Eficode is one of the rare software services companies in Finland with an ISO 9001 certified quality management system. Even more rare it is because the system is based on agile software methodology. It is an evidence that agile and management system thinking are not in contradiction with each other. Agile has quality control and management built-in and the management system standards are not to be interpreted in a conservative, narrow manner. Their purpose is to help organizations have control over what they are doing, not to restrict them into a pre-dictated structure.
The company had considered having a certified quality management system for some time already before the effort to have it was started. I was interested in quality management systems and we agreed that I will look closer into it. We had no previous technical knowledge about quality management systems, so I had to find out everything. I studied literature and especially the standards and we interpreted them in terms of what the concepts would mean for Eficode.
For a bit more than a year I created understanding together with the company management about what our quality management system is. I went through the entire concept of quality with the whole organization. Our projects were functioning quite well already because of earlier adoption of agile methods. But there was more to do about the general operational management as well as strategic management.
I lead the quality management system project alone and reported to the top management. In a bit over a year we had our management system audited by a certificate authority. Before that I had established all the quality management practices and tools, instructed the personnel, conducted most quality management tasks, like measurement collection and nonconformity analysis, etc.
As a result, the overall quality of deliveries improved, relationships with customers were enhanced and further company growth took place in a safer manner.
Business coach Benedictus Ågrén 