Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

24.1. Defining Quality

It seemed to me that if these quality award winners were going under shortly after reaching the pinnacle of success, there were three possibilities.

First, the guidelines for choosing the winners must be fuzzy if companies that won weren't really achieving the quality they claimed.

Second, perhaps companies that were into quality in a big way were in high-risk sectors, susceptible to downturns in the economy. When things got bad, poof, they went under. This seemed even less probable than the first possibility.

Third, they were using the same tool to fix everything. That meant they were using the wrong tool most of the time.

That's what I told Martha.

"You haven't got to the heart of the problem. For starters, what is quality?"

"Excellence," I said without hesitation.

"What is excellence?" she rejoined with no hesitation herself.

"Well," I said, stalling for a second, "good, better than the rest."

"What is good?"

Damn, I thought, this was how all of the project stuff started.

"What," I said, "is the point of all of these definitions?"

Martha delivered a stare that said I was getting out of line. I thought for a moment. "I don't know, good is not bad. How's that?"

This seemed to perk the old girl right up. "You're right, you don't really understand what the words quality and excellence mean. You might understand the definitions, but you haven't thought carefully about what they mean." She settled back in her rocker.

"You did define quality correctly. Excellence ...