Starting Quality Assurance can be difficult when there are existing projects already in progress, new projects starting up and operations running at full speed. There does not seem to be a good point in time to say “We are going to launch into Quality Assurance activities and start improving our processes”. There will always be a more important operations or project related activity that needs to be solved today that will take precedence.
So the first question we want to answer is Why. If we cannot answer the question Why for our particular situation then it is unlikely that any initiative will succeed. Since the answer to this question has to go to the highest levels of the organisation (given the perceived cost of quality), the answer must be put in business terms.
So, given that premise, here are some possible answers to the question Why
- To reduce the amount of rework in any particular process and Save Money
- To get a product or service to market faster and Save Money
- To reduce the number of defects or process problems at all stages of the development and Save Money
In general the arguments, as is obvious from the above, are made out in terms of saving money for the organization. The above are the obvious ones that are common to almost all organizations and can be adapted to any situation.
For your particular situation, you need to look at the processes you use or the products you produce or the way you work and ask if you can apply the above to any aspect. If you cannot apply them directly then you need to look in detail at your processes and see if anything else applies with the caveat that it must have the end result of saving money.
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