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Dilip D'Souza

New Standards in Meaninglessness

Nearly every day, I read one more proud announcement that the standard has been achieved. The Hinduja Hospital in Bombay, I think, is the latest prominent institution to trumpet it. We're talking quality here, folks, and the quality doesn't get any better than if you acquire an ISO 9000 (or 9001, or 9002) certificate. These things are so prestigious that Crompton Greaves used to have a hoarding near Marine Lines station; it said, referring to its certificate: 'Once again, we've made history.'

ISO 9000, as you may know, claims to be a standard for quality. If you are a factory, it certifies that you are following certain quality-producing procedures as you churn out whatever you churn out. In fact, it is not your product, but your factory that is ISO 9000 certified, and that has, I believe, become a requirement for exports to Europe. And I suppose it's safe to assume that a ISO 9000 certified hospital provides truly stupendous care. Prestigious, too.

Prestigious it may be, but the really important thing about the ISO 9000 (or 9001, or 9002) bandwagon is that it is a big one. Trainers, consultants, certifiers, companies, even hospitals: all are rushing to get on it.

Since I'm not anxious to let bandwagons pass me by, and since I'm quite ignorant about ISO 9000, I decided to find out something about it some time ago. Now I have a passing interest in software. So I signed up for something that was advertised as -- and I am quoting directly from the letter here -- 'an important seminar on ISO 9000 for computer software.' It was to be conducted by -- I am still quoting -- 'an expert in this field' from a major European country that I will not identify except to tell you that its name begins with "Ger" and ends with "any."

Inspired by the quotes from the letter, I trooped eagerly into the seminar. I quickly found that my eagerness was somewhat misplaced. When Baroness Orczy asked: "Is he in Heaven? Is he in Hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel!" she might well have been talking about ISO 9000, except that it doesn't rhyme too well.

A day and a half and many hundreds of overhead slides and handouts later, the "expert" himself told us: "I can't tell you anything about ISO 9000 for software because I don't know anything about it." Not voluntarily, you understand; he was asked whether this was really a seminar about ISO 9000. Whether it was really about software.

But there were those hundreds of slides. Most had boxes and arrows and graphs and words such as "traceability", whatever that means. If ever there has been as large a collection of boxes and arrows and pretty pictures that said as little as these did, I want to know about it. No, actually I don't want to know about it.

One slide plotted the "probability density for success" against "attainment level"; others told us that all projects are always somewhere on something called a "Quality Surface" (Carefully Capitalized). Another had four identical little graphs on it: they were titled "complexity", "centrality", "diffusion" and "embedding". Our expert did not bother to tell us what these terms meant, if anything at all.

But he did tell us about the "Capability Maturity Model" (Carefully Capitalized), which ranks your company in one of five "maturity levels." Level 1 is "Initial", in which you are "ad hoc" and "chaotic." Up from there is "Repeatable," where "the process is person-dependent but it is managed", thank you very much. What does that mean? I have no idea. At the top of the heap is Level 5, "Optimising", where "the process includes feedback."

Your goal, said our expert, should be to make it to the rarefied air of Level 5. Of course, our expert is -- and other competing experts are -- eager to visit you and rank your company, or your project. As one of them did -- still another slide told us so -- with 168 projects in the US and 196 in Japan.

And what would you guess were the Maturity Levels of all these projects in these advanced countries? Mostly Level 5 ("Optimising"), or at least Level 4? Wrong! As yet another slide announced, 86% of the US projects and 95% of the Japanese ones were mired in the muck of Level 1 ("ad hoc" and "chaotic," let me remind you). We're talking here about the US, the country in which an overwhelming proportion, still, of all software today is produced. Innovative, useful software (well, not Windows 95), used productively by millions of people around the world.

And we must believe it was all produced in an "ad hoc, chaotic" fashion.

"Software is still on a low maturity level," said our expert, explaining these results. I don't know about you, but another, simpler explanation occurred to me. These experts and their close kin, consultants, charge huge fees to visit your company and tell you your company is doing everything it possibly can wrong -- ad hoc and chaotic, I believe it's called. That you are stuck at Level 1. When you start correcting those wrongs, they quickly discover a new set of models. According to which, another visit and another fat fee informs you, you are still stuck on the bottom rung. You never get off that rung, but the expert collects his money each time. A more convenient arrangement would be difficult to imagine.

But back to the expert and his seminar. The hours were filled with vague banalities such as: ISO 9000 "has no value if not embedded in a Quality Philosophy." This Carefully Capitalized "Quality Philosophy", we were told, is "Total Quality Management" or TQM, another Term of the Times, also Carefully Capitalized.

And what is TQM? It is "not precisely defined," and "a safer understanding [of TQM] is coming along with the ISO 9000 series standards."

Baroness Orczy, bless her inquiring heart, would have sympathised with us. We could see signs of ISO 9000 here and there. We were told that it was not this or not that. Most confusing of all, it was defined in terms of things, like TQM, that were themselves to be defined by ISO 9000.

But what was ISO 9000?

That, sadly, remained unclear at the seminar. Some weeks later, I was sent kilograms of documents that spelled out ISO 9000 in excruciating detail. One that I went through with a great effort is titled "Quality Management and Quality Assurance Standards." A pronouncement in English and French on the cover has this weighty disclaimer: "In accordance with the provisions of Council Resolution 45/1983 this DIS is submitted in the English language only."

And what's inside? Here is a random sample of all the critical advice it dispenses. Paragraph 5.8.2 (b) says, in full, that a "maintenance plan" should include:

* maintenance activities.

Paragraph 5.7.3.3 (a), in full, warns suppliers and purchasers that in establishing their "roles, responsibilities and obligations", they should take into account:

* schedule including off hour and weekends.

The whole document is filled with -- let me be frank -- trite, meaningless nonsense like this. <

Finally, as you go through the ISO 9000 experience, as you read Important Documents, as you wonder about your Capability Maturity Level, I know you will ask yourself, as I did, this crucial question: "Is the use of the masculine gender in these documents meant to exclude the feminine gender where applied to persons?"

Well, the ISO 9000 people knew that would be on your mind. That's why they begin their Guidelines with this Note: "Use of the masculine gender in this Guideline is not meant to exclude the feminine gender where applied to persons."

Now you know.

Dilip D'Souza