The 9000 Resource

Explaining your Project to Co-workers...in simple terms

It is important to have people on your side as you implement the project, and there is a balance between not enough info and too much when you’re informing employees.  Anxiety is often caused by a lack of knowing (“will my job be affected?”) yet too many details can confuse them.  So as you prepare to implement ISO 9000:2000, try to get people engaged without giving them the nitty-gritty details. We’ve all seen an ISO implementation broken down into any number of steps, our site even gives some examples. But depending on the context of the conversation it may be too much. Here is a simple look which may help translate the project into very concise terms that anyone can understand:

1. Documentation = Say what you do – document your processes/procedures
2. Implementation = Do what you say – follow procedures as documented
3. Training – Ensure that everyone knows how to perform their procedures/tasks.
4. Improve – Continually look for ways to improve your processes. 

And all of the above must be customer driven…you must be meeting or exceeding customer expectations.  This is the big advantage of ISO 9001:2000 over the 1994 version.  You could follow #1-4 above, but it is said that if you are designing CONCRETE life jackets you won’t have many customers, even though you are making them consistently to the specification.

Everyone needs to be informed. So keeping it in simple terms might just help you win some employees and keep them from becoming cynical detractors.

Planning your ISO 9001 Planning Meetings

A. Planning your meeting

Determine who should attend. Include top management. Answer these questions:

1. Who will be able to decide which employees will be assigned tasks?
2. Will they know whether the employees' workload will be able to accommodate the assigned tasks?

Create an Agenda, items to include:

1. Review Task list.
2. Determine how to group tasks.
3. Group tasks by the area responsible for the requirement where possible. (If you can group requirements, you can assign a set of requirements to an individual or team from the relevant area.)
4. Assign the tasks to individuals or teams.
   
   • Review the responsibilities to make sure that they are well dispersed, not assigned heavily to one group or one individual.
5. Determine resources required for completion of the tasks.
6. Will teams or individuals need assistance with other responsibilities during the ISO 9001:2000 project?
7. What kind of technical guidance will be needed to allow these teams or individuals to complete the tasks efficiently and effectively?
   
   • An external consultant?
   • An internal consultant?
   • Assistance from the management representative?
   • Prepared materials?
   • Special Training?
8. Assign dates to tasks.
   
   • Stagger start dates according to resources available.
   • Determine which tasks you need to complete in the beginning to allow others to build on, for example: Management Responsibility. Complete the Quality Policy and Quality Goals as well as identifying key processes and their interrelation early on in the project.
   • Estimate the amount of time needed to complete each task based on the amount of resources available to the task.

B. Holding the meeting

1. Follow your agenda, fill in responsibility and dates on your task list as you proceed.
2. Keep minutes of the meeting, including attendees. This will show top mana

How to write an ISO project plan

A. Determine the project goals

In order to start planning, you will need to determine what your goals are for the project. Answer these questions:

1. When will you start your project?
Consider the start of your project as the date of the Gap Analysis. When will you be ready to conduct the Gap Analysis?

Recommended steps to be completed before conducting the Gap Analysis: Identify one or more people to conduct the Gap Analysis; it is helpful if they have some quality system experience or audit experience. You may also want to consider having assistance from a consultant.

Create or purchase a checklist for the Gap Analysis.

Schedule the Gap Analysis, and communicate to all employees what is being done, and why. You will want to be able to make the employees comfortable with answering your auditors questions.
Resource Tip: Check out our ISO 9001 Employee Flyer Package. Use it to inform and educate your employees.

The auditor is the person conducting the gap analysis. It may be an audit team or one individual

2. When does your company want to have an ISO 9001:2000 certificate in hand?
The answer to this question will determine your timeline.
The shorter time frame allowed for the project, the more resources the project will demand during implementation.

It is important to know what your goal is because other dates will be determined by this information.
Find out if there are company goals, are there clients that are requesting certification or other circumstances that will determine the date?

Your date may be revised later. You will use this as a target date, and as we move along to the gap analysis and creating the task list you will be able to determine if the date is realistic. It will depend on what you currently have in place for your quality system, and how many resources you have available for the project.

B. Identify Project Responsibilities

It is important to determine who will be leading this project. Are you the person leading the charge? If so, you would be the project manager. You do not need to identify the management representative at this point. You will need to clarify who makes up "Top Management". The standard has requirements to be fulfilled by Top Management, and the sooner they are involved in this project the better.

Who is your project manager?
Who makes up Top Management at your organization?
Who should be on the ISO 9001 Steering Team? This team will play an important role in planning, coordinating and providing resources for the ISO 9001:2000 project.
What is the ISO 9001 Steering Team?

C. Begin to fill in the Project Timeline

When will you conduct your Gap Analysis and how long will it take to complete?
A Gap Analysis can typically take anywhere from 2 days to 5 days to perform. It will depend on the size of your organization, the number of auditors, the state of your current quality system and the experience of your auditors.

Planning Meetings to assign Task Teams.
This will take one or two meetings. The project manager and top management should be involved.
What are task Teams?

Target a date for Introductory training for all employees.
You will want your employees to be aware of the project, what will need to be done, who will be involved, and why you are implementing ISO 9001:2000. Choose a date that is after the planning meeting discussed above. That way you can decide if some people that will be involved in the project need more detailed training, and you can let employees know who will be working on the project.

Plan training before the Task Team meetings so individuals involved in the task groups are trained before their first meeting.