The Changing Face of Requirements

By Thomas Pyzdek

 

Prior to the industrial revolution, quality was defined aesthetically. It was beauty, goodness, art. The requirements were those of the user or artist. They were as varied as the individuals for whom they were created. There were no quality professionals, only creators and consumers.
Quality 1.0, which began in the late 18th century, focused on consistently meeting the requirements of a target customer market. The emphasis was on reproducibility, accuracy, and consistency. Quality professionals came into existence. They were tasked with identifying the customer’s requirements, translating them into an internal language called specifications, and assuring conformance to these specifications. The customer requirements that concerned these professionals were what Noriaki Kano termed expected and “must have” requirements. These were requirements of which customers were consciously aware.

While these tasks were challenging, they pale by comparison to the new challenges imposed by Quality 2.0. Namely, we must now identify, translate, measure and assure conformance to the requirements of all major stakeholders, not just customers. And we must determine not just those requirements that stakeholders expect or insist on, now we must assure that our offerings include new and exciting features that will differentiate us from our competitors for customers, employees, and investors. These are “requirements” that stakeholders aren’t even aware they have. There have been many names for this type of requirement, but I’ll use my favorite: Wow requirements. Wow requirements are features of products or services that stakeholders didn’t ask for, but once experienced they think, “Wow! I really like this!”
So how do we go about identifying requirements that stakeholders don’t know they have? One way has been around as long as business itself: visionaries. Before Alexander Graham Bell no one really knew they wanted a telephone. Ordinary folks can also identify Wow requirements by reflecting on the humanity they share with everyone else. What would you love from your job? Your investments? Your purchases? What is there that you’d love that no one else provides? Answers to these questions may provide the germ of an idea for a Wow requirement. Another way to identify these requirements is what Intuit Corporation calls “follow me home.” This involves spending time with customers (or groups that you would like to have as your customers) and carefully observing what they do. How can you help them do it faster, easier, cheaper, or more joyfully? What problems do they have that you can make disappear? What opportunities could they exploit with your help?

The new role of the quality professional

The changes Quality 2.0 brings to requirements has a major impact on the quality professional’s role. In the past the quality professional could pretty much focus on two questions:

  1. What are the customers’ requirements?
  2. Do our products and services conform to the requirements?

The quality professional’s role was passive. Marketing would identify product requirements, engineering would translate the requirements into specifications, and manufacturing would create products. It was assumed that engineering made the proper translation. Quality Assurance began when manufacturing received the engineering requirements. Quality developed procedures to assure that manufacturing met the requirements.
In the future the quality professional’s role will be much more pro-active. In addition to being concerned with product requirements, we will be expected to facilitate the process of deploying strategies to achieve the leadership goals for stakeholders. This means that we will guide the organization in how to obtain stakeholder requirements and how to measure them in concrete terms. Figure 1 illustrates an approach for doing this. The organization pursues the leadership vision by helping stakeholders meet their various requirements. They do this by pursuing strategies that are operationalized via metrics for each stakeholder. These metrics are monitored on balanced scorecards. Metrics are divided into two categories: key requirements and differentiators. Key requirements are operational metrics that must be competitive. Differentiators are strategic metrics that must be world-class. A dashboard is used by the leadership to monitor differentiators and those key requirements that are dangerously non-competitive. The dashboard is used to drive operational plans and to identify strategic change projects, including Six Sigma projects. Leadership monitors the dashboard carefully and uses feedback from the dashboard to help identify changes in strategies.

 

Figure 1 –Quality 2.0 Overview

These activities are Quality 2.0 in a nutshell. It is an exciting, challenging new world forthe quality professional.

 

 

 

Thomas Pyzdek, Principal of Pyzdek Consulting, Inc. holds more than 50 copyrights including the Six Sigma Handbook, The Quality Engineering Handbook and The Handbook of Quality Management. His works are used by thousands of universities and organizations around the world to teach process excellence. Pyzdek has provided training and consulting to clients in all industries for over 23 years. He has worked in process excellence since 1967.