Quality Design Part 3

Genesis Design Method

‘A method for technology selection and process design using quality as the premise for success.’

© Clyde Lennon, United Kingdom, 2002-2003

10. The Organisation, Design & Quality Considerations

An organisation is a combination of resources like money, people, offices and facilities. Its primary purpose is to supply products or services to a market. Whether or not it is a profit or non-profit organisation, or a government institution, the Genesis Design & Development method will be just as important and as effective.

A lot of what we normally associate with technology, is typically within the facilities of an organisation, i.e. networks, telephone systems, computers, etc. Over the last decade or so, management professionals and academics have also attempted to understand the effects technology has on resources and people. As a result, approaches such as change management (CM) and business process re-engineering (BPR) have evolved and proliferated throughout management consultancies. Not all methods are the same and most work with standard practices able to be implemented time and time again, regardless of the uniqueness of the organisation.

CM or BPR processes are often highly structured activities limited to the way it does its business. That is to say, these projects often ignore dynamics of quality and normally rely upon proven and known answers to questions. But what is truly a good answer for any given circumstance, may not necessarily be the same as that which is already known or proven elsewhere. Indeed, it is important to place the proven and known solution under the same rigorous examination for quality as if it were unknown. There is nothing wrong with CM or BPR and many organisations can gain much through regular reviews. Simply going through the process can remind you of what is and isn’t important. However, without a basis of change founded on principles of quality, the solution, no matter how functionally correct may not yield the quality of performance expected. In essence, potential may not be reached although the solution looks the same as every other one being considered. In these cases an examination comparing quality requirements with those being produced by the solution, will need to be undertaken.

When making a wooden boat for example, you may have several types of wood from which to choose. Each type will have characteristics which will either make it easier to build, or make the boat more stable, or stronger, or lighter. When choosing the wood, you may end up making the wrong choice, because you ignored the desired end result, or the way you needed to build it. If you want to build it quickly and easily with little time at hand, then obviously the wood which enables those results will be the best choice. It may not be the cheapest, or the strongest, or the lightest, but you may build it quickly and without great effort or difficulty. This is a quality decision process. If your design criteria are different, then you will try and build the best boat that fulfils your intended purpose. E.g. It might need to be a river boat, easily loaded onto and off a trailer by two people, able to handle small chop of say two feet and take up to an eight horsepower outboard without vibrating itself into separate parts. You may also want it to last for decades and be a low maintenance proposition. You may want the look and feel of a traditional wood and lacquered river craft. They are all issues that affect the level and type of quality being set in order to determine the best solution from available choices.

There is no simple formula for good design however a balance of quality and purpose will be behind most things you think are ‘spot on’ or ‘cool’. We must also look at the quality of an organisation’s structure, its staff’s level of loyalty, as well as the overall pride of belonging and sense of purpose. You may think that this does not have much to do with choosing an IT solution, however I believe it does. To make the best choices for the company, suggests that the staff must themselves be of sufficient quality in loyalty and experience. It requires open minded and caring consideration for knowing the difference between what is and isn’t good by the staff.

Materially, quality is not necessarily the most expensive, nor the most difficult to produce. Often quality can be from minimalism and lightweight. The phrase form follows function springs to mind as an alternative to fit for purpose. An example, from the late Colin Chapman, founder and designer of Lotus sports cars, is that he always endeavoured to add lightness, by reducing weight without sacrificing strength and structural integrity. His design objectives enabled a higher quality of road holding, handling and ride that a heavier chassis would have compromised, or at worst, cost more in material and taken a more complex design. We can also examine how quality varies depending upon application of the solution and or by those who determine the solution in the first place. It is critical to ensure best experience is employed in the process of setting standards of quality, as well as analysing quality outcomes from potential solutions.

Quality need only be good enough to be fit for purpose, achieving what the market demands and no more. Quality comes before form and can be defined outside of physical objects and logical constructs. E.g. A wing of a plane must give maximum lift at the lowest speed in the coldest conditions possible. This could be the quality criterion for a plane that is needed for short length take off and landings in severe arctic conditions. Indeed, quality and the pursuit of excellence is what drive improvements in all areas of nature and mankind. This is why it must be the basis of choosing solutions for technology, as well as all other aspects of the organisation, such as strategy, structure, branding, positioning, etc.

The reason you should be concerned about quality, is because you seek the best solution. You must also seek to restrict what you expect in order to obtain the quality you can afford, or what is appropriate. Obviously, attainment of the highest possible quality in a specific area may be a goal and is always limited on what can be produced at that moment. Assuming at that moment as the driving limitation, then at some time in the future, what is possible may change. Just look at processor speeds and reduction in microprocessor sizes. All too often, technologists spend more than is required in order to satisfy the business need. The more lights and bigger the processor does not always stand the test of quality for the whole solution. Be careful when making value judgements about what will achieve the quality standards you require. Understand the motives of people involved.

Another issue about quality is that although you and your colleagues are most certainly the arbiters of what’s best for doing your business, you may not have sufficient resources to consider alternatives, competition, emerging markets or even be able to create an objective unbiased view. It is often highly advantageous to have at least one or two people experienced with the process of selection, BPR and CM, so that you and your team can be guided and facilitated throughout the steps towards completion. The independent third party can bring external ideas, criticisms and experience without fear or favour, so that the essence of what matters and what doesn’t, is extracted for the benefit of the organisation and the people concerned. These persons may or may not include the Project Director I mentioned earlier.

Money is a finite resource and as such, you are always limited in what can be invested by what you are prepared to risk in the first place. Secondly, money can be used as a way of measuring quality, through rates of return on investment, or minimisation of risk. There are other ways of measuring quality in financial terms, most of which are understood by accountants and financial analysts. These methods are well known and not included in this document. Whatever the financial criteria, it is an ingredient that makes up quality objectives.

11. Levels of Complexity & Einstein

As stated earlier, it is easy to choose a solution where there are specific requirements with little or no quality requirements. The more complex a problem, the more difficult it becomes to design a solution. Within the realms of software solutions, typical large scale business problems magnify many thousand-fold because of the levels of choices and the choices at each level of the puzzle.

The most difficult problem to solve is one where there is no absolute answer. For example, address and data cleansing are some of the most complex and sophisticated areas of software application requirement. I have been involved in the list management area for more than a decade and a half. Apart from creating automated, user defined workflows, data cleansing is a spiral of ever more complex and discrete work, with a ‘never ending story’. In dealing with personal names and addresses, which are not as precise, or as exact as the computer would prefer, the problems arising from the source data could be infinite. Making a system which can correct spelling errors, correct formatting and layout of words is not a straightforward task. The nature of this problem is that there are an infinite number of problems and ways to resolve them. This is why you must first define what quality you expect and why, because to pursue the development of solutions to infinite problems is to eventually be defeated by the law of diminishing returns. That is to say that the more we solve the problems, the more problems we find. Within companies who have dedicated technologists and management, pursuit of perfection will exact a high price and may never actually be appreciated, let alone increase any of the desired business goals. So in seeking solutions to the problem and choosing technology wisely, the first thing that must happen is to define the outcomes and the levels of quality required.

Einstein wrote that the problem with addressing problems with infinite causes is that no matter how close you think you get solving the problem, you are infinitely distant away from actually doing so. He coined a law intended to have the humour of Parkinson’s law, that ‘The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite’. This is a serious consideration when addressing aspects of technology whereby, as in the address cleansing example above, no matter how hard you try, there is always a new or another problem yet to be solved. Unfortunately, these circumstances mean that there is rarely a set of general rules for solving such issues and therein lay the conundrum requiring a quality specification.

In the case where even a complex set of standardised rules can solve most of the logic needs for cleansing data, all other issues may require either one-off, or specialist processes in order to be resolved. Consequently, over time the department responsible ends up with a truck-load of tools and processes covering every up to date known problem. Associated with added processes will include specialist data accumulated to match and correct the myriad of possible permutations. The cost and complexity to cover all these possible issues are beyond reasonable justification, let alone replication. The madness of this situation is that it can only get worse! Herein lies the root cause of most technology solutions failing or costing too much, separating that which does 80-99% of the puzzle simply and adequately, from that which directly supports the one-offs or vagaries of data, unable to be processed by the basic software. I question the need to undertake more than is necessary in order to satisfy the client within the realms of what is competitively reasonable. Or to put it more succinctly, only do what the market is prepared to pay for and you are prepared to spend to deliver the end result.

This last point is also part of the quality issue, in as much as you must only do what you can afford, not necessarily what you can do. You have limited resources and the market will already have points of reference for expectations. To go beyond these expectations, is wasting resources that may not add any material value to client satisfaction, loyalty or brand awareness and only create a higher cost of sale.

There is another way to solve ‘chasing the end of the rainbow’ problems, which can never be guaranteed 100%. Within technology services it is normal to provide the market with a sliding scale of services, based upon the percentage of result, just like a service level agreement. No one will offer a 100% service level agreement, if it is not possible. We all know that acts of God, War, etc., preclude a 100% guarantee. The same applies to problems like address cleansing and data management. Considerations like these must be tackled in order to determine what level of quality and service is to be delivered in order to achieve goals and competitive positioning.

12. Conflict Management

When choosing a solution, often there will be conflicts in opinions between members of the organisation about what is and what isn’t necessary and more so, about perceptions of quality. Invariably, if the tests I propose above are undertaken by all concerned, it should provide a better platform for consensus.

The Genesis Design & Development method will enable you to question your motives for doing processes, or acquiring technology, so that a thorough and reasonable justification can be reached. The most important aspect of applying this method is to ensure that you define firstly what is important and required. That is, define what is CORE to achieving the goals and objectives of the organisation. Break the core items down into smaller parts that are in themselves ‘objects’ of work or processes. Make sure that ‘intentions’ and ‘reasons’ are clear and generic. E.g. A fast database engine, to support rapid selection and complex analysis. This example defines the higher objective, not necessarily pre-disposing a solution based upon a specific product or supplier. Certainly, there is a need to define what fast, rapid and complex means in the context of the market at the time of the statement being made. That can come later when choosing solutions against the needs of quality based analysis.

13. Fresh Start

Part of the technique for applying quality for choosing technology, is to define the needs of the organisation without reference to the way it is (was). That is, assume a clean sheet of paper. Define the core components necessary to engineer a capable organisation and infrastructure, to achieve the vision and goals expected. Next, compare the way it is to the way it needs to be and decide what must change. This is where most companies lack courage to initiate change. In order to implement change, many aspects of management and business skills must be brought to good effect. This document does not cover such effort, except to state that the rules of checking for and including quality in decision making should be applied in the same way.

14. Quality Steps for Choosing Solutions

My recommendations for undertaking a review of systems, processes and technology, are to:

Firstly ensure that the participants are aware of what quality is and how to judge and determine what matters, where, when, how and why. Ultimately, you decide upon quality relative to the market. Initial sessions should focus on broad business issues starting with vision and positioning and where they are today in the market. Separate the business issues and market objectives from the ‘how’. Map out all services and processes with least effort and steps – streamline the work. Review best practices and methods of competition or other market leading organisations within your geography or others similar in nature. Review all relevant technologies employed within the same industry vertical and review advanced and emerging technologies, which may impact methods and processes. Define all data required and how that data is to be acquired, maintained and stored (static, dynamic, singular, multiple, over time, etc.). Define points of connection and sharing of data between processes and services. Define all logic and reason for doing anything at any point (why/how/when). Create a business definition document stating what the business should look like and how it should operate based upon analysis and application of quality. Create a requirements document for change and solutions, both technology and processes, to address the business definition document. Ensure all participants agree with both documents. Issue both documents (under Non Disclosure Agreement) to potential suppliers (after researching and short listing). Review and choose a short list for due diligence and bench marking of solutions and rank in order of closeness of fit, cost of change and modification as well as other traditional criteria.

Once a choice is made and suitable contracts have been ratified, the implementation should be undertaken so that maximum benefit is yielded as soon as possible with minimal disruption. Quality should be judged alongside original expectations to ensure that the delivery yields the expected results.

Finally, do not be afraid of changing expectations of quality. As the market changes you may have to alter your quality in different ways and this may have minor to serious impact on systems and processes. Assuming this from the outset means that one of the requirements of technology is flexibility and ease of change. Again, this is a subject in its own right however it is also a very important aspect of choosing technology.

In conclusion, quality is about appropriateness and rightness of fit for purpose. It is a level of comfort and benefit above alternatives at a cost you are prepared to pay. It is about considerate design enabling flexibility not only in technology, but also operational processes and methods of delivery. Quality is about inherent design strengths and excellence of execution. Ultimately, the market determines quality requirements and your task is to understand either what you need to achieve to be superior, or look at ways to move the goal post to a new pitch.

Whatever you do, do not assume you can always judge alone what superior quality is or is not. You must involve everyone and get external advice and research to help produce the end result to the level you are prepared to risk and ultimately invest. Quality is something that will create other intangibles within your organisation. Pride, loyalty and commitment will come from being part of the process that seeks to drive the company towards quality based decisions and levels of service. The ultimate reward is having the market respond the same way as your staff.