This document discusses how quality professionals can better communicate with senior management to gain their support for quality initiatives. It suggests focusing on business metrics that matter to management like revenue, profit, customer satisfaction and retention. The document recommends quality teams map their goals to these "business influencers" and take ownership of delivery processes. It also advocates investing in innovation, building strong communication channels, and assembling a team fully committed to quality.

1. Influencing Eskimos to buy Refrigerators
Selling Quality to Senior
Management

2. My identity
▪ Ramkumar ‘Ram’ Ramachandran
▪ Captive IT unit of Euro-Japanese Automobile Giant
▪ GM – Quality & Testing
▪ Global Service Delivery viz. US, UK, China, Singapore, France,
Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Bahrain, Kuwait etc.
▪ Aeronautical Engineer / IIMC Alumni
▪ CSQA, CISA, PMP, SAFe Agilist
▪ ramkumarramachandran@yahoo.co.in

3. Disclaimer
▪ The content is purely out of my personal experience and is not
out of any research conducted by me or anyone else
▪ Approaches provided here would work in most of the
scenarios, but the organizational culture would be a major
game changer

4. What’s inside!
▪ Why this conflict?
▪ The Communication Gap
▪ What Senior Management ‘Actually’ Wants
▪ The Business Influencers
▪ Process Ownership
▪ Take the Risk Route
▪ Build the Right Team
▪ Invest in Innovation
▪ Re-Cap
QA Management
DeliveryQuality
Team Enterprise

5. Senior Management Commitment
We have zero-tolerance to bad quality…!
The biggest investment we have
made in our organization is on
quality
We don’t mind having a bad
customer to whom we have
delivered good quality
Quality is Numero-Uno
parameter for all of us…!
We don’t mind bending backward to bring in
quality in our services
We will not bill the customer
for any proven bad quality
deliveries

6. Why this conflict, when quality matters most?
▪ In IT industry Quality Models are ‘evolving’
▪ ‘Waste’ is not evident
▪ Rules could ‘significantly’ vary based on domain & technology
▪ Revenue leakages not tracked effectively – Rework / Low Productivity etc.
▪ Quality Professionals do not appreciate technology – Well, Mostly…!
▪ A crowd out there, harps on documents – for proving quality…!
▪ Super Heroes / Pockets of Excellence encouraged
▪ Systems that suits West implemented in Indian IT companies

7. Senior Management Vs. Quality –
The Communication Gap

8. Impact of Differences
Give me
Resources What are you
doing?
Give me a
raise
What is the
value you
add?
Give me
onsite You are only a
support function
NCs are not
closed But delivery has
been good

9. What does Senior Management bother about?
▪ Revenue
▪ Profit
▪ Customer Loyalty / Satisfaction
▪ Key Employee Retention
▪ Investor’s Interest
▪ Board’s Appreciation

10. Management Maturity Vs. Quality Focus

11. Map Business Goals to ‘Influencers’
Revenue
Profit
CSAT
• Productivity
• Good delivery model
• Less Rework
• High through put
• Consistent Good Deliveries
• Vendor Responsiveness

12. Delivery Owned Process
▪ Engineering Process Group SHOULD be owned by Delivery
▪ Quality Team brings global best practices into QMS
▪ High visibility to Senior Management on EPG activities
▪ No cribs: -
– ‘It’s QA Team’s processes’
– ‘This process doesn’t fit me’
▪ Quality Team ensures that there is no ‘undue’ dilution of controls
QMS
Senior
Management
Recommendations
Best
Practices
Operations

13. Take the Risk Route
How do you bring in consistency in
delivery operations across team?
If a delivery is made successful without practicing
process, how to replicate success?
How do you know the un-reviewed code
is the most optimal one?
This project looks to be cooking up documents for audit, which will
have sustenance issues
There seems to be too many inter-sprint
changes, which will make application
too volatile
Late deliveries to Testing are eating into regression, which could lead
to heavy defect leakages
The Product Owner is evidenced to have
limited domain knowledge, which could
lead to UAT issues
Doing a Fixed Bid project under iterative model will
lead to huge revenue loss

14. Formal Communication Channels
Operational Inputs to Delivery Teams
SQA
SQA Lead
Tactical Inputs / Alerts to Delivery Heads
SQA
Manager
SQA Lead
Strategic Project / Program Risks to CEO
Delivery Excellence Head

15. Build the Right Team
▪ Team that ‘thoroughly believes’ quality
▪ Team that appreciates ‘Delivery Nuances’
▪ Team Leads / Managers who are strong Communicators
▪ Team Leads / Managers who can ‘see beyond the obvious’
▪ Managers who can ‘make a point without making an enemy’
▪ Team that ‘learns continuously’
▪ Team that can outgrow their role very quickly

16. Invest in Innovation Kaizen
Six Sigma
Innovation
• Validate
Compliance
• Take CAPA
for violation
• Implement
QMS
• Define QMS
Plan Do
CheckAct

17. Re-Cap
▪ Talk the Business Language
▪ Never talk about non-compliance, talk only ‘Business Risks’
▪ Make Delivery Teams own the Process
▪ Have a Team that shares your Dreams
▪ Communicate effectively at all levels
▪ Believe & Invest in Innovation

18. And…now

19. How do we
meet again?
My LinkedIn
Page
All my knowledge is like open
source, you can take it and
extend it and return it…!