Standards and frameworks are, simultaneously, the biggest help and biggest hindrance to implementing effective life-cycle management.
While standards and frameworks provide invaluable guidance to professionals and help to establish consistency across a profession they also constrain and, worse, are seen as an end in themselves.
Standards and frameworks are brilliant, I love them. I also ignore them when they get in the way of actually getting a result. The thing is, too often, particularly with so-called ‘compliance’ standards (those that are certified by a standards body) the standard becomes the goal and this is wrong in pretty much ever respect.
The Good…
Certification that your organisation meets a standard should be the last thing on your mind. First, create a good system. Establish good, consistent practices. Design efficient processes that provide the correct balance between control and flexibility. Ensure that your organisation is producing the best quality possible in a timely fashion and can account for each deliverable’s path through your processes.
Do this and getting the standard certification is simply the icing on the cake.
The Bad…
Get a copy of the standards. Write a process to meet those standards. Force your organisation into a set of working practices that comply with those standards. Go for certification.
The second approach results in an organisation being shoehorned into fitting a process, the first adapts the process to fit the organisation. The first approach will always be better than the second because the focus of the Good approach is on making the organisation function more effectively while the focus of the Bad approach is on making the organisation fit a prescription.
The Ugly (truth)…
The Ugly truth is that most organisations that hold standard certification do so not because they believe that it benefits their business, but because their clients demand it. Their clients demand it, not because they believe that companies holding the standard certificate perform better but because those making the purchasing decision know they are beyond reproach if the supplier holds the certification – it is ‘not their fault’ when a supplier fails to perform, after all, they had the standard certificate. (This disease is particularly prevalent in government bodies where standards certification rules supreme.)
It is also certain that organisations holding standards certification will at various times not meet the standards to which they are certified. Experience suggests that the more an organisation approached achieving the standard through the wrong approach outlined above the more likely they are to ‘break the rules’.
So, are standards useful? Should we pursue certification?
Hopefully it should be clear but now that:
- Yes, pursue certification but only when you have an organisation that is ready. Never force the organisation to fit the standard just to get the certification.
- When purchasing, use certification as a ‘nice to have’ but always base your decision on what you know about the organisation’s actual working practice. Standards are a supplement, not a substitution, for due diligence.
