Training and Leadership

In GTMSinfo we strongly believe that training and leadership are the foundation of quality. Members of the project team, including the project manager, will be trained in all necessary skills. Members new to the team during implementation will be trained also, not simply placed on the job and admonished to learn from others.

Leadership is seen as the unifying force of quality. The goals of leadership are to improve performance and quality, increase output, and bring pride of workmanship to people. Leadership is necessary to eliminate the causes of defects, not just the defects alone.  To be effective, leaders must know the job. They must be technically competent in the work at hand and capable in purely leadership skills in order to earn the respect and commitment of team members and to represent the project team well with customers, stakeholders, and upper management within the organization.


Quality and Responsibility

In times past, the quality department was responsible, but no more.  We at GTMSinfo believe that everyone is responsible for quality. Organizational management is responsible for the quality system. Project managers are ultimately responsible for project and product quality. Project teams are responsible for the quality aspects of their part of the project, and individual team members are responsible for quality in everything they do to contribute to project completion. No one has the luxury of off-loading quality responsibility to someone else or some other function. Everyone associated with a project is responsible in some way, with the project manager bearing the burden or obligation of ensuring quality in everything the project does.


The Wheel of Quality

The graphic image of The Wheel of Quality above discloses how all core elements interact. Customer focus, variation, and continuous improvement are the central issues in contemporary quality. Each is related to the others and shares a common boundary. Each is expressed through a more specific aspect of project work — respectively, requirements, processes, and controls.

These aspects are not discrete, but exist as a spectrum between two extremes. Requirements may range from general needs to explicit specifications. Processes may be viewed from those focused on outputs or products, which interface with the explicit specifications of requirements, to general techniques. Controls may focus on means of production, which interface with the techniques of processes, to ends of production, which interface with the general needs of requirements, completing the linkage of all three aspects.

These aspects are further linked by higher level considerations in the organization that bridge the aspects two at a time. What we do bridges requirements and processes, how we do it bridges processes and controls, and why we do it bridges controls and requirements.