Quality Is The Differentiator, Or Is It?

In my time as a Project Manager, I have come across many obstacles, but the one that seems to constantly occur is the big QC, Quality Control. The debate? If quality isn't your differentiator, what is? The answer, nothing. In this day and age, knowledge is easy to come by, almost too easy. Anyone can sit down with a book, take a class, or surf the web and come out an expert in whatever they desire. The Question: What makes you stand out from the crowd? The Answer: Quality.

So what is quality? According to Wikipedia, it is "the achievement or excellence of an object". The excellence of an object, something so basic, yet at the same time is so often overlooked. The question is why? In my experience, lack of quality is never associated with lack of knowledge or skill set. So what is it? Ownership.

Ownership ~ The word ownership is really synonymous with the word accountability, it is the idea of being responsible for your work. I cannot emphasize enough how critical ownership is to the quality of a project. From my experience, one of the main downfalls in quality, is the disconnect between one's self and one's work. If there is no ownership, then what you end up with is a robotic production line, where the key goal is to produce as much as you can, as quickly as you can, for as cheap as you can. The problem? As the saying goes "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". The mistake of buying a substandard product, only occurs once and in most businesses, the goal is to keep selling. See the problem?!

Now that we have an understanding of quality, and where we are going wrong, the question is how do we fix this? While I'm sure that every person has their own patented approach, let's look at two basic concepts...

Process ~ You are not the first person to ever create a product and you will by no means be the last, so why waste time in trying to recreate the wheel? Process is essential to creating a quality product. From the first point of meeting your client, all the way through to your final product delivery, you should have a consistent process in place. Having standard steps through a project's life cycle will allow you to stay on track and ensure that everything is moving along as it should. Now the key to a good process, is that it is organic, that it is constantly changing to keep up with new successes and to rid itself of past failures.

Confidence ~ The concept of confidence, is a self enhancing system, the better the quality of the product, the more confidence you'll have, the more confidence you have, the better the quality of the product. Be confident in yourself, in your knowledge, in your skills, and a quality product will surely follow. On the flip side, if you are not confident, seek guidance. In most scenarios you are not working alone, but rather you have a team to support you, look to others to provide the answers you need. And if all else fails? Find a blog that has the answers!

So what does this all mean? At the end of the day, whether you are the Project Manager, the Developer, the Designer, the Sales Manager... you are the Company. When you deliver a product to a client you are representing not only yourself, but your company as a whole, and in that sense, to deliver something below standard, reflects negatively on everyone and is therefore unacceptable.

Now, to overcome this is simple. Before handing your product over, you must think to yourself, is this something that I would be happy with? If the answer is no, then you go back and work on it. If the answer is yes, well then, you've just produced something of quality and in the end, quality is the differentiator.