systems in place for ISO – 9001 in our software delivery based organization are run as per the standards recommended by the external quality agency. The systems in place are as follows –

1. All software releases are marked for delivery only after the 5 testing stages –

• Unit Testing
• Integration testing
• System Testing
• Regression Testing
• Beta Testing

2. All testing cycles are independently run and documented
3. Another separate team reviews the documents and passes the releases
4. A separate quality team manages hiring processes
5. Control documents on various infrastructures are maintained and regularly monitored
6. Customer requirements are separately kept and maintained.
7. Project management team is also governed by a separate regulatory team.

The system is robust and does not allow for any malfunctions. The shortfalls though are as follows –

1. The quality team is not well governed and hence sometimes the business objectives suffer
2. The backups in the quality team for staff resources are not enough

The way ahead for improvement in the systems is that set standards are followed in the quality team and proper resources are available so that business does not suffer with lags. Certain set software coding standards should be in place so that expectations are clear and negotiations are reduced between the quality and the development teams.