Quality is key for any startup company's success.  Customers are always looking for deals- something better for less- and when they find one they want to be happy with it.  No one wants to waste time and money on excessive change costs.  But they will change if they're unhappy, so assuring good quality is critical for any organization's success.  Cost gets you in, but quality gets you out.

So, how must a start up balance cost and quality?  There are a couple approaches.  The first is to thoroughly plan, adequately capitalize, and implement a formal, complete, rigorous quality system, organization, and action plan.  The second is to wing it with something less.  Given that money is often tight in a startup environment and quality system maturity takes time, winging it is common.  There's an old saying- anything worth doing is worth doing until you can do it well.  So, when it comes to startup quality, where to start?

There are many formalized quality approaches, including ISO, GMP, Six Sigma, TQM, Lean, and CMMI, but experience shows that there are three critical aspects of quality for any startup:

1. Planning- Someone must identify the critical requirements that the product/service must meet to win customers.  It is very common for entreprenuers to work with requirements (some hard, some soft) in their head as they toy around with what they can actually put together.  But it's critical for this vision to get outside one person's head so customers, partners, and employees know what is expected.  It is also important to consider regulatory requirements in a formal way- no one wants a hefty fine.

2. Validation- Once the requirements are determined, the design must be reviewed for compliance.  Prototype(s) must be created and tested in house.  And here is where many startup quality efforts fail- the product/service must be thoroughly tested across usage profiles.  Nothing will kill a startup quicker than a launch with significant bugs and the damage to reputations, the loss of revenues, and potentially huge scrap and change costs.  Alpha and beta customers are a proven way to identify these issues. 

3. Corrective Action- Corrective action is an outflow of testing, but remains a critical part of any quality system.  Problems must be fixed.  The 5 why method- asking why? five times- should be used to identify the root causes of any problem- especially customer complaints and validation/test failures- and problem seekers should never be allowed to stop on "inspection", "mistake" or "communication".  Most problems boil down to failures in materials, design, training, or processes, all of which can be error-proofed.

If a startup takes these three aspects of quality deadly seriously, then the elements of ISO will fall into place over time (if you fix a training problem you'll want to manage it and audit it and report on failures to management, for example).  Customer demands will drive continual improvement, warranting total quality, lean, and six sigma thinking.  And as the organization moves towards market leadership, market leading customers will seek perfection, where CMMI plays.  And leadership commitment to customer satisfaction will be bolstered.

mbarq technologies is pleased to offer a new approach to fleshing out quality systems using web 2.0 technology.  Just as CRM and ERP systems have given companies online tools to best manage customers and resources, OTS can be used to best manage quality, driving best practices throughout the organization.  In addition, mrSPC^TM is a low cost way to monitor critical processes and metrics.  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.