5. Disadvantages of using QM Software

It is also necessary to point out the existing disadvantages by using QM software such as:

Miscommunication or No communication
As to specifics of what an application should or shouldn't do (the application's requirements).

Software complexity
The complexity of current software applications can be difficult to comprehend for anyone without experience in modern-day software development. Multi-tiered applications, client-server and distributed applications, data communications, enormous relational databases, and sheer size of applications have all contributed to the exponential growth in software/system complexity.

Programming errors
Programmers, like anyone else, can make mistakes. And these mistakes are often difficult to identify
Changing requirements (whether documented or undocumented)
The end-user may not understand the effects of changes, or may understand and request them anyway - redesign, rescheduling of engineers, effects on other projects, work already completed that may have to be redone or thrown out, hardware requirements that may be affected, etc. If there are many minor changes or any major changes, known and unknown dependencies among parts of the project are likely to interact and cause problems, and the complexity of coordinating changes may result in errors. In this case, management must understand the resulting risks.

Time pressures
Scheduling of software projects is difficult at best, often requiring a lot of guesswork. When deadlines loom and the crunch comes, mistakes will be made.

Poorly documented code
It is tough to maintain and modify code that is badly written or poorly documented; the result is bugs. In many organizations management provides no incentive for programmers to document their code or write clear, understandable, maintainable code.

Software development tools
Visual tools, class libraries, compilers, scripting tools, etc. often introduce their own bugs or are poorly documented, resulting in added bugs.

The following Ishikawa diagram (Figure 4) presents these all discussed aspects of the disadvantages of using quality management software.

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6. Evaluating compliance system

There are sound, objective criteria of organization can be used to evaluate and select the right software solution. The companies seek solutions to optimize the returns they originally expected from their compliance and quality management systems. Software should be determined by the users of the product in a specific business situation. Different business characteristics require different types of software products, not only to do different things, but also to cater to how different people want to carry out their tasks. This can be subjective and cannot be determined only on the basis of quantative metrics.

Following are essential features in any final compliance solution which should be opened:

Capable content
Is the solution's technical content complete and accurate in addressing relevant quality and compliance requirements? Does it do so in a logical manner consistent with accepted industry "good quality" practices?
For the end user, there's a huge difference, between a quality solution developed by software professionals and a software solution developed by quality professionals. This factor is equally important in ensuring that solution providers understand and react to future changes in compliance standards in a reasonable and timely manner. To be sure, ask for the backgrounds of their subject-matter experts.

Collaborative real-time data
Characteristics in the solution should be as current as possible. The system should provide e-mail-based messaging that gives users both appropriate information and specific, relevant directions for action. Data access and entry capabilities should be expected from anywhere in the world at any time. All time-sensitive activities, such as pending document approvals, corrective action, requests and customer complaints, should have configurable alerts, alarms and escalation that work within user company's messaging system.

Ease of use and deployment
Installing, configuring and deploying the solution should not be an excessively time-consuming project. Indeed, every business system requires planning, forethought and preparation before implementation.

Environmental administration
Managing the system in the company's information technology environment includes considering network topology, security, messaging, bandwidth, data storage, backup, and disaster recovery. There could also be hidden, project costs had not be considered, such as new or additional servers, upgrading client machines or other non quality system issues. The solution provider should furnish information and work with company user, IT group on these issues in advance of the purchase.
 
Application administration
This includes planning the user community and incorporating the new system's functionality into existing workflow and quality processes. It should be able to define user nomenclature, glossary of terms and template layout within the system. Time scales, security access, roles and responsibilities should be established and maintained without any special programming or computer skills. The software's user interface should be intuitive and easy to master and to navigate.

Scale
Global organizations should be able to leverage resources and production capacity by working collaboratively within the system on documents, shared-suppliers data, customer information, design engineering and quality-planning data. Various sites and business units should be able to call upon anyone in the enterprise, regardless of physical location, to participate in a document or process workflow. Escalation time frames and responsible parties should be logical and configurable across the enterprise. System security should control data access and manage workflow participation within large groups of people in a sustainable manner. Time stamps, where useful, should reflect the date and time in a format that supports participation across various formats and time zones.

Integration and compatibility
The selected system should work seamlessly with other applications, such as the Microsoft Office suite, various graphics and flowcharting tools, common enterprise resource planning programs and relational systems.

Executive summaries and reporting
The package should facilitate extracting and managing data, including graphs, charts and drill-down reporting. The reports should be user-defined and configurable.

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• To define, describe the particular needs of the organization.
• To identify a champion from senior management from the very start. To seek the advice on the best way to achieve corporate buy-in, and to use the champion as a budgetary reality check.
• To create a spreadsheet of specific requirements that the suppliers should consider.
• To make sure that it is understood and budgeted for the hardware and system requirements of any potential solution.
• To ask suppliers hard questions about their service components, including training, support and consulting. Do their staffs have the experience and depth to support your organization for the long term? This support should include quality management experience, convenient locations and multilingual service providers.
• To demand to see the product in action.
• To ask for and check suppliers' references from industry.
• To verify suppliers' financial viability.

8. Conclusion

The carried out analysis shows that there are a high number of software makers and suppliers for this market in France and at European level. At the same time there is no any labeling neither for software developers, nor for quality software itself (for example, French Movement for Quality (MFQ) in the end of 1990’s tried unsuccessfully to establish model for software labeling). It is possible to outline software market as an “open market”, where “every user” claims various functionalities for the purposes indicated above.

There is no authority or database which verifies or classifies information about software developers. But procuring an application is not the solution - unless there is a Management system solution to configure the selected application with. For this purpose quite some effort is required to make the organization and its users satisfied in the end. But the greatest problem is how to arrange, describe and select information in a database with a very large number of products.

As the issue of this problem solving is to follow to the experience of American Society for Quality (ASQ) and to establish the model of Certified Software Quality Engineer, who understands software quality development and implementation, software inspection, testing, verification and validation and who implements software development and maintenance processes and methods to satisfy the user’s requirements.

As a final conclusion it is possible to suggest relying on “Decision Making Scheme” where each software user defines the priorities by itself and according to the gotten results makes the right decision on what Quality Management Software and which QM software developer is preferable.


The following figure 5 shows the repartition of the analyzed software companies according to the application area and the classification of the Quality Management Software (the number, shown in the cells, corresponds to those one which are listed previously, see the list of software developers).

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Project Planning

This project is elaborated by using planning chart  - “Gantt diagram” (Figure 6). The project results are achieved by determining working period (30 October, 2006 – 22 January, 2007) and dividing it into several time phases according to the developing tasks and subtasks.  
The project is developed on the basis of studying and analysis of the documentation of the QM software developing companies, technical literature and on basis of searching the information on Internet.