An Analysis of Quality Systems in IT: IBM Website Development Project

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of quality systems within the context of Information Technology (IT), specifically focusing on IBM's website development project. The report begins by justifying the selection of the IT industry and provides an overview of IBM's business operations, products, and services, including its web address. It then delves into the quality standards, such as ISO 9000 and AS9100, that IBM employs in website development, highlighting their importance in maintaining system quality and addressing client satisfaction. The report also addresses the risks associated with website development, detailing risk management standards like ISO 31000 and ISO 31010, and the importance of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) stages in identifying and mitigating potential issues. The report concludes with Gantt charts illustrating the project's timeline and activities, providing a visual representation of the development process and demonstrating how planning and execution are managed. This comprehensive overview offers valuable insights into how quality systems are implemented to ensure effective website development within a leading IT company.

QUALITY SYSTEMS IN IT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
(A) Justification for selection of industry....................................................................................1
(b) IBM business operations........................................................................................................1
(C) Product and services of IBM.................................................................................................2
D) Web address of company........................................................................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
A) Quality standards in the development of the corporate website.............................................3
B) Risk associated with the development of such a website.......................................................4
C) Quality assurance practices are applied at all stages of the website development life cycle. 5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
A) Gantt charts for the website development project..................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Quality standards helps in improving quality of the software and also gives a way to
resolve them by applying various techniques. ISO (International organization for
standardization) consists of many risk assessment techniques that helps in reducing the risk in the
software. IBM provides good quality software and hardware to the client. For the effective
implementation of the software in the company, they need to use software development life cycle
and create activity plan to implement a software on time.
TASK 1
(A) Justification for selection of industry
Information Technology (IT) is the best technique to increase overall firm performance
and productivity in the world. There are different types of IT companies that have the main
objective to increase the work efficiency in the company. By using various IT systems, they can
easily manage their work and get accurate results in an entity. Information Technology plays a
crucial role to increase work efficiency and also helps in getting higher performance in the
world. By using advanced and enhanced technologies of IT, the company can easily analyse data
and get accurate results (Bales and et.al., 2012). There are many companies that provide
appropriate and effective software to the customers to get higher performance in the world.
Advanced technologies help to increase work efficiency and get accurate results from the data
comparison.
(b) IBM business operations
IBM is one of the best companies in the UK and it provides innovative and effective
software to the customers. It develops appropriate hardware as well as software for the
consumers. Based on the client needs, it gives innovative services to the customers. It is the
multinational company that develops advanced and enhanced software for their clients. It has
many branches in the world such as UK, US, India etc. They use different types of marketing
strategies and approaches to increase overall sales performance in the business. It has good brand
image in the market because it gives effective and efficient services and software to the
consumers (Feng and et.al., 2013).
(C) Product and services of IBM
IBM is the multinational organisation in UK and it gives hardware and software to the client. It
has good brand image in the world because it uses various advanced technologies that gives
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more profit to an entity. It concentrates on the higher market value and more profitable market. It
has many shareholders and stakeholders in the world that gives more profit to the firm in terms
of higher performance in the world. It gives the products such as hardware and software. In
hardware, it gives the innovative products such as floppy disk, hard disk etc. while in software
products, it includes the comparison software, analytical and analysis software. Based on the
client needs, it gives innovative products and services to the consumers. It flows different types
of strategic approaches that helps in getting the desired target. Furthermore, it has good brand
identification in the world. It has many shops and branches in different countries. It increases
their sales revenue by applying various marketing and promotional strategies (Inman and et.al.,
2013). There are different types of marketing strategies that gives more advantages to the
customers. Therefore, it uses various approaches to create effective software in the world.
It gives innovative products and services to the consumers to increase their firm
performance in the world (Tejeda-Lorente and et.al., 2014). Company follows various
technologies that helps to create effective software and hardware for the client. It has many
stakeholders and chains in the world that give higher profit to the cited entity.
D) Web address of company
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/uk/en/
Screenshot of home page
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TASK 2
A) Quality standards in the development of the corporate website
For the effective website development or quality system, firms must use the quality
management standards which help them to maintain quality of the system or software. There are
different types of standards that give more security and protection to the quality system. Quality
standards provide the way to develop an effective and efficient system for the companies. IBM
uses different types of standards of the quality management that provides a way to create a good
website or the system in a firm (Wang. and et.al., 2012). Some of the quality standards that are
followed by IBM are as follows:
ISO 9000
This standard provides the ways, principles and policies to create an effective quality
management system in the company. It has two main objectives: it defines the terms and
conditions of the quality management system; other one is that it describes the principles of
quality management systems. When website is developed by software developers someof
employees faces various problems during development process so it can be said that these are the
standards that ensure improvement in quality work. In ISO 9001, it includes all the necessary
requirements of developing and implementing the quality management system based on
improving client satisfaction. It also includes the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) Cycle which helps
to check a plan and monitor the work whether it is working properly or not. It they found any
issues in the development of website, then a manager needs to take appropriate decision for the
solution (Aland, Kairn and Kenny, 2011). IBM uses these standards while creating the effective
quality management system.
AS9100
These standards provide the way to improve quality of the system and also helps to give
more techniques to reduce an issue during the implementation of the system in an entity. It
totally concentrates on the risk and configuration management. It is a set of principles and
regulations that helps to reduce a risk in the system (Bonetta and et.al., 2010). Recently, IBM
lost their data in the system and that system is not able to satisfy the consumer needs; so,
manager decided to use this standard which help to increase efficiency of system and also
enhances satisfaction level of the client.
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B) Risk associated with the development of such a website
There are different types of risk that can be occurred during the implementation of the
website in the company such as technical issues, risk of data and security. IBM faces many
problems related to the data security and risk control but they follow various standards of the
quality and risk management standards that helps to reduce the complexity of the risk in the
website.
ISO 310000
It includes different types of principles and instructions on the risk management. IBM
faces many risks during the implementation of the website an entity such as data security risk,
website is not able to satisfy the consumer’s needs, deign issue etc. For these barriers, company
follows various standards and approaches that helps to reduce the risk (Sallis, 2014). The firm
must use appropriate policies and techniques such as software development life cycle, advanced
standards which helps to secure the system and also improve the quality of the system in the
company.
ISO 31010
It includes all advanced techniques that helps to improve quality of the system and also
helps to reduce the barriers from the system. It consists of many principles and rules that gives
more benefit to solve a specific issue. By applying these risk management standards, IBM can
easily solve a particular issue in the development process. To solve any issue in the development
process, it includes various steps of risk assessment. By following stages of the risk assessment,
manager can easily identify the issue and then they can easily take appropriate decision for the
problem.
C) Quality assurance practices are applied at all stages of the website development life cycle
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) helps in identifying the risk and issues in the
particular software. IBM follows SDLC which helps in creating an effective software in the
entity. At each stage, manager can easily find out the issues and then they can take appropriate
decision for the particular barriers (Boutoubat, Mokrani and Machmoum, 2013). At each level of
a software development life cycle, developer can easily find out the problems and then they can
easily take effective decision for the improvement. Stages of SDLC are as follows:
Planning: At this stage, company plans for the software and creates the quality assurance plan
for the software. It also includes the test approaches to test a software whether it is reliable or
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not. By preparing the test cases for the software, it helps to check the reliability and flexibility of
the software.
 Analysis: It includes specification review of the software. To improve quality of the
software in an entity, manager needs to follow SDLC. IBM follows this approach that
helps to identify the risk and issues so that it helps to create effective software for the
customers.
 Design: At this stage, manager analyses the software design. A design must be effective
and attractive so that it helps to attract the consumers in the market. IBM totally
concentrates on the design and flexibility of the software which helps to increase
satisfaction level of the client and also helps to increase efficiency of the software
(Srivastava and et.al., 2011).
 Development: Manager needs to create test cases for the validation and verification of a
software. By testing the software, they can easily know whether the software is reliable or
not. IBM manager provides appropriate training to the employees so that they can easily
test the software to identify the issues (10 best practices for QA teams to deliver quality
software, fast, 2017).
 Development: At this stage, manager can easily apply test cases in the software to know
the actual fault and barriers. By knowing the barriers in the software, employees can
easily resolve them by applying various advanced techniques.
 Testing: There are mainly two types of techniques of the testing: one is test automation
and another one is non-functional testing. IBM follows all these quality assurance
techniques to improve the quality of the software.
 Deployment: At this stage, manager creates the validation and apply various enhanced
techniques of the shipment assurance (Guidetti, Beghi and Bodria, 2010). IBM manager
gives training to employees so that they can easily create validation planning and process.
TASK 3
A) Gantt charts for the website development project
Task
Mode Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors
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Manually
Scheduled
Identify the objective and
purpose 1 day 1/8/2018 1/8/2018
Manually
Scheduled
Identify the system
architecture 5 days 1/9/2018 1/15/2018 1
Manually
Scheduled
Requirements of the
system 10 days 1/16/2018 1/29/2018 2
Manually
Scheduled
Software strategy and
resources 2 days 1/16/2018 1/17/2018 1,2
Manually
Scheduled Cost calculation 1 day 1/30/2018 1/30/2018 3
Manually
Scheduled
Software requirement
analysis and appropriate
approaches
5 days 1/18/2018 1/24/2018 4
Manually
Scheduled Testing 2 days 1/30/2018 1/31/2018 3,4
Manually
Scheduled Risk management 3 days 1/31/2018 2/2/2018 5
Manually
Scheduled
Implementation and
results 1 day 1/25/2018 1/25/2018 6
Manually
Scheduled Software submission 1 day 1/31/2018 1/31/2018 5,6
Figure 1: Network diagram
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Figure 2: Gantt chart
For the effective implementation of the software project, company must need to create an
effective plan for it so that they can easily manage their work according to the time. Based on the
time scale, IBM can easily create a good quality system and software in the firm (Feng and et.al.,
2013). There are different types of techniques to create a good quality software in an entity. By
creating the planning activity, it gives an idea to the employees to complete the task on time.
Requirement analysis and testing the main stages of software development that need to be
performed for an effective implementation of the software at workplace. IBM creates this chart
because it gives the way to implement the good quality software in the company.
 Work breakdown structure: It is the structure under which tree like diagram is prepared
and different branches are prepared in it. This sort of method is used when in any activity
that is important for project cover sub activities. In order to reveal this sort of structure,
work breakdown method is used (Hamada, Sekimoto and Imanaka, 2012). In respect to
current project which is related to software development, business analyst can review
entire sort of documents and can identify core tasks like planning and testing etc. For
breakdown structure in planning, different activities can be encompassed like analysis of
customer requirement etc. Similarly, in testing in tree, it can be revealed whether
software developer will use automated or manual testing process. If there is manual
testing or automatic testing phases that will be followed under these testing process will
be reflected clearly in chart. It can be said that in these ways, work breakdown structure
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can be used in an easy and effective way. This is the reason due to which work
breakdown structure is commonly used by the software development team. In the
structure, different phases of project can be charted in proper manner. Due to such wide
application and easy to understand feature, this method is widely used by the analysts in
their software development projects.
 Gantt chart: Gantt chart to some extent is similar to the work breakdown structure. It can
be observed that in Gantt chart also classification of activities is done like seen in case of
work breakdown structure. On this ground, both appear similar but there is also
difference between them (Peraman, Bhadraya and Padmanabha Reddy, 2015). One of the
major difference between them is that Gantt chart reflects the duration in which project
will be completed. It also reflects time period in which each phase of the project will be
executed. It can be said that Gantt chart is more convenient to use and is more
informative then work breakdown structure. In the current software development project
in Gantt chart, time within which planning, software development and its implementation
of closure of project must be done can be clearly determined. This will lead to control on
cost of the project.
 Precedence diagram: Precedence diagram is another approach which reflects sequence in
which activities are performed. This diagram reflects that before performing specific task
what other tasks are performed. Thus, step by step activities that need to be performed are
clearly reflected by precedence diagram. By using the precedence diagram, software
developer can plan a series in which they need to perform task in sequence.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded that for the effective development of software, firm must use
Software Development Life Cycle which helps in identifying the issues so that employees and
manager can easily solve them by applying various approaches. IBM gives an effective and good
quality software to the customers. It also innovates the software based on the client needs which
helps in increasing overall company performance in the market. However, during the
implementation of the software in an entity, employees may face many problems such as quality
issues, technical barriers, risk management etc. All these are solved by applying advanced
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standards, ISO 9000 and 310000 in the business and this gives a way to improve the quality of
the software.
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Sallis, E., 2014. Total quality management in education. Routledge.
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10 best practices for QA teams to deliver quality software, fast. 2017. [Online]. Available
through :< https://techbeacon.com/10-best-practices-qa-teams-deliver-quality-software-
fast>.
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