Maturation process - long

["Alex Silbajoris" <alsilba -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

It has been a while since I posted about this company's lack of maturation 
in its processes.  Since then, we have become ISO 9001-2000 certified.  Has 
it made any difference?

Well, yes and no...

I have served as an internal auditor, and an auditee (most recently 
yesterday).  We joke that a company/department can have bad processes, and 
if they document that as their way of doing business, then they pass the 
audit.  In our training as internal auditors, they tell us to ask to see an 
example of adherence to documented processes.

But in a more serious vein, yesterday the lead auditor expressed his focus 
as the pursuit of increased customer satisfaction, through improvement of 
our processes.  And instead of asking "can you show me an example" he chose 
the example himself, and asked us to show how we followed our processes in 
that project.

(Our department representatives started shifting in their chairs...)

It was interesting to see him start looking into "the way we've always done 
things" ever since this company was created.  He was using the approach that 
the external auditors will take next time they are here:  follow one project 
through all its phases across various departments in the company.

So, we have a Business Consultants group that negotiates new projects with 
our principal government client.  They create a Project Scope document which 
lists, among other things, the hours required for development, 
documentation, quality assurance, etc.  But even though the document lists X 
number of hours to be spent on documentation, there is no list of 
deliverables that are to result from those hours.  This came to light when 
the auditor simply asked, "how do you know that you have actually done 
everything you were supposed to do for this project?  What quality record 
shows that you have completed the job?"

Our answer was, well, we don't have any such record.  That's just how it has 
always been done.  We write a user manual, and maybe a little pocket guide; 
we post the documents on a web server as a means of delivery, but the 
details have always been set in informal conversations with the client.

I've been complaining to deaf ears about how immature our company is, and 
now I have some satisfaction in seeing our processes coming under some 
scrutiny.

Still, the auditor completely missed the fact that we have no formalized 
review procedure (my main pet peeve), in spite of the fact that one of our 
"process maps" lists such a step.

One result of this internal audit is that the business consultants group 
will add a list of deliverables to the documentation section of the project 
scope document template.  Then, our group can check off the items and create 
a record of completion.  Pretty basic, yes, but something as simple as that 
has never been part of the way this company does business.

I am actually beginning to hope that we will do business in a more 
professional manner.  I don't feel like a lone, ingored voice now.

- A


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