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Subject:Quality Docs and ISO 9000 From:Shakespeare's Monkey <CARL_M1 -at- VERIFONE -dot- COM> Date:Sun, 30 Jul 1995 10:39:02 -1000
From: IN%"droberts -at- PANIX -dot- COM" "Dan 'Fergus' Roberts" 29-JUL-1995 04:07:53.62
To: IN%"TECHWR-L -at- VM1 -dot- ucc -dot- okstate -dot- edu" "Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L"
CC:
Subj: RE: Quality docs to meet contractual obligations
:Pierre Goulet (gouletp -at- entrust -dot- com) wrote:
:: "..the supporting User Guide must be at a "certain level" otherwise
:: the product will not be accepted."
:: My question is not "How do I go about measuring the quality of a
:: document." My question is "What wording do I put in the contract
:: to ensure the User Guide I get with the software is good?"
:I think you might want to investigate ISO 9000, which supposedly has
:regulations and procedures for ensuring quality <yeah, right>.
ISO 9000 cannot "ensure" quality. There is nothing in ISO 9000 to
prevent a company from making life vests out of cement as long as
it follows the citeria in ISO 9000. A company may specify that a
manual must have less than ten typos per page. As long as this is
documented, and a procedure is in place to check that no document
with more tah ten typos on any one page is sold, everything is
a-okay with ISO 9000.
ISO 9000 is very useful to a company in analyzing the efficacy of
its procedures, but the process itself cannot invalidate a boneheaded
decision. That, my friends, is still a marketplace decision.
