Dealing with Second Party Audits

[patkim]

We are confronted by a unique situation (Software Services Industry)

The project is managed and executed more or less as per what the customer wants.
This means following more or less the practices and process as per customer expectations. It in a way it also means violating some of the best practices of Software Engineering and doing things as per what customer wants. Project is also more or less short on resources and overstretched.

The problem is that Customer’s QA Department visited us and audited the project at our end and raised many findings, which in a way are required, but were more or less given less importance by the customer. But NCs are on us and we are now in a tough situation to deal with this!

Thus customer engineering management thoughts are in a conflict with the customer’s Quality Management group’s views.

Now we have to handle this diplomatically as it’s customer on either sides !!
Any thoughts from your side would be useful.
Thanks,

[prototyper]

Do you have documented evidence of the customers expectations which deviate from best practice?
If so, I would refer to this evidence when answering the NC's, after all, it sounds like the real NC's are with your customer's engineering not adhering to their own systems.

[joshua_sx1]

…I have a little confusion with your post… it’s like you are telling that some of your customers is requiring you to violate some of the best practices in Software Engineering… it really surprise me… not for anything else, but usually customer will ask you something that constrain with so much regulations & best practices (not the other way around)… that is the usual problem of an organization - complying to their customer requirements while conforming to the best practices, rules and regulations…

…anyway, I guess as long as it is part of your customer requirements (which sometimes overruled your best practices), protyper is right… you have to have records of those requirements to justify your deviation from best practices… and to turn around the table by 180 degrees...

[Randy]

2nd party is all that TS audits are and most 9K audits are the same as well.

[Coury Ferguson]

Originally Posted by Randy

2nd party is all that TS audits are and most 9K audits are the same as well.

Could you define this a little better for me, because my understanding of a 2nd party audit is one that is performed by a direct customer.

[Randy]

Yeah, we were just discussing this yesterday in the home office and having fun with it..

In most cases "organizations" put their Q Systems in place because of some type of customer mandate.........the "organization" being some type of supplier either of components, parts or material. Additionally a part of those mandates may very well be to achieve a "3rd party" certification of the system to help provide the customer a level of assurance....The certification cannot be achieved without an audit being performed...So in essence we (the CB's) are performing a type of supplier audit on behalf of the customer(on the system only), but it is paid for by the "organization".

Like I said, we batted this around and had fun with it...by we I mean the group of my fellow employees and management I was training this week at our headquarters.

You gotta twist things a bit, think out of the box, be a bit liberal with definitions and have a sense of humor, but it was a fun exercise.

[Coury Ferguson]

So, basically, my understanding is correct, however look at this outside of the box.

Thanks Randy.