How can I introduce my company?

How can quality management systems help a design company and how to introduce them?

• Are there any QMS that can help a design firm transform and help it grow or organize or perform better?

• Answer:

  Well... that's more of a book answer than a Quora answer :-) Personally I find most of the "traditional" QMS regimes (ISO 9000 et al) can, if blindly sought after, really get in the way of more creative organisations like software development and design working well. It really depends on what you're after. Some folk look favourably upon those with ISO 9000 (or whatever). It can add creditability.  Personally I think looking at it from a purely marketing / sales oriented POV, as some companies do, is a mistake, and you can much more usefully spend your time and money elsewhere. If you're actually after ways to improve quality and process - then my first port of call are the various approaches from the lean world. As for ways to introduce that way of thinking - I've found the kanban method to be a good way of starting and progressing. Basically because it allows you to start where you are now and incrementally improve. To simplify a little the approach is to: Visualise the way you work now publicly - usually in the form of a  kanban board (see https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=kanban+board&num=100&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvnsa&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ZtVJUL6xD4y1hAfiqIGwCQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=673 for some examples - lots of post-it notes - and we design folk do love our post-it notes :-) Limit work in progress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_in_process) at each stage in the process. This helps demonstrate the bottlenecks where you may be able to increase efficiency. Work at removing the bottlenecks. Repeat The downside of this approach is the incremental improvement. It can be hard, sometimes, to see places where you can improve from the inside. You're acclimatised to certain habits and ways of working and see them as fixed parts of reality - rather than stuff that can be changed and improved. You might find some of the following a useful read. Some are written more for/by people in the software development community than the design community, but there are some great lessons to be learned in there. Lean Thinking, Womack & Jones Kanban, David J. Anderson The Lean Startup, Eric Ries Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation, George Koenigsaecke The Principles of Product Development Flow, Donald G. Reinertsen Leading Lean Software Development, Mary & Tom Poppendieck Lean Product and Process Development, Allen C. Ward The reading list on the Poppendieck's site has a lot more that you may find of interest http://www.poppendieck.com/reference.htm :-) Once you're happy with something like this - and if you decide pursuing something like ISO 9000 would be useful to you - then it might be time to go find some thoughtful auditors who can help you reach that sort of accreditation without it adversing affecting the work that you do.