Integrating offshore development into our QMS? Software Development

[cjohnson]

Hi - New to this site, so I hope this question is in the right forum.

I'm a Quality Manager for software development company in London, UK, and we are ISO9001:2000 registered.

We have recently decided to move a large proportion of our development over to India. The company we are using are not ISO9000, but are at CMM Level 5. They are creating a dedicated workforce specifically for our use, and will be required to follow our QMS procedures, development lifecycle & policies.

I am wondering what changes I would need to make to our documented QMS, and what effect this would have on our ISO9001 registration?

I probably haven't given enough information here, but at this stage I don't really know what the questions are, never mind the answers to them !

All help appreciated.

Thanks.....

[Paul Simpson]

Originally Posted by cjohnson

We have recently decided to move a large proportion of our development over to India. The company we are using are not ISO9000, but are at CMM Level 5. They are creating a dedicated workforce specifically for our use, and will be required to follow our QMS procedures, development lifecycle & policies.

The standard requires that you control processes that are contracted out. The fact you are requiring them to follow your procedures would satisfy this requirement.

Originally Posted by cjohnson

I am wondering what changes I would need to make to our documented QMS, and what effect this would have on our ISO9001 registration?

Again if your purchasing procedures cover CMM Level 5 as being the criteria you use for contractors then no change needed. What I would recommend you do is take a risk based look at contracting out - what could go wrong with offshore development, what could it lead to and, based on the risks you identify, what controls would you want to have in place to ensure those risks are not realized (some people use a tool called FMEA - Failure Mode and Effect Analysis). Once you are convinced those systems are robust then document them.