posted 10 July 2001 05:47 PM               

Thanks for asking! I started to do a couple of web searches to see if I slept through that discussion in quality school.

posted 11 July 2001 05:38 AM               

I am actually also about to certify to ISO 9000:2000 a websote company rallypartsireland.com .

As ever i have approached this from the standpoint of what might be useful to the company as opposed to what ISO might require.

In fact i dont really see much difference between a bricks and mortar operation and a website retailer.

There is few useful tricks to be learnt however. For example a website is normally in a constant state of development. To control this i have set up folders in the outlook that automatically captures e mails with specific names. I have now instructed the website developers to send me an e Mail with TEST THIS CHANGE written in the subject line. If i accept it i return the email with CHANGE ACCEPTED or CHANGE NOT ACCEPTED written on it. These e mails are always on copy to the website and are automatically filed. Whats the advantage? At a later stage i can go to the folders and trace every change and subsequent acceptance or rejection.

This is just one example, if you have any other points you wish to raise please post it here becuase i am convinced that more of these companies will exist in the future that will require some form of certification.

Regards

posted 11 July 2001 06:10 AM               

andy has a good procedure to follow using emails.

software dev. cos have been doing iso certification and an iso certification for websites should be no different.

reason being, the procedures followed in the development and maintenance of the websites are again the same procedures followed in a normal software dev. project.

hence, continuos change in the website in terms of look or feel or new utilities added are not the important things in iso documentation because they do not qualify for procedures. A general procedure in this regard will be product realisaton or service realisation.

in other words a website goes for an iso audit like any other software dev. company with the difference that the services it offers to customers are slightly different.

what i would like to know is what documentation procedures do established websites follow or are there other standards for quality assurance?

posted 11 July 2001 05:40 PM               

Thanks for opening my eyes! I now see how websites would need some type of control process.

ASD...

posted 11 July 2001 07:53 PM               

The main issue I see for Portal's is controlling the quality of the external sites they have linked to. News, TV and radio have the product in their hand, and it is a constant product. Portal however have only a link and the content at the other end might be very different from day to day, and like all production industries, it is the quality of this content that directly affects the quality and attractiveness of the Portal.

Other than this, is would suspect that most areas of ISO9001:2000 would apply.
Management Responsibility certainly applies, as does Resource Management. Measurment, Analysis and Improvement are critical to justifying a price for the advertising space, it is just in Product Realisation (as the standard was designed) that there would be areas that could be dropped. I would think that Calibration, I mean Control of Meaasuring Devices would require a bit of interpretation to apply. The other area I mentioned before is purchasing. I'm not sure whther you need to 'buy' the rights to link to certain sites. If so you would expect that you would be able to negotiate with the controller of the site to assure yourself of the quality, in any case you would certainly need 'inspection' of the 'product' and control of non-conforming 'product' (cutting the link if it comes to that). It is the constantly varying nature of the internat that cuases the problem. Thinking about it even more, this is probably the area that needs the most concentration, and a very rigorous inspection schedule. I can't think of a sampling plan for websites.
The design and development area would also be a big focus, but I would think very similar to traditional software development.

And of course all the normal contineous improvement areas apply, internal audits, CA and PA, measurment and monitioring.

posted 13 July 2001 08:42 AM               

From my limited time in the software industry, I know that one key success factor is implementing and enforcing a good configuration management system. Is is possible to succeed without one, but the probability is not high.

Another success factor is the ability to keep all of the team members focused on the organizational goal. You have to define your business, and the role of each function in it, and then resist the tendency to drift off into exploring "interesting" but irrelevant areas. For example, one company may be an established business that is adding a web site as an additional distribution channel. Another may be a business that wants to be totally internet-based. A third may be a company that wants to create new tools to enable building e-commerce sites for other businesses. Each of these is a different business model and requires a different focus from the developers, subject-matter experts, and marketers.

The quality objective should be the same in any model, though. After all, software development is a different kind of business than most of us are used to, but it is still a business and needs to follow good business practices to survive. You need to produce a system that meets the customer requirements and your business objectives, on time and within budget.

posted 28 July 2001 03:58 AM               

a financial portal (what i am into) could have the following procedures

1. requirement analysis
for any new service added to the website. the inputs for these could be customer feedbacks collected on the site. competition mapping, weekly review meetings of the product team, management decision e.g. if a financial portal does not have information on insurance planning, probably depending on the needs of the investment community the management could instruct the product team to start a new section on insurance
The req. analysis ends with preparation of Req. Specification Document (RSD)and can be passed on to the development team.

2. Project management

This is a standard procedure followed accross software companies. With minor changes this can followed.

3. Sales

One area to be covered is media sales on the portal, ad space sold either through cash sale or barter

If the portal is also into transaction it could account for the entire sales process till service is delivered is commenced.

4. Customer service

service maintenance, monitoring, web site uptime, MIS reports etc. Online customer feedback and complaint forms and redressal mecha nism

Other procedures are global procedures like training, resources etc.

Anyone?? Does anyone actually know of web portals that would have procedures in place?