Building Effective Project Teams

Quality Improvement

Session 6

With the pressure related to finishing your milestones and project growing, you will likely find that members of your team will start to focus more on merely getting the project done rather than building a quality information system.  In project teams such as yours as well as in the project teams that you will participate in throughout your career, there will always be pressure to cut corners and sacrifice quality in order to finish the project under some deadline or time constraint.  The training sessions we are providing and the ideas presented on this form are designed to help your team focus on quality as these pressures to sacrifice quality mount.  This particular training session is designed to acquaint you with important information about procedures that your group can use to focus on quality.  

A number of organizations have begun to adopt the Quality Improvement viewpoint and have thus gained considerable experience with the processes needed to improve quality.  A number of the organizations and groups that have been successful in implementing quality improvement programs have several characteristics in common: 

·        The leader develops and shares a vision of what the final high quality product should be and how the team can reach the goal.  When a team has a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished, it is far more likely that the team will be successful.

·        The team critically examines and researches the requirements for the system or product that is being produced.  Through this process, a good understanding of what is really needed by the customer is developed.

·        Teams focus on facing problems head on and frequently review to make certain that problems that were previously dealt with do not reoccur.

·        Everyone in the team is involved in the process.  Greater involvement leads to greater buy-in by all team members.  Greater buy-in by team members means that each member will be motivated to participate and contribute their talents to the project.

·        Team members are willing to participate in active, on-going learning.  This implies that everyone participates in learning by being involved in active, hands-on experimentation, exploration, and work on the project.

·        A team's leader helps the team apply what the team is learning by focusing the team on its goals and how the new information can help the team achieve these goals.  It is important for the leader not only to tell others what is important, but to also lead by example.

·        A team's leader should look for opportunities to institutionalize gains that the team has made by reinforcing the focus on quality, learning, and member involvement.  By making these positive behaviors the normal behavior for the team, the team will naturally become more productive and produce higher quality results.

These guidelines are useful for helping team members focus on the behaviors and attitudes that empower groups to make quality a priority.  However, these guidelines do not explicitly tell you what you need to do with or to the information system to make it a high quality system.  The following are the important dimensions to a product that you can focus on improving when you work on your information system.

 ·        Performance: What are the systems primary operating characteristics?  You should try to identify ways to improve the speed, efficiency, or effectiveness of the system you build.  For example, look at your input forms; are they laid out so that users can efficiently enter information?

·        Features: What are the primary components of the information system?  You should examine the specific components that you have included to make sure that all required components are present.  In addition, you should look for opportunities to add new or extra features to your system to improve its appearance or functionality.

·        Reliability: What is the probability that the system will malfunction or fail?   You should test all of your system components on a regular basis.  Do not assume that something works; information systems have frequently failed because of inadequate testing.

·        Conformance: Does your system match the expectations of the customer (or instructor) and does it stack up against your competitors?  Compare your systems' performance, features, and reliability against the requirements for the project and against other student systems.

·        Durability: How long will your system be useful?  Will users be able to easily enter more data or add new features as their needs evolve?  You should make sure that you do not design system components that make it difficult for users to change the system.

·        Serviceability: How easy will it be for someone to fix or change components of the system?  Have you added documentation to the system so that others can understand what the important components of your system are?  Have you followed conventional programming procedures and used appropriate commands for each part of the system?

·        Aesthetics: How does the system look and feel when someone uses it?  You should make sure that the screens and input forms are not too cluttered, that colors are selected carefully, that form elements fit on the screen, and that there is not too much information on the screen.

 By critically examining your system in the context of each of these product dimensions you will likely generate a better quality product.  However, quality is not something that just happens.  Team leaders and team members must be willing to expend the effort that is needed to strive for a high quality information system.  Therefore it is important that team leaders look for opportunities to change the normal operating procedures of the group so that quality becomes a consistent goal for all group members.