Build Quality into your Systems Effort

Abstract

People programming, the design and documentation of administrative systems for use as a management tool, has been on the rise for some time now, but not so the quality. That seems to remain at a low level. Not only do systems designers still take too much time to design, but the document that they finally do publish is barely communicative. Quality in this case is paradoxical: it is sorely needed, yet it cannot be measured. Grumman, however, solved the problem by taking the approach of building quality into the design effort, providing writing mechanics to do so. Neither the approach nor the mechanics were easy to specify.

A philosophy to establish the basics and define the terms was first in order. The mechanics were developed from that philosophy. The results were more than anticipated because, in three years' use, the mechanics have not yet failed to cope with the many systems writing requirements.