Mar
05
2011
What is quality?
Just read a discussion poll on linkedin of the group Quality Management Professionals. It was a poll about definitions of quality. The options were not quite clear, but it focused on the degree the customer’s requirements were fulfilled.
Two ideas came immediately to mind:
- is quality only measured by focusing on the customers’ need or should more stakeholders be taken into account?
- should the requirements be the focus or the customers’ goals? This was also mentioned in a comment on the poll.
Apparently it’s not that easily to define quality. Even wikipedia states that “Quality has no specific meaning unless related to a specific function and/or object. Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute.” So before defining a term as quality, you should ask the other person first what he thinks of quality and then come up with a definition that works for the both of you.
