Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total quality management (TQM) is a top-down organization concept that dedicates quality to every function of an organization. It was developed in the 20th century and was initially created for product manufacturing. Over time, it was adopted by numerous agencies to gain a competitive advantage in their market. TQM is a way to harness an organization’s resources to improve effectiveness and efficiency with support, training, and guidance. As a result, it leads to better organization and quality performance.
TQM and Knowledge Management
Adopting total Quality Management (TQM) develops an organization’s culture of quality. When TQM is coupled with Knowledge Management (KM), organizing the knowledge base through documentation and subject matter expertise, organizations can improve the focus of process management, planning, and analysis. Another goal is to develop processes for an organization that set it above its competitors. This increases their effectiveness in their industry and makes it difficult for competition to replicate the processes without first meeting the proper resource requirements.
Organization of TQM
As Total Quality Management (TQM) is considered a top-down concept, it is important to note how organizational roles affect it. Different functions within the company, such as management, project managers, and quality personnel, have different perspectives and duties around the organization’s quality plan.
Executive and Management: At the top level of an organization, the management expects to convey the expectations and policies for quality. Therefore, management should regularly review quality issues, policies, and procedures to reflect the organization’s priorities. Management should also periodically follow up on risks, metrics, and approved actions.
Project Management: Project managers are responsible for their team’s adherence to quality policies and prescribed actions. They will provide updates on quality-related tasks and communicate changes in policies and procedures to the team. In addition, they will maintain the budget, scope, risk, and schedule regarding quality measures. They will also follow up on stakeholder needs and issues regarding quality.
Quality Personnel: Quality personnel include testers and the rest of the project team. Everyone on the development team has a stake in the quality of the deliverables, and they should be of the desired quality. The team must ensure that the deliverables meet quality standards, are testable, and are measurable. They are involved in providing a design that considers all quality policies and processes and meets the stakeholders’ needs. Quality personnel are also responsible for measuring processes and error data and supplying those measurements to project management.
Software Quality Factors
Quality factors are a significant element of Software Quality within Total Quality Management (TQM). They guide project managers and project team members to the quality expectations in the project’s life cycle. Quality factors are divided into three major categories: operation, revision, and transition. First, the operation category is divided into the following sub-categories: correctness, reliability, efficiency, integrity, and usability. Next, the revision category is broken down into maintainability, flexibility, and testability. Finally, the transition category is broken down into portability, reusability, and interoperability.
Operation Category: The operation category deals with requirements that affect an application's daily operations. Correctness is related to the application’s outputs, including the display, accuracy, completeness, and responsiveness of information. Reliability is related to the application's threshold of errors and the failure rate. Efficiency refers to resources meeting the application’s needs, including hardware or technology. Integrity relates to application security. Finally, usability is related to the resources required to train or operate an application.
Revision Category: The revision category deals with requirements that ensure application maintenance activities. Maintainability is related to the resources required to detect, fix, and verify errors and defects within the application. Flexibility is related to the resources necessary to adapt an application for additional user needs, whether for different technologies, activities, or products. Finally, testability is related to the ability to verify the application, even if requirements change or additional capabilities are needed.
Transition Category: This transition category deals with the requirements for adaptation and integration with other systems or software. Portability is related to the ease of using the application in other environments, such as different operating systems or hardware. Reusability is associated with the ability to reuse a portion of or an entire application in similar projects. Finally, interoperability is related to the application’s ability to communicate or interface with another application or system.
Note: This is an excerpt from an academic paper I provided in 2023.
