Readings
- What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
- Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
- Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
- Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
- What does all of this have to do with IT?
The Claim Proof Insurance Case
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process? Please post your responses.
Rich
Donald Hoxhaj says
What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
Total Quality Management refers to set of standards adopted by organizations to sustain long term customer satisfaction through constant improvement in quality of its products, services, and working efficiency of employees. Each person in the TQM hierarchy, including suppliers and partners too, play a vital role in producing and delivering quality products and services to its customers. The key principles of TQM are:
1. Customer Focus
Every organization need to adhere to the requirements of its customers because as said, customer is the king and decides the quality levels. Therefore, an organization should achieve customer satisfaction through all possible quality means including improving supply chain, upgrading IT and security systems, training and development of employees, and following best practices in the industry
2. Employee Empowerment
As discussed, the TQM requires high levels of motivation by the employees and each person in the organization hierarchy contributes in some ways to the quality of the product and to its customers. Therefore, organizations should give its employees the necessary platform and resources to contribute effective, either in teams or individually
3. Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement is a long-term strategic objective and requires an organization to make additional efforts in order to stay competitive and raise the KPIs to meet customer expectations.
4. Process Oriented
One of the key principles that drives the entire TQM systems is Process Orientation. All systems, be it any department, function, or chain within an organization, is governed by processes right from Suppliers to Manufacturers to Customers. The ability to clearly visualize this process and monitor constantly for performance improvement is essential to identify any unexpected issues.
5. Communication
Communication stands as the crux of all the principles mentioned above because any good system requires effective communication through enablement of communication services. The interaction between all these systems within an organization requires communication in day to day operation and business settings.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
The ultimate purpose of Employee Empowerment is to improve the quality of a company’s products and services by empowering its employees to think creatively and make their own decisions. In TQM, it is essential that if quality needs to be constantly improved, then the bottlenecks and hassles of getting approvals from senior management be reduced and employees who are closer to the critical systems or problem, make their own decision when the time arises. This allows for faster decision making and improves the speed of execution in a TQM process.
Moreover, Empowerment on the ground leads to higher levels of motivation, satisfaction, and productivity, that ultimate converts to improved quality of deliverables to a customer.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
The top 5 IT Services that are part of the mainstream Industry needs are
1. Software Services
2. Hardware and Network Services
3. Project Management
4. Strategic Planning Services
5. Implementation Services
Note: I have posted the Software Services Flow Diagram as post instead of comment because I could not attach under this post.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
Ideally, the CIO (Chief Information Officer) mandates the most important quality requirements and standards that needs to be adhered to by the IT department. This is then passed on to the Quality teams and the chief quality architects who frame, design, and implement quality feedback loops, control systems, and quality standards to be followed by all members within the IT team.
Richard Flanagan says
Donald – how does this fit with your response to question 1.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Correlating this with the first question, I believe that the quality standards are set based on the first principle i.e. Customer Focus. What I essentially mean here is that the standards are decided on what the customer decides or his business requirements demand of.
Example, if it’s a B2B business, then the standards of quality though may be decided by the partner/customer, but the ultimate deciding factor is the customer’s customer i.e. their end users. They decide the quality, which is then passed on in the chain.
So it’s the need of the end users that decides the quality that the business manufacturers and then this is passed on to the service providers. Therefore, all these stages and the decision making happens in tandem with the mandate of the CIO or CISO to the process owners within the respective departments
Service Provider ——- Manufacturer ——— End Customer (Quality Factor)
Donald Hoxhaj says
What does all of this have to do with IT?
IT today is an integrated system with almost all major division or business functions and in fact, all departments depend on a fool proof and a sophisticated IT system to give services on a constant basis. With increasing integration of IT services such as Hardware, Software, Network, and Database, the quality of an IT system ultimately determines the productivity of the organization and the efficiency of the TQM process on the whole. On the vice versa, IT systems act as system enablers for other associated systems such as CRM, Quality Assurance, Finance, and others. While at one hand they are key essential indicators to improved productivity and quality, they also support the Quality Assurance teams too by giving the high-level information about quality awareness, quality levels, and quality costs across different departments. Therefore, TQM implementation in IT department is of utmost importance so that they not just support, but act as constant enablers for constant quality improvement.
Vince Kelly says
Donald I like your observation about an IT system ultimately determining the productivity of the organization and the efficiency of the TQM process on the whole. As you know, productivity occurs when a business can increase its outputs, minimize its inputs or both. Given the ever increasing pressure on the business and the ever increasing competitive environment, (outside of people), IT is probably one one of the most impactful ways to do this.
Michael Gibbons says
Excellent points Donald and Vince. I completely agree with the importance of IT systems being a major factor in quality. I guess the gray line is making sure the organization has a vested interest in keeping IT relevant (i.e. not having IT dictate how things are done but a coordinated effort for applications and strategies, decisions not made in a vaccum).
Michelangelo C. Collura says
What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
The overarching concept is providing quality in service/product as determined by the customer, not by the firm. Based on this definition, a firm is then concerned with producing quality proactively, not reactively. This means designing it in and not being focused on eliminating flaws through later inspection (although of course this would still be used to boost quality as a secondary method). Perhaps a theme, or principle,in TQM would be continuous improvement. There is no such thing as perfection, and a firm needs to recognize this through constant inspection, customer feedback, design enhancements, etc.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Michelangelo – I really liked your response Michelangelo, especially the fact that the quality is decided by the customer and not the firm. But I have a feeling that the ultimate decision makers of quality are the customer’s customer and this passes on to other partners in the supply chain. Well, customer feedback is definitely the most important point that you mentioned. Many organizations fail do have a feedback mechanism and keep delivering services without understanding the nature of problem faced by the customer. A good feedback mechanism that involves all relevant stakeholders is absolutely essential and would allow for constant improvement in quality in the system.
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
I’ve been working in Software Development Quality Assurance for the past several years. Quality is everyone’s job, however the ultimate decider of the quality of the final product is going to be the end user. One way to better get an idea of the overall quality of the deliverables is to engage the end users along the way. The difficulty of doing this is dependent on who your end users are. If you are designing an internal system, you can simply ask a colleague who might be the end user to try out a prototype and give feedback, but can be much more difficult if the end product is external and to be used by millions of customers. This is where your Beta testing comes into play. You would roll out the product to a small audience of users, and get feedback on potential improvements or defects that may need to be fixed.
Michael Gibbons says
Interesting points Patrick. I would agree with end users not being engaged throughout the process as much as they should be. Sometimes the end product may meet what they thought their initial goal was but one area I have seen issues happen (and this is probably just poor coding practices) is fixing one defect causing multiple other modules to break due to the reuse of code that wasn’t intended for another purpose. Finding that right level of testing and feedback would help the quality in a positive way.
Michelangelo C. Collura says
Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
It overturns the older methodology in which employees feared reporting defects/flaws for fear of reprisal. In this newer system, they are continuously trained in QM methods/tools so that they can react to flaws themselves, either correcting or reporting effectively, with the goal of not missing defects at any step in the production process. This also encourages more of a team mentality, so that employees aren’t thinking only of how they may benefit/suffer from defect issues. Rather, the whole team, even the whole firm, is on the same side, to reap the benefits of successful TQM or suffer the consequences of failures.
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
I see both mentalities in todays workforce. I am glad to say, though, that the older methodology is diminishing over time. I don’t think the fear of being reprimanded is there anymore, however I can see some failing to report defects/issues due to laziness or just being too busy to open and retest defects. I’ve seen things that have been broken, but have a “temporary” walkaround which becomes a permanent one since the resources don’t get the time to analyze and fix the issue properly.
Overall though, the newer methodology where employees are feeling empowered to report issues and even work the defect is prevailing. More and more, it is being stressed that quality is everyone’s job. The first step in fixing a problem is identifying that there is one.
Michael Gibbons says
I agree with Michelangelo and Patrick.
I also have seen where employees have reported issues, the defect is acknowledged, the management team approves the time and resources to fix the defect to then have the project team take the path of least resistance and not fix the actual issue and implement a work around that makes the process less efficient (providing less quality).
Michelangelo C. Collura says
Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
The process owner would be constantly evaluating feedback, reports, etc, to determine when quality if suffering and how to improve it. This fits into the TQM concept of everyone being integral to the improvement at all steps. It also ensures that those who are closest to the action, and therefore best able to detect defects/failures, are more likely to rectify. I think this combines TQM with basic human nature. In other words, the process owner is likely closer to the employees involved in the process than the CIO, CFO, CISO, or some upper management. They kind of speak the same language and understand each other better, so there’s a higher chance of successful problem resolution in such a closer relationship within the firm.
Richard Flanagan says
Michelangelo – good answer about how to continuously try to improve the quality of the service. I meant the question to be more about who sets the target for what quality is for a service.
Michelangelo C. Collura says
I would think it’s the process owner, so if we’re discussing printing service, then that would be the IT staff member responsible for that system. It wouldn’t be someone higher up, because that would be too many hats for one person to wear, and it wouldn’t be someone lower down, because that person would only be able to report fault, not necessarily remedy it. I hope this makes sense.
Richard Flanagan says
Michelangelo – TQM would say that it should be the customers of the service. Obviously the process owner (if there is one) will make a target official but quality theory would say that that target should be the result of the customer’s feedback about what they want/need.
The challenge in this is who is the customer. We tend to think in terms of end users, but the line of business and corporation are also customers so it is a complex balancing of interests.
Michelangelo C. Collura says
What does all of this have to do with IT?
As with any process, IT benefits from TQM. It’s silly to think that improvements are unnecessary, or that flaws won’t occur. In particular, security risks in IS make proper TQM in IT incredibly important to a firm. This could spell the difference between success and stock value crashing for a firm, and it all derives from IT. As described in the Quality Digest article, TQM in IT goes beyond preventing security risks and moves into communication failures. Since other people in a firm may not understand or appreciate the value of some IT process, a part of TQM would include improving communication so that IT and IS is clearly understood and emphasized appropriately by others in a firm. This makes sense since IT is often a service and not a product, but the theme holds true in both cases..
Richard Flanagan says
I would go further, IT is almost always at service, it is in the business of providing business services. Hopefully they are clearly defined with identifiable borders. Only when they are articulated this way can they be measured and improved continuously. The trick of course is to identify the most important services to the business and focus on them.
Michelangelo C. Collura says
Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Five services would be help desk, tech support, printing services, website maintenance/update, and project management. I wrote out the diagram for printing services.
Employee sends document to printer >>Print Server>>Server Spool>>Print Router>>Local Print Provider>>Local Port Monitor>>Local Printer>>Employee retrieves printed document
Richard Flanagan says
I like the idea of a printing service but I think you need to expand your thinking. What printing demands do the customers (internal) have? Is it all black and white or do they need color? Are all the customers in the same location or are there many? Is local B&W acceptable with color printing centralized OK or is there decentralized need for color printing. Is it OK to print slowly at a remote office or do they need service equal to that of the central office. Its not just the provision of a technical output, its also the provision of the infrastructure that provides that capability.
Vince Kelly says
5. What does all this have to do with IT?
Outside of mentioning the fact that some of the basic concepts of TQM should be embraced by IT, the “Managing Quality for Information Technology” article seems to have very little to do with the “Total Quality Management” (TQM) article. In general, I basically agree with the former but can see only limited application for the latter. The reason for this is that the TQM article presents its case in a completely one-dimensional fashion – from the perspective of customer-defined quality only while the “Managing Quality for Information” article (correctly) points out that there are many potential facets to quality within IT.
I think that the TQM article is trying to convey how critically important TQM is and how it should be an integral part of every function without exception. In my opinion however TQM applies to IT in some cases but not in others. As the “Managing Quality for IT” article points out, embracing some of the principles of TQM is import and useful – but, in my opinion, at times, TQM is impractical and may actually be counterproductive. I may be wrong but I think that, for most large scale software and hardware development efforts, it is nearly impossible to design ‘zero defect’ code/systems given the shear complexity of the requirements, the variability of environmental factors and the frequency of industry changes.
While many of the principles of TQM certainly apply to IT, I also think that some of these principles actually conflict with the philosophy of software development methodologies like DevOps and CI/CD.
For example, the TQM concepts of “Do it right the first time” and “no amount of defects should be considered acceptable…” directly conflict with the DevOps philosophy of “Fail Fast” in which the existence of defects should be accepted but eliminated quickly through the collaboration between the development team *AND* the customer, (in the form of a customer feedback loop).
According to the TQM article, Dr. Genichi Taguchi believed that “80 percent of all defective items are caused by poor product design.” In the hardware and software development world, I’d have to believe that *at least* 90 to 95 percent of defects can be attributable to something that was missed during the systems design, development and/or integration phases. But that being said, it also seems to me that Dr. Taguchi’s idea that it’s easier to design a product that can perform over a wide range of environmental conditions than it is to control the environmental conditions may be a useful academic exercise to try to achieve and even applicable in some scenarios, but it is lacking when taken as an absolute truth in the context of hardware and software development.
For example, it is not uncommon for some software methods and functions in a large system to lay dormant and unexercised for *years*. During that time, hardware has changed (e.g., Intel’s Tic-Toc cycle was every 18 months), firmware revisions have occurred for any number of hardware devices, operating system releases have been introduced, application architectures have often been refactored, new and constantly changing workload mobility and platform requirements have emerged, etc., etc., etc,. All of these variables,(and more) become fertile breeding grounds for the unpreventable infestation of unexpected bugs and defects.
In other words, if the same conditions existed for the development of automobiles as it does for software and hardware, then even though a car might look the same externally,*each component* – its ignition system, carburetor, water pump, cooling and exhaust systems, transmission, breaking, and its electrical systems would change every 12 to 18 months. In this sort of environment, it would be impossible to design a car or class of cars that could “perform over a wide range of environmental conditions” in exactly the same way.
One of the reasons given for the incredible momentum that artificial intelligence has gained in recent years is that – once the technology matures – the application of AI has the potential to obviate the need for systems analysts and programmers altogether. In effect, AI has the potential to become a TQM tool that can literally turn the ‘art of software development’ into a measurable, error free discipline. But until that time comes, hardware and software development will remain as much an art as it is a technical discipline.
In general, I agree that TQM unquestionably provides the right approach and is applicable for most business and some IT processes because it is customer driven. But when it comes to software and hardware development, TQM should be thought of as a desirable objective and beneficial side-effect, not as THE singular goal or model of perfection.
Richard Flanagan says
Vince – I like to use Amazon as an example. Do you think their HW and SW has changed much over the years? Of course they have, but Amazon’s focus on presenting the customer with products and recommendation and delivering on time as promised has not. Another example is Campbell’s. There paramount IT metric was cost of a case at the customer’s location. An large investment in IT was OK do long as it reduced the supply chain costs in such a way as to deliver improvement from the customer’s POV. I am not suggesting that this is easy or straight forward. On the contrary it is often very hard to do.
Vince Kelly says
OK, I’m probably confused then Professor – (something that I’m pretty adept at BTW:). I thought that question was, “what does this have to do with IT?” not “what does this have to do with Amazons (or Campbell Soups) logistical systems or supply chain efficiency?”
My point was that TQM may be appropriate for many business processes and perhaps even for some processes within IT but certainly not as an absolute truth that’s applied to everything within IT.
As an example of TQM not being appropriate in all cases, I used the case of DevOps as a software development methodology. Amazon was one of the early adopters of this practice.
In addition to DevOps, Amazon makes extensive use of infrastructure automation and as a result, their core doesn’t use years as a timescale, it uses *minutes* – i.e., their core IT infrastructure services are in a state of *constant* change. I think this goes to the heart of the point that I was trying to make.
Again, one of the points that I was trying to convey was that the DevOps philosophy of “Fail Fast” is an anathema to what is professed by the “Total Quality Management” paper.
According to the TQM paper, “TQM focuses on identifying root causes of quality problems and correcting them at the source, as opposed to inspecting the product after it has been made.”
DevOp methodologies and processes on the other hand are *designed* with the notion that errors will inevitably manifest themselves in the final product – but because the system is essentially in a state of constant ‘error correction’, the magnitude of their impact is substantially reduced.
Here’s a clip from Amazon’s DevOps Cultural Philosophy and practices;
“……..Frequent but small updates make each deployment less risky. They help teams address bugs faster because teams can identify the last deployment that caused the error……”
I think you’d agree that Amazon is acknowledging here that bugs and errors will occur in their final product, (something that the TQM paper claims should be a no-no;) but because Amazon is constantly cycling through improving iterations of their core, these defects are quickly identified and eliminated.
Here’s the link:
http://community.mis.temple.edu/mis5202online2017/2017/10/12/week-8-reading-questions-activity/#comment-3584
So again, TQM for logistics and supply chain? Yes, makes perfect sense. For help desk, customer service, and maybe some components of service delivery? Certainly. But for all aspects of IT ? I have a hard time understanding that one.
Vince Kelly says
…You may have noticed that the link that I posted to the Amazon statements about their DevOp processes is incorrect. Thank you flaky Temple blogging software:)
https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/
Richard Flanagan says
Vince – I think we may be in violent agreement. If I look at the Amazon DevOps site, I see a process and organization that has been continuously improved to provide a web service (many actually) to Amazon customers. In fact, they seem to have a very defined process and would look askance at anyone who tried to go around it. I bet their service metrics are based, in part, on customer disruptions. Thus to me, you have a process (DevOps) that delivers a service (Amazon web sites) to their customers with a quality definition, at least in part, from the customer’s perspective.
I agree wholeheartedly that you cannot focus on everything in IT in this fashion all the time. That just reduces the available resources to trivial amounts. You need governance to decide which services are most critical to your firm and to concentrate your improvement efforts in those areas. That which I focused on business process as that’s where IT generally produces the most value.
Vince Kelly says
I violently agree Professor;) The problem with using a company like Amazon as a model for anything is that they take an unbelievably unique approach to technology. Because of their scale, they can afford to do things like keep software engineers on staff to build their own computing platforms.
That being said, and to your point, IT process is IT process so it doesn’t matter if your AWS or a small mom and pop data center somewhere in the middle of a cornfield ;););)
Vince Kelly says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
Based on the article “Total Quality Management”,(TQM):
The customer does.
The article states that “TQM is about meeting quality expectations as defined by the customer…” so if IT is incapable of supporting the needs of the business in an effective way then the business can’t support the customer. As a result, the customer effectively creates and drives the TQM decision.
The organization does.
The TQM article also points out that, “TQM is an integrated organizational effort designed to improve quality at every level.” According to the article, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa believed that “..everyone in the company needs to be united with a shared vision and common goal. He stressed that quality initiatives should be pursued at every level of the organization and that all employees should be involved.” So, the entire organization creates the conditions that enable TQM decision execution.
Management,(Business and IT) does.
W. Edward Deming said that it is up to management to correct system problems and create an environment that promotes quality and enables workers to achieve their full potential. Deming believed that “managers should drive out any fear employees have of identifying quality problems, and that numerical quotas should be eliminated.”
Richard Flanagan says
Vince – excellent job of pointing our that “who’s the customer” is an issue. I think of sales support as an example. Individual sales people might want the easiest system to use, a line of business may want the system that best matches the needs of their process and the corporation may want the cheapest system possible. All are appropriate customer needs and they have to be considered. Making a decision is hard, but if these different POV’s are not acknowledged and considered, the end result is unlikely to be satisfactory
Vince Kelly says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
– Put the customer first and meet or exceed their expectations.
– Quality is user oriented and fitness for use based. In other words, focusing on the customers intended use
of the product is more important than focusing on the technical specifications.
– Build quality into the process.
– Do it right the first time” no amount of defects should be considered acceptable.
– The ‘Quality trilogy should be observed:
Quality planning: processes should be set up to ensure that quality standards can be met
Quality Control:Ensure the regular use of statistical control methods to ensure that quality standards are
met and to identify variations from the standards
Quality improvement: Improvements should be continuous as well as breakthrough
– There should be a total systems approach to quality.
Work environments where quality developments are integrated throughout the entire organization,
Where management and employees have a total commitment to improve quality
Where people learn from each others successes
– TQM should focus on identifying root causes of quality problems and correcting them at the source, as opposed to inspecting the product after it has been made
– TQM Identifies and corrects causes of quality problems before they reach the customer
– Upper management must develop a commitment to quality and provide a system to support this commitment that involved all employees and suppliers
– Quality management should be embedded in the organization
Michelangelo C. Collura says
Good point about the trilogy. Specifically in standards, if they are set such that they cannot be met (for example, the manufacturing equipment doesn’t have that level of precision), then TQM is sort of failing, and employees are likely going to jump ship rather than be faced with an insurmountable hurdle. I suppose there might be a disconnect in which a firm does require precision that it can’t actually produce, and this would probably be a result of inadequate controls or communication.
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
Vince,
I can easily relate to your ‘Quality Trilogy’ reference. Over the past several years, I’ve been working in Software Development Quality Assurance. To me, the quality trilogy can be shown by examples of real life process and deliverables which many companies have in place:
Quality planning: This would be your documentation. You would need to look at the business requirements of the ask as well as the design plans. Create your test plan and Test Scenarios/User stories/Acceptance Criteria. These would detail what the expected end result is and how to achieve it based on the design of the project. This wouldn’t include the coding or build of the application(s)
Quality Control: This would be the actual testing of the software and business requirements. As someone who needs to constantly think in terms of quality, this would include making sure that the business requirements are being met by the product you are delivering, making sure that the product you are delivering is actually working as designed, as well as making sure that the business requirements and product are meeting the customers needs.
Quality improvement: As long as there is a business need for the product, we should always continuously look for ways to improve the quality of the product for the end user as well as the firm hosting the application. This can take many forms. It can be a user interface update to make it easier to use or even a back-end improvement that cuts down on processing time or data usage. Even small improvements can end up saving companies millions of dollars in the long run.
I should also note that this is not a one time process. In most organizations today, internal applications are often complex and connect with other applications. Any time there is a new update or improvement, it should be strongly suggested to run regression testing to ensure the quality of the rest of the system. For instance, you make an update to one piece of the application, but that change in the code caused another downstream system to break.
Vince Kelly says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Empowerment is important in *ANY*organizational environment, not just TQM. There are several reasons for this including:
It fosters a participative culture and inclusive atmosphere within the organization. People have a tendency to become more invested in the success of any outcome when they understand that they have the power to directly influence or change it.
It creates a culture of accountability within the organization. Having the authority to impact change brings with it an attributable responsibility for the changes that were made. Although it may potentially increase the business risk, it also creates opportunities for employee recognition and growth, customer satisfaction,, business agility, etc., etc., etc..
Organizational empowerment is THE ultimate litmus test of the flexibility (or rigidity) of a company’s business model.
Empowerment creates the ability to dynamically scale the business. It allows managers to focus on business problem areas and the overall strategic direction of the company instead of day-to-day tactical decisions. The alternative to empowerment is a stagnant, hierarchical, inflexible command and control system that may have proven to be scalable in the 1950’s but is completely incongruent with the expectation of today’s workers and customers.
Donald Hoxhaj says
Vince – Your first statement itself had quite a deep meaning Vince and it was really amazing to see you start with that. Employee Empowerment is not an aspect of just TQM, but for all other functions or processes within an organization. We need to understand that all processes are ultimately interconnected with each other in an organization and dependent. Quite intuitive to see you mention about how employees feel part of the success of a delivery to a customer when they are empowered. It is empowerment that decides rigidity or flexibility of both processes and employees within an organization. If an organization wants to constantly succeed in the long run, it needs to have flexible processes where individual employees take decisions for their own processes. This improves quickness of service, better understanding of customer’s problems, and efficient delivery of goods and services.
Pascal Allison says
Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Five IT services are:
• Network administration
• Data management & recovery
• Network security
• Email administration
• Information Security
Network Security: Workstation > Firewall > Router > Internet
Donald Hoxhaj says
Pascal – Some of your services that you mentioned are definitely worth noting down, especially Email administration. You are definitely right in the sense that Email administration itself could be one of the IT services as it acts as the firewall for all internal and external communication with external stakeholders and third parties. In fact, in one of the studies it was mentioned that Email attacks are one of the most growing cyber-attacks in the United States and the ability of organizations to have mitigation strategies will decide the fate of its survival
Richard Flanagan says
Defining at what level to define and measure a service is always open to debate. Is email broadly that is the service? Email administration? Provisioning of employees with productivity tools? Which level of granularity you pick will affect how you define quality.
Pascal Allison says
Business executives, CIO, and IT quality leaders decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function. They agree to a set of measurements that will track the progress of IT quality.
Richard Flanagan says
Pascal – No customer input?
Pascal Allison says
Customers satisfaction is one of the paramount reasons for change (quality). Thus, customers are key stakeholders in the decision making process. Sometimes, their input might be indirect but understandable. If the customers are not satisfied, objective of quality provision will not met. Customers input could come via survey, negative reaction to past or present service or product, written/verbal complains, citation from management, and/or request.
In short, quality can be define based on customers (internal and external) needs. Example, a website that is not user friendly.
Richard Flanagan says
Pascal – fine, so long as you don’t equate users with customers. The line of business and the corporation are also customers All these different views must be merged into something meaningful. Thus the users may want something very user friendly, the line of business something that covers every possible sales opportunity and the corporation something compliant with its Enterprise Architecture. I use this example because it was a real case I dealt with. We focused on one user sub-segment (which was of special interest to the business), limited to only one type of sale of a restricted product range (which the business disliked but could live with) and used an unfamiliar product that was consistent with our EA. . In our case the results were good because we nailed what the business’ customers really wanted in that sub-segment while meeting most of the demands of the business and corporation.
Pascal Allison says
CIO, Business Executives, and IT quality leaders decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function. They agree to a set of measurements that will track the progress of IT quality.
Pascal Allison says
Total Quality Management (TQM), focuses on incessant improvement. This improvement is more of a long term rather than short term. TQM surrounds the use of strategy, data, and communication to maintain quality in the organization. TQM highlights the process of production. It describes the process, monitors and measure performance, uses the stats from monitoring and measuring to initiate or maintain improvement. TQM requires employees to form part of the process.
The key principles of TQM are:
• Customer focus – businesses paramount reason for existence is mostly financial. It is not achieved without its customers. In other to attract and retain customers, their satisfaction is key. Thus, customers and their needs should shape an organization produce and process of production. It based on the customers satisfaction that quality is determined.
• Employees improvement – are internal customers. They contribute to external customers satisfaction through the products and service provided. Thus, their satisfaction and development (empowerment) are very important in producing, maintaining, and improving quality products/services. To produce quality, employee must understand what quality is. They must have quality training, support, and resources for produce quality.
• Continuous Improvement – businesses should have a going concern. If there is a going concern, there will be competition. Thus, customers must be retained and attracted for continuity. To achieve continuity, businesses must remain competitive by maintaining contemporary market value (product/services) and adjust to customer needs. There should be quality, improved quality, and opportunity for improvement.
• Process Management – TQM monitors and measures for performance improvement. To achieve quality improvement, the process of production needs to be looked at and guided based on objectives that support business goals.
• Communication – communication is important to TQM. System must communication, employees must communicate, customers, and all stakeholders must communicate to achieve the production of quality product/services. Communication is a requires effectiveness and efficiency. Thus, the communication must be set based on the level of the organization, appropriate channel, and measurability to determine effectiveness and efficiency.
• Supplier Management – raw materials used in production must be of quality. The source of the raw material must be managed well (selection, organization, relationship, etc.). This helps to save time and cost.
• Product Design – the design of a product is a determinant of the level of quality produced. Customers have likes and expectation of a products design. TP meet customers expectation, products must be designed accordingly.
• Use of quality tools – producing quality is achievable through variety of processes. Having trained employees without quality tools affect productivity and quality. The tools used during a production processes help the save time, increase efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce cost.
Pascal Allison says
Quality began with the people (employees) who are producing quality. As quality can be used to measure the viability of a business, those producing quality must understand what quality is. How to produce and maintain quality. Empower is important to TQM because it helps to improve productivity, reduce cost, better customer service, embrace change, decision making, safes time, teamwork, and improve morale.
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
Empowerment in TQM encourages employees to seek out problems and start the process of correcting them. You’re absolutely right that it will most likely result in improved customer service, and (maybe not in the short-term) in the long term, reduce costs. I’m with you when you say that quality of deliverables can be a very important measure of the quality of the overall business in the eyes of the customer. Empowering employees to seek out defects and issues, assists with identifying isssues as quickly as possible to improve the overall quality of the product, thus improving the value of the product and the business overall in the eyes of customers.
Pascal Allison says
IT is not a separate institution from an organization. It supports organization to meet their goals. If it is an institution by itself, it has goals. To meet these goals, TQM is of essence.
IT provides services (internal and external) to its customers. To adequately meet customer needs, IT must continually monitor and measure performance for quality and improvement opportunities.
• IT must focus on its customers and their needs as they are the reason for production;
• The products and services IT produce must be designed to meet customers need and taste
• Quality tools are needed to produce quality services which saves time, money, increase efficiency and effectiveness;
• IT needs supplies to produce quality. It is easy to work with a supplier that understands IT line of business. Thus, IT must relate to the right suppliers;
• IT must communicate effectively and efficiently for success. Communication can be amongst employees, external stakeholders, equipment, etc.
• Production is made possible by employee. IT employees need contemporary knowledge, quality suppliers, and tools to produce and maintain quality and ably manage the production process. Thus, IT empowerment is key.
Pascal Allison says
Change management involves modernizations to enable the transition of individual, organization, product, services from its present state to a desire state. Every record of a system must be tracked for successful adaption to change in an IT environment.
Change can be managed properly, yet customer requirements will be lacking. Quality, in the text of change management means designing a system or process (change) that leads to operational improvement in which that quality supports a business goal.
Claim Proof is not doing well in attaining high quality change process. Yes, there is a change but what is the output of the change?
One system controls the production source and execution code, the administrator is single handily compiling the code for production, and these codes are open to all programmers who can make changes that are not reviewed or verified for production. After the change, there is no reconciliation for error.
How good is a change when the goal for production is not realized? It is understandable that production will be on time, but high possibility of producing under quality products which could cost more to repair, reproduce, and customers dissatisfaction. There is also a high possibility of fraud. If you must do it, do it right the first time.
Vince Kelly says
5. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Professor, do you mean “name 5 ITIL services?” as in Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement or are you just looking for any IT services in general?
If your looking for just the names of some generic IT services then how about:
DNS Services
DHCP Services
AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting)
Email Services
Database Services
In terms of a flow diagram, this flaky Temple blogging software doesn’t look like it will let me attach a ppt diagram so:
DHCP Client ——- local broadcast for any DHCP Server ——–>
<—– no response, timeout in 60 seconds ———
Scenario 1:
– If timeout window expires then use a predefined Class B address of 169.254.0.x/16
– Test to ensure that this address is unique on the network (up to 10 times)
– If this process fails, notify user
– If the self-configured address is not in conflict, configure the adapter and continue to search for any DHCP server every 5 minutes
– If a DHCP server responds, abandon the self-configured IP address and use the new IP address,(and IP address options) offered by the DHCP server
Scenario 2:
DHCP Client GATEWAY (default router for the subnet)
DHCP Client <————— ICMP Reply ———- GATEWAY
– If the ping is successful, the DHCP Client assumes that the IP address and address options contained in the lease that it received from the (dead) DHCP Server are still valid and will use those values. It will also try to renew the lease again when 50 percent of its lease time has expired
Scenario 3:
DHCP Client <———- ICMP Ping Timeout Failure ——–
– DHCP Client assumes that it has been moved to another network that does not have a DHCP Server
– DHCP Client will begin the auto-configuration of its IP address all over again.
BIlaal Williams says
What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
The main principle in TQM is that quality is customer driven and an organization must focus on meeting or exceeding its customer’s expectations. An organization must identify its customers’ needs by gathering data that can be used to identify who their customers are, and what their expectations of quality are. This is the most important concept in my opinion since a business is nothing without its customers.
Once these levels of quality have been established, and the organization feels it is delivering the required level of quality to its customers, the organization should work to continually improve on this level of quality. TQM focuses on the philosophy of continuous improvement. This is a key concept since it introduces the idea of gradual improvements to an organization instead of drastic organizational changes and restructuring. Since an organization can never be entirely perfect, it must always gauge its performance and take actions to improve it. Establishing a benchmark is a great way for an organization to ensure it is on par with its competitors, and if not, identify what needs to be done to get there.
The TQM philosophy encourages employees to identify and report issues with quality, providing incentives to employees who identify defects. The purpose of this principle is to empower employees to make decisions relative to quality in the process they are involved in. This also introduces the concept of internal customers, which are employees within the organization in different departments. This is another key concept because often the best person to identify issues in quality is the individual who performs this process daily. If this person is hesitant to communicate defects in a process, there’s a good chance the defect will not be identified until the product or service reaches the customer, which is not an ideal situation for an organization.
Without the proper tools or training, employees in the organization will be unable to identify what its customers’ expectations of quality are, and if these expectations are being met, so the use of quality tools is another key principle of TQM. These tools include those required to identify and correct quality problems such as Control Charts and Diagrams to document the inputs to a process and the quality of the resulting outputs, Relationship and Trade-off Matrices, and QFD.
Process Management is another key principle of TQM. TQM focus on identifying root causes of quality problems and correcting them at the source. This concept follows the philosophy that it’s better to find a quality defect in the process during production rather than after. That way the process can be corrected before any additional products are affected.
Vince Kelly says
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management
There’s an old saying; “managing change is managing risk”. In other words changes that are done well can minimize risk while changes that are not done well have the potential to substantially increase risk. This is particularly true when taking a Total Quality Management approach. In fact, one could argue that this saying is almost tailor made for TQM because at least two TQM principles have a direct effect on risk. That is, the TQM principles of continuous innovation, (which implies some sort of constant change and, as a consequence risk) and the TQM principle of involving people,(which obviously introduces the possibility of errors and, as a consequence risk).
One observation from the Week 8 video was that; “There is a strong correlation between having strong controls and quality management”. The point being that in order to effectively manage the kinds of changes that minimize risk, a strong control environment must be in place – this means that, at a minimum – strong control environments must be in place to facilitate both continuous innovation and for people.
Richard Flanagan says
Vince – historically the concepts of TQM and risk are tightly aligned. Manufacturing looked at unwanted outcomes as variances and tried to minimize them, hence Six Sigma. For IT, you might just substitute “risk” for “variance” as the unappealing outcome.
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
I like how you put it when you said that “changes that are done well can minimize risk while changes that are not done well have the potential to substantially increase risk”.
Quality is a part of every job description, every process, every change control, and every keystroke when it comes to IT. In the area of change management, it is essential to have a strong quality process. Like you said, “changes that are done well can minimize risk”. This means that with high quality, there will be lower chances of having customer impacts, lower chances of financial and reputational loss, and a lower chance of a production issue ‘popping up’ at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon. (Anyone working with software development will understand).
Without a high quality change management system, things can easily go awry very quickly. Code can incorrectly get promoted to or demoted from production, there could be missed impacts with other lines of business, etc. Any one little mistake can cause a huge issue. When it comes to IT, even the smallest misstep can have dire consequences.
Vince Kelly says
how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process?
In my opinion, Claim Proof is not doing very well at all because they pretty much ignore many of the principles of TQM. For example, the fact ClaimProof is unwilling to retain customers if there is *any* claim is not exactly the model for the TQM principle of having a customer a customer focus.
Other examples where ClaimProof not only has weak controls which expose the company to substantial risk but also ignores TQM principles include:
– Continuous Innovation: Their PCCS VCS is not structured or suited for continuous innovation (one of the TQM principles) because it makes very little use of automation. it’s essentially a manual process that creates unnecessary obstacles which slows everything down.
– Taking a Process Approach: One definition of a process approach is that processes should be structured in order to achieve a certain objective *in the most efficient and effective manner possible”. The ClaimProof change management process is anything but efficient or effective, The production control team has limited availability and in general, there is no Q/A process at ClaimProof so moving code directly from test into production increases the risk of introducing coding errors. This flies in the face of the TQM objective of preventing errors before they make it into make it out the door.
– People: ClaimProof has *SUBSTANTIAL* exposure because there is very little attention paid to the principle of separation of duties. For example, giving an administrator the ability to recompile code *AND THEN* move that code into production is simply asking for trouble
Jonathan Duani says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
I think the key principles of the total quality movement are a set of standard that an organization will develop to achieve their goals. The way I see it there should be specific ones that have to be included like being focused on the customer and taking into account their needs. This is important because at the end of the day you are supporting and/or catering to them so you need to think of things from their viewpoint. Another principal that I foresee is as being important is communication. If the communication fails in a company everyone could be doing great but if one team doesn’t know what the other team is doing then it is a problem. Finally I think another principal is always improving yourself. IT is an always changing spectrum. Since this is the case, if you do not keep up with how technology is you are going to fall behind and get lost in the shuffle.
Richard Flanagan says
Jonathan – you need to also remember that TQM focuses on producing quality as perceived by the customer or customers. It assumes a process that is established to provide the particular product/service for the customer. The quality is measured at the customer and improvements are made to the process to improve the performance of the process (ie quality output every time). This improvement cycle is continuous, assuming that the customers quality demands remain unmet. The Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle is how improvements are made.
Jonathan Duani says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
I think empowerment is really a mental thing. I have seen a lot of time that even a good job or you are going great work has helped many employees 10 fold. A lot of employees will shut down when they have no positive reinforcement. A lot of employees do not want to say anything because they are worried about the repercussions. The when you have positive reinforcement, quality can go up because moral is higher.
Richard Flanagan says
Its a bit more than that. Quality believes that the people doing the work are the most likely to understand how the work (the process) is actually done and how improvements can be made. If you don’t have an environment where people feel comfortable sharing, you won’t get the best improvements.
Anyone ever heard a manage talk about how things are done when you knew that that person didn’t have a clue about how it really worked?
Jonathan Duani says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Five IT services are VPN Access, Tech Support, Network Security, Email, and Active Directory.
VPN Access FLOW = User Logs in on Radius Client Radius Server Authenticate to AD Return Response to client Access to Network.
Jonathan Duani says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
I think the main decision on how quality looks in an organization should come directly from the CEO and CIO. At the end of the day they are the people who are in charge of the decision making of the organization. I think after that it will go to the CTO and/or the CISO depending on the structure of the organization. I think after this it will trickle down to the respective teams and manager. I do not think one sole person is responsible for quality in an organization. In my eyes it is a team effort in order to make it work correctly in an organization.
Richard Flanagan says
Jonathan – TQM would say its not a good idea to rely on upper management to know what quality should look like. They are not the customers and can’t possibly know what the customers of each IT service really need and want. TQM’s emphasis is that the customers know what quality is and that the people doing the work know best how to produce it. This doesn’t mean that management has no role, only that they should be gathering the input from these two key groups.
Jonathan Duani says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
I think in IT today there are a lot of different systems and people that are included under the IT Umbrella. This is important because everyone has different backgrounds and but at the end of the day IT really is the back bone of the modern world. Nobody really knows that IT exists until something goes wrong, but when something goes wrong they are always on your case. IT is also always changing. It is hard to improve the system and keep up with the changes with systems if there is a lack of quality within the organization. A lot of the new systems and teams are being incorporated into IT I think that quality is the first things that goes out the window. It is important to keep quality up and incorporate quality into the system in the planning, incorporation and execution of IT organization because if you incorporate quality within the organization. As things change if you do not have consistently with quality you will start running into with issues with ingratiation and incorporation of new and old systems
Heiang Cheung says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT? This have to do with almost everything not just IT but business in general. Since IT is part of almost all businesses this makes perfect sense for IT. For a business to have TQM IT need to have TQM since the beginning this course we always talk about how IT should align with the business. Also we have to recognize that IT is a service and quality can be measured and should be measured. IT should constantly try to improve it quality of service because in return this improve the quality of the business
Richard Flanagan says
Heiang – you still need governance. You really don’t want an IT group trying to improve everything all the time because that improvement costs resources. You want to know where better quality will most help the business and focus your efforts there.
Heiang Cheung says
I didn’t really think about improvement cost that definitely helps on overall understanding of quality Thanks
Heiang Cheung says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function? The IT quality leaders and the CIO decide what quality looks like for an organization IT function. In my opinion I think that the external and internals customers should decide what quality is and then the quality leaders should implement that type of quality. In the reading it said quality is hard to measure and should be customer focus because you need to know what the customers want to deliver the quality they want.
Heiang Cheung says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Empowerment is important because it diffuses decision making to employees and it calls for active cooperation. It also give the employees responsibility and accountability to put out quality service.
Heiang Cheung says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
The key principles of TQM
Customer focus meeting or exceeding customer expectations and that quality is customer driven. They say that because if you have a perfect product it doesn’t necessarily mean the customers wants that product. You would have to know what the customer wants
Continuous improvement is a key principle of TQM because you want to continually get better and not plateau. In the reading it talked how making small changes is always better than making one huge change all at once.
Employees empowerment allows the employees to find quality issues and give them the authority to fix the problems. In a way it give the employees responsibility to the quality they put out.
Communication is definitely a key principle because you have to communicate to internal and external customers to figure out what quality is
Richard Flanagan says
Heiang – don’t forget about process focus. TQM sees work being accomplished through repeatable processes. Its these processes that are improved which in turn produce better output.
Heiang Cheung says
Case study
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process? Please post your responses.
Quality in the context of change management mean how well are they managing the changes in their system. How well are they managing the controls that they have for changes in their systems. I don think that claim proof is doing that great because during installation the test libraries that contains source and excitable code is open to all programmers, which kind not safe at all. Also separation of duty is kind of off because it looks like the change administrator has authority to to everything. Also when changes are made after hours there no review of the changes that were made. To me this company doesn’t really think much of quality it’s all about the bottoms line with Claim Proof. Claim proof don’t retain any customers if there is any claim history on their their customer account, also they initiated a cost cutting initiative. I feel like for a business person this is counter intuitive because if you offer quality service people are willing to pay more for quality service.
Duy Nguyen says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
• The concept of quality management has truly evolved over time. The concept was established in the early 1900s by Walter A. Shewhart who was a statistician focusing on a random sampling of completed products for quality assurance. The process/concept of quality control began to incorporate controls that would identify defects earlier in the production process. In addition, adapting these concepts to the service industries where quality is customer driven. The concepts have slowly evolved to become an organization-wide initiative with a Continuous improvement philosophy, which techniques like benchmarking, quality circle, and Pareto analysis.
Duy Nguyen says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
• TQM concepts relied heavily on organizational efforts. Empowering employees give individuals ownership and accountability. Passing ownerships and accountability in addition to positive incentives pushes the employees to identify defects as well contribute to improvement initiatives.
Duy Nguyen says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
• Helpdesk, application support, infrastructure support, technical support, hardware support.
• User Helpdesk Ticket # if helpdesk is unable to assist Support group (application support, Technical support, infrastructure support,, ie)
Duy Nguyen says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
• Internal customers of the organization. The employees that utilize these services should be evaluating the benchmarks and standards set by the senior IT and Business management. Management should constantly enforce and evaluate these quality standards and benchmarks to ensure static results.
Duy Nguyen says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
• From the business point of view, IT is a service. Whether internal IT department or external consultants, the IT group is providing a service. TQM provides a model of providing this service more cost-effective and efficient. Since a service is an intangible product, TQM gives a method to assess the quality of providing this service. TQM also provides techniques to keep the assessments of quality dynamic and updated.
Duy Nguyen says
The Claim Proof Insurance Case
Change management is a process that an organization has or takes to ensure that changes to systems or infrastructure are designed to support business goals. In addition to providing a review process for change, Change management also enables the organization to plan for change if implemented correctly. Based on the concept of Continuous Improvements, TQM should be on-going with continuous reviews and process change to always strive for better. By incorporating Change Management into TQM an organization can ensure that all changes to TQM process is correctly reviewed by the right people and is implemented correctly for the business.
Claim Proof’s production change process is flawed. There are not enough reviews done before a change is migrated to production. If a programmer timed it correctly, they could do the whole process themselves by developing, testing, and then migrating their changes to production. This process needs to be tested by different groups that should involve input from the Business management. Another huge flaw was that after-hour changes were not reviewed even by the administrators.
Pascal Allison says
Fine point Duy. Does not seem like any control exists here. Especially where after the administrator verifies the codes and move them into the production library. It said, only the production team has access but after hours it is accessible with a one time code by the programmer – complete gateway to breaches and fault. A perfect recipe for rewrite, cover up, etc.
A programmer can start a process, send it to the administrator (transit), and finish the work after hours.
Mohammed Syed says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
Management Commitment – Planning, monitoring, reviewing, are implemented to achieve high quality of performance. Employee Empowerment – Training, measurement and recognition, freedom to express ideas are a few ways to empower employees resulting in better higher quality of services. Customer Focus – Not compromising quality to meet customer driven standards which ensure customer satisfaction. Continuous Improvement – Systematic measurement and focus on team excellence to improve standards, and to continue to retain customers by improving quality of services.
Mohammed Syed says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
TQM philosophy is to empower all employees by allowing them to identify problems, and correct them. It’s important because it enables the employees to identify issues without the fear of repercussion. To ensure that employees are ready to make decision in regards to high quality of the production process, TQM employs various methods of encouraging employees, by providing incentives, by valuing their suggested ideas highly, and implementing their suggestions.
Mohammed Syed says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function
I would say it would be the executive team who would decide what the quality would be for the IT department. The CIO’s role would be to ensure that there is high quality of service support by maintaining customer satisfaction and improving IT quality in every part, such as applications, infrastructure and so forth.
Richard Flanagan says
Mohammed – please read my earlier reply to Jonathan. Relying on executives to make decisions on what quality looks like for the many and varied services within IT, let alone the whole organization, is just not possible. There are too many topics, too much complexity, and they don’t have nearly enough bandwidth to handle it. TQM focuses on the customers input defining quality and the employees input suggesting how the processes can be improved to produce that quality.
Mohammed Syed says
5 What does all of this have to do with IT?
Total quality movement applies to all areas of business not just specifically to IT. However within IT, it focuses on application development, networking, databases, data centers and end-user support (help desk).
Jonathan Duani says
The Claim Proof Insurance Case
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process? Please post your responses.
In my experience I have found that change management has always been a huge issue in an organization. Quality plays a huge role in change management as well. In my eye I see quality in multiple different places in change management. The first place that I see it is within the actual change process. You need a concise plan of execution for a change for example, first the change will be submitted by someone, everyone who is effected will sign off on it, it will be implemented, and then it will be tested. I think if the quality of this process is poor then there could be multiple problems that arise like disruption of a service which in some scenarios like where I work in health care could be life threatening. I think that Claim Proof is doing a decent job in controlling change management but I think they can do a little bit better. To me it is a good thing that they already have a process in place and that they have some control. If you look at their current process only specific people can commit a change and they are only available during regular business hours. If something were to happen and a change would need to happen after hours a one-time password would need to be given out and that is not really under any control and is more of an honor system since the user is getting it from a file cabinet and writing their info down in a book. I feel like there should be a production person on call at all times to really secure the process during times where a change will need to be made after hours.
Richard Flanagan says
Jonathan – your being charitable. ClaimProof is not enforcing separation of duties which would say that developers should never implement changes to production. This can circumvent the need for proper testing and could allow malicious code into the system. Furthermore, if the change causes a disruption they may not be able to track the problem back to the source.
Mohammed Syed says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
The Five IT services:
Service Provider
VMware Server
Web services
Network services
Quality Assurance
Internet Service provider> VM Server service>Networks services-> Quality Services>Tech services
Lezlie Jiles says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
TQM’s concentration is concerned with identifying the core cause of quality issues and resolving those issues at the source. The TQM process stresses that quality is driven by customers, however, it involves the entire organization. TQM also focuses on implementing quality within all facets of an organization. As stated in our readings “It is concerned with technical aspects of quality as well as the involvement of people in quality, such as customers, company employees, and suppliers” (Total Quality Management, Chapter 5). The key principles of TQM are customer focus, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, use of quality tools, product design, process management, and managing supplier quality.
Customer focus is concerned with meeting and exceeding the customer’s expectations and needs. Once the targeted quality has been achieved the organization must continue the improvements to reach greater levels of quality. The process also encourages the employee to seek problems with quality and correct them. Lastly, utilizing quality tools, design, and management of solutions and services.
Lezlie Jiles says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Employee empowerment is vital because it provides the organization with information that is not typically known to them. Take for instance a company like Lowes. They are focused on providing excellent services and a quality product to their customer. However, they have minimal certified employees to educate their customers about their products, which hinders their achievement in providing their customers with a quality product. This issue would not have been identified by the upper management level, but it would have been identified at the staffing level. The staff within the stores would know and felt the effects of being short staffed, and hearing customer complaints about certain product recommendations. With employee empowerment, they would be empowered to speak up about these issues and how to better improve them without feeling that they would be reprimanded.
Lezlie Jiles says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
IT services are managed by Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) which provides a framework of the service lifecycle approach to improving processes, procedures, tasks, and functions to better integrate IT with an organization’s vision. It begins with forming a strategy and designing the steps needed to implement that strategy. By making the necessary changes required to implement the decisions effectively and evaluating the services for any required improvement. The steps of ITIL is a strategy (planning), service design, service transition, service operation, service improvement.
And the five IT Services are
1. Desktop support
2. Web services
3. Network and wireless
4. Security
5. System services.
The posting of a flow chart is difficult, so I will write it out below.
Security workflow:
Gather information from the business and IT staff>execute a scan of the system>review and evaluate the result>identify the business impact>implement changes to elevate all vulnerabilities identified>perform penetration test>security review and application assessment>maintain, and monitor services improvements.
file:///C:/Users/ljiles/Downloads/Security%20Workflow.pdf
Lezlie Jiles says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
I believe this was revealed in question 1 about TQM. The TQM process stresses that quality is driven by customers, however, it involves the entire organization. The customer decides what quality looks like within the organization’s IT functions. It focuses its concerns on meeting and exceeding the customer’s expectations and needs. Once the targeted quality has been achieved the organization must continue the improvements to reach greater levels of quality. The process also encourages the employee to seek problems with quality and correct them. Lastly, utilizing quality tools, design, and management of solutions and services.
Lezlie Jiles says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
I believe all of this assist IT in recognizing and concentrating on services that are significant to the organization. Which in turn gives the company what it’s looking for in its IT systems as it relates to effectiveness, efficient, confidential, integrity, availability, compliant, and reliability.
Lezlie Jiles says
The Claim Proof Insurance Case
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high-quality change process? Please post your responses.
The change management process consists of requesting a change, identifying the impact analysis of that change, approving or denying the requested change, implementing the change and, reviewing and reporting the implemented change. I believe quality means (is needed) in the context of change management for Claim Proof is the statement made that says “Each morning, the programmer change administrator reviews the sign-out log and verifies that the appropriate paperwork has been completed. During an initial interview, the administrator was asked whether further examination of off-hours changes was performed; the response was no. An incident reporting system records all processing disruptions, but there is no reconciliation between the system and the PCCS.” These changes are completed during off hours but are never reconciled between the two systems, which does not reflect a quality process. Claim Proof is not doing well in attaining a high-quality process during the off-hour changes. The process should be reviewed and an auditing process should be implemented to reconcile changes between the system and the PCCS for all changes made off hours.
Brandan Mackowsky says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
The key idea of total quality management (TQM) is to initiate an effort that is designed to improve the quality performance at every level of a selected organization. The full idea of TQM is quality standards that are set by the customers in the market. A business understands that it can produce anything that it desires, however, in order to sell or make profit on its assets, it must make itself useful to customers. Thus, a key principle in the TQM movement is a customer focus, ensuring that consumers understand and want what the business is offering. Next, a continuous improvement factor is essential because it is important to never settle for a quality standard that is working. While something may be profitable and useful today, it can be deemed the opposite the next given the continuous improvement of competitor products and services that can deem the item useless. Next, employee empowerment is a key goal within the TQM movement because in order to initiate change, the employees need to be on board with the constant goal of perfecting the product. Without them on board, problems will go unidentified potentially leading to a failure. It is also important to use quality tools and have a good product design in order to appease the market and make the offering desirable. The last key aspects to hold for TQM movement are a good process management as well as managing the supplier quality because with a good process in place, the products will meet demand as it continues to increase as the product becomes more desirable and the products will last when a supplier is rated as good and respected.
Brandan Mackowsky says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Empowerment is so key to TQM because by having employees on board to correct issues at hand, a products servicing will be nearly perfected. It also drives a heavy focus on teamwork within the organization which truly drives team members to work together for a common good. By working closely together with the same goal in mind, a product’s TQM will be extremely high because everyone has the same focus to ensure that the product is ready and is high quality within the market, servicing it quickly and efficiently in order to ensure quality against competitors for the consumers.
BIlaal Williams says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Empowerment is so important to TQM because it gets the employees involved that are close to the process and will most likely be the first to notice any defects. Empowerment in TQM creates an environment that rewards employees who identify and report defects in a process. This prevents the culture of “tight-lipped” employees who are afraid to report any issues they notice for fear of being reprimanded. The philosophy of TQM is that managers should drive out any fear employees have of identifying quality issues. Improving quality should be the responsibility of everyone in the organization and upper management is required to create the environment where this type of interaction is encouraged.
BIlaal Williams says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
1. Business Analytics
2. Network Administration
3. System Administration
4. Access Control
5. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM flow:
Customer visits site Views Products Makes Order Receives Invoice Product is shipped Customer information retained for additional marketing opportunities Cycle continues
Paul Needle says
1. What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
Total quality management is an integrated effort designed to improve quality performance at every level of the organization.
The key principles are as follows:
– Customer Focus: The goal is to identify and meet customer needs
– Continuous improvements: A philosophy of never-ending improvement
– Employee Empowerment: Employees are expected to seek out, identify and correct quality problems
– Use of quality tools: On going employee training in the use of quality tools
– Product design: Products need to be designed to meet customer expectations
– Process management: quality should be built into the process; sources of quality problems should be identified and corrected
– Managing supplier quality: Quality concepts must extend to a company’s suppliers.
Paul Needle says
2. Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Employee empowerment is important to TQM because employees are the front line for quality. They are the first to identify a problem. The need to have support and appropriate resources to correct the problem. If employees are empowered to correct the problem than the issue will not flow through the product line and ultimately end up with the customer. Not only should they be identifying problems but they should be incentivized to seek out deficiency’s. Again, employees are the front line. They need the resources, support, and incentives to seek out deficiency’s proactively to achieve TQM.
Heiang Cheung says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
1. Helpdesk
2. Network services
3. Security services
4. Software/applications services
5. Web services
Helpdesk
Request>acknowledging issue>create ticket> can it be solved immediately >yes>complete ticket>no>assign ticket>address issue>solve>yes>complete ticket>no advise supervisor >can the isssue be solved in house>Yes>apply solution>complete ticket>no> advise end user>evaluate if issue is worth solving>no>close ticket.>yes>escalate issue.
BIlaal Williams says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
The ideal situation should have the entire organization involved in what quality looks like for IT in the organization. Using the philosophy of TQM, quality is a shared responsibility and quality is ultimately based on meeting customer’s expectations. Since IT is a service related industry which should add value to an organization, the customers for IT services are internal employees. Standards of quality for IT services should be set using objectives and goals based on data gathered by end users throughout the organization.
Paul Needle says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
– Network administration
– Vendor Management
– Email Services
– Database Management
– Security and Information Management
Vendor Management Flow Chart:
Board Sign Off > Risk Assessment > Due Diligence > Contract Process > Ongoing Oversight and Monitoring.
Paul Needle says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
Quality is always determined by the customer. In the case of IT customers are both internal and external. Both sets of customers are expecting a specific set of outcomes. External customers are expecting that their information is confidential and their services are available on a regular basis. With internal customers quality needs to incorporate effectiveness, efficiency, integrity as well as confidential, available and reliable qualities. The internal customers need to be empowered to speak up if quality is not met so that it does not reach the final consumer. Furthermore, quality needs to be a constantly improving through process.
Brandan Mackowsky says
3. Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Five IT services that may exist within an organization are:
1. Patch Management Team
2. Technology Support Group
3. Enterprise Information Services
4. Software Development Team
5. Malware Protection Services
I did a flow diagram for the Patch Management Team:
System Error/Vulnerability Occurs or is noted > Create Support Ticket > Patch team reviews support ticket > determine when patch needs attention > develop solution based on time frame > temporarily disable the system > install updated patch and firmware > recommission system
Brandan Mackowsky says
4. Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
This question was essentially answered with question number one by claiming that the standards within the market are set in full by the customers shopping in it. In turn, they decide whether or not they are satisfied with the quality of what the organizations IT is offering and will continue to utilize and recommend or will abandon all together. While the consumer typically has the largest say, it is key for the organization’s employees to listen because if they choose not to listen to the consumer, quality will still remain low and lead to consumer abandonment. By employees continuing to ensure quality assurance, consumers will continue to return as their needs are met.
Brandan Mackowsky says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
Given that IT is generally offered as an internal, organization facing service or as an external, for sale service, TQM plays a huge role in IT because people both internal and external of an organization want to use IT services and expect top of the line quality when they are paying people to run this service for them. IT needs to grasp that it will never reach a point of complete because there will always be updated technology in the environment that require it to constantly be improved on a daily basis. Through TQM, the IT department determines what its customers, whether internal or external partners, want out of its services and it is their mission to provide those technological services to meet that demand.
BIlaal Williams says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
The TQM philosophy involves treating quality improvement as the responsibility of everyone in the organization. IT services are involved in every business function, so improving quality in IT services will improve the value of an organization and improve its overall goal, making profit. Using the principles of TQM in IT service management would be an effective way to improve IT services throughout the organization.
Michael Gibbons says
What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
According to ISO 9001, the key principles of the total quality movement include.
1 Customer focus.
2 Leadership.
3 Involvement of people.
4 Process approach.
5 System approach to management.
6 Continuous improvement.
7 Factual approach to decision making.
8 Mutually beneficial supplier relationships.
Richard Flanagan says
Michael – I am glad you brought up ISO 9001. Does your organization use it?
Paul Needle says
5. What does all of this have to do with IT?
There is a strong connection to the control environment and having a strong quality management system. Both are all about expected outcomes, providing better service, prevention and taking appropriate corrective measures when there is a defect. They both have a process that is constantly monitored and corrected. IT places a lot of focus on preventative measures and adjusts to defects accordingly. There is no difference between service and products. They need to meet the desired outcomes of IT customers and find/fix defects. Both IT and TQM try to predict and produce desired outcomes.
Michael Gibbons says
Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Empowerment is important to TQM because employees have more capabilities than what is written in a job description. Giving employees the opportunity to improve processes and correct issues also follows Maslow’s hierarchy and these activities would fall into the secondary or higher level needs of employees seeking constant betterment.
Michael Gibbons says
Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
5 IT Services would include email, office productivity applications, security and access control, reporting and printing.
To flow out access control it would include the following:
Initiation – a request is made to IT to create/change/delete user access
Received – the request is received and tracked by IT in a centralized tracking system
Processed – the request is assigned an owner who processes the request
Review – the request is reviewed for accuracy to ensure the work performed has met the expectations of the person who made the request
Michael Gibbons says
Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
The users of IT services (internal customers – employees and external customers). If the users are getting the service they need, the products they require and timely response to issues, etc., they would weigh these factors into what quality is for their respective organization.
Michael Gibbons says
What does all of this have to do with IT?
In my experience, Total Quality Management is an unspoken topic within IT. While it is generally understood that service level agreements exist and projects should be done on time, within budget and meet the goals of the project, quality is not always something that is measured. I see where it fits but I also see where it would be glossed over because there is always another project coming down the pipeline with a deadline and to stop everything to reengineer how a company does projects or any service would take time and money.
Richard Flanagan says
Michael – certainly that happens in a lot of organizations. On the otherhand, ITIL is supported in many organizations and is just one variant of the TQM philosophy being adopted in IT. I have seen IT shops that use Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma as their “quality philosophy. The approach used is less important than the principles being ingrained in and followed by the IT organization.
Brandan Mackowsky says
Case Question: Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process? Please post your responses.
Quality within an IT change management setting ensures that all standardization methods and procedures are in place to guarantee efficient and effective handling of changes as they occur within the IT infrastructure with minimal setbacks occurring.
Based on this, Claim Proof follows a typical structure for change management and has a set up that is functional with programmers creating changes that must sit in production until the production control team reviews it. However, this control is not followed by the organization because they deemed it essential to cut costs and only have the production control team available in regular business hours. Through this, the new method of the one-time key was created for programmers to automatically pass their code into production which deems the entire process they have in place useless and ineffective. Claim Proof is doing an awful job managing its changes in the IT infrastructure environment because any programmer is able to pass his or her code into the production environment. Through this, no review process exists and unauthorized changes can easily be passed into the system. Claim Proof needs to remove this part of its process and either submit changes into production during regular business hours or add the cost back to the organization.
Michael Gibbons says
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process?
Claim Proof is doing a poor job in attaining a high quality change process. There is no separation of duties due to allowing programmers to make changes to production, there is no review process for the changes and most of the process appears to have been done out of convenience. Change management is a basic IT General Control and if it is weak, it would lead the reader to believe other weaknesses would exist in the control environment.
Jason M Mays says
Q4: Who decides what quality looks like for an organization’s IT function?
IT TQM is the responsibility of the CIO, head IT administrators, head IT operators, PMO, Business process owners, head architect, head of development, service manager, information security manager, business continuity and privacy officer according to COBIT APO1101/.02. Together the APO,s lay the foundation on how to establish and define the overall system. The CIO and COO are critical in this process to get support from their fellow executives for the overall adoption of TQM. Many of the roles listed interact with IT systems and can include their comments in how to shape documented and procedural TQM policy for the company.
Richard Flanagan says
Jason – then where does the customer’s voice come into play?
Patrick DeStefano (tuc50677) says
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process?
Quality is essential in any change management system/process, especially in relation to production code implementations. If the process itself is low quality, then there is a much higher level of risk being taken on. In most cases, the risk far outweighs rewards associated with a few hours of labor saved. Claim Proof seems to have a quality process during normal business hours, however their after-hours change management process is a bit worrisome. Segregation of duties should not allow the person who coded the update to be able to directly put it into production, regardless if they are logging it in the paperwork or not.
The other worrisome part is that there is no further review/reconciliation of the changes implemented into production than just making sure the documents are properly filled out. This is a huge risk as it would be easy for some form of malicious intent to show it’s head. They should definitely be verifying the code which was updated and reconciling it against what was documented.
BIlaal Williams says
Change management is an essential control in any IT organization. What does quality mean in the context of change management and how well is Claim Proof doing in attaining a high quality change process?
Quality in the context of change management means that a change process exists that changes can be made to a system without causing any negative impacts to production while still protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system.
The change process for ClaimProof seems to lack controls that could affect the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of its program control system.
Availability – production team is only available during regular business hours. If issues arise that require someone from production control, it will have to wait until the next business day which could effect the availability of the system.
Confidentiality – storing one time passwords in a file cabinet does not seem like the best way to protect the confidentiality of a system. The document makes no mention about how these passwords are generated, or secured.
Integrity – It seems that allowing the programmer to document time and date of completion of a change made after hours is placing to much trust in the individual and creates a vulnerability that could lead to undocumented or falsely documented changes to the system. The timestamp should be automatically generated in the system when the change is made.
Jason M Mays says
Why is empowerment so important to TQM?
Two of the biggest obstacles to implementing a successful TQM program is the time and resources needed and the willingness of employees to adopt it. Empowerment from the executive level can provide the momentum to overcome both of these obstacles. Executive level cooperation can allow for the organization or structuring of how resources like time in money or use in order to achieve TQM. United visible support from the executive level can encourage employees to comply with the new standards, metrics, and procedures set forth by the executive level in order to achieve TQM.
Richard Flanagan says
Jason – don’t miss the point that executives don’t really know the details of how work gets done in their organization, the workers do. TQM is saying that involving the workers in how to improve the work process is more likely to generate success that relying on management to have the answers. This may be the hardest thing for organizations to adopt when focusing on quality.
Jason M Mays says
What does all of this have to do with IT?
The adoption and implementation of TQM and IT Have similar philosophies in what it takes to be successful and face similar obstacles. The IT world changes rapidly and must be approached as an ongoing project. TQM Was designed to address this exact problem. Both have a cycle of adopting, use and monitor the results. The principle of doing the right job the 1st time is also very important in IT. Software and hardware systems that are incorrectly installed can create severe financial and production stress. They also share the weaknesses of fighting it and please who refuse to adopt or slow to adopt. IT also requires Large budgets and large blocks of time devoted towards training in order to be successful.
Richard Flanagan says
Jason – the idea is that IT provides valuable services to the organization and that TQM can be used to improve the quality of any product or service. ITIL is an IT specific version of the TQM principles. Think of most IT projects as ways to introduce or improve an IT delivered service.
Jason M Mays says
What do you think are the key principles of the total quality movement?
The 5 principles of TQM are:
1. Produce quality work the 1st time
2. Focus on the customer
3. Have a strategic approach to improvement
4. Improve continuously
5. Encourage mutual respect and teamwork
These principles create a cycle of improvement that always asks the question of how can this be done better. I think each of these principles has a part to play in the process. They act as sort of a system of checks and balances to make sure that the progression of how to do things better is not stopped by one person or event.
For example: If a team is unsure of how to proceed, the team leader embodies the 1st principal and can get them back on track. On the other hand, if the team leader is stuck in how to proceed, the team embodies the 5th principle by providing their input in order to find a solution.
Jason M Mays says
Name 5 IT services and do a flow diagram of one.
Operating system patching and maintenance.
User account and authorization management
DBSM
Email account management
Network maintenance
Email account issuance: Request> user authenticated> email account created> email account issued