The Future: Ensure Digital Quality

 'Quality Throughout' is the 2015 Future of Quality Report.  I invite you to download a copy of the same and read it.  Laurel Nelson-Rowe, ASQ Managing Director has written the guest post for this month, where she asks the influential voices bloggers to share their views about this report and "the future of quality" from now on.  

Switch on the time machine to  step back to the year 2007.  One of the key happenings then was the introduction of iPhone, by Apple, that really triggered the birth of business disruption using Digital, especially mobile smartphones.  Companies that embraced Digital technologies survived while many others, that did not, perished. Following the iPhone invention, digital innovations around Cloud computing, Social Media, Big Data and Hadoop, Machine Learning etc., started to appear and eventually gained prominence.  Companies started using Digital as a differentiator  to run and stay ahead in business. 

Today, mobile channel is one of the prominent business channels for many enterprises.  It is responsible for about of 50% total business transactions in many organizations, especially in retail sector.  Smaller companies, that did not have the capability to make heavy investments, could compete with larger corporations by adopting cloud services such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service.  By leveraging commodity infrastructure and high bandwidth network, enterprises obtained the power to derive business intelligence from huge amounts of (big) data such as real-time web click streams, server logs etc., which earlier were ignored.   So, over the last few years, the world for many organizations have changed significantly, due to digital, and that journey is still on.

Quality professionals have a lot of work ahead to devise concepts, processes and tools,  that will ensure high quality, consistent customer experience and care across various channels such as mobile, web, in-store and over-phone.  They also have the responsibility to assure high quality of big data, a major pain point today when dealing with unstructured or semi-structured data.  Security is a key concern for many organizations that want to adopt cloud.  How to ensure high compliance to security guidelines and how to measure and control the same is an issue a quality professional can help address.  In summary, there is a lot of work ahead for a quality professional in the future digital world.

The buzzwords of today and, apparently tomorrow, are "Digital" and "Internet-of-Things (IoT)".  Future of quality will be to assure that everything is alright around Digital. Thus, quality professionals will need to help build the right quality processes, tools, concepts etc., relevant to this new and emerging digital world.

The Real Value of Conferences

This month's blog post is by Julia of ASQ Communications and she has come with an apt topic for discussion this month - The Pros and Cons of Conferences.   It is apt because the prestigious 2015 World Conference on Quality and Improvement is going to happen at Nashville, TN from May 4 to May 6, 2015.  In her blog post, Julia asks an important question about the 'value of conferences, meetings and in-person events'.  In her question, the term 'in-person' is key.

In fact, Julia's question is valid and relevant to today's context.  Many organizations and individuals may not prefer to participate in such in-person events or conferences due to the reasons such as - i) it is an expensive affair, due to the travel and registration costs, ii) there are cost-effective ways to participate remotely, for example - through web conferencing, or,  iii) watch video channels or read blogs, for example - YouTube,  as they provide live or delayed telecast of conference proceedings.

To attract more participation in conferences, organizations strive to deliver 'value'.  When individuals perceive a greater value, they tend to participate in-person.  I would like to look at this 'value', from an attendee point of view, and discuss 5 special points that makes conferences unique and effective.

1.  Time and Effort, dedicated - True and effective learning happens when there is dedication. Conferences are those events primarily focused on learning and knowledge sharing.   Since people typically invest their 2 to 4 dedicated days at conferences, they get to learn and share knowledge, or discuss business - to their satisfaction.  This dedication is very unique to conferences and a  real value element that generates satisfaction

2.  The Guest Speakers, those famous personalities - It is always great to see or meet with famous personalities in-person and listen to them.  This is often possible only during conferences.  Conferences with best and famous speakers receive better registration and participation

3.  The Sessions, you get to really learn - Breakout sessions are very important from a learning perspective.  You can ask questions to the presenter only if you participate and interact live.  You also get to listen to others questions which is most often not effective, or even possible, when participating through web conferencing or while watching video channels

4.  Networking, meet human beings - Physical networking and the ability to exchange business cards is only possible in in-person events.  The bonding that one can create while meeting people and spending few days will be long lasting than virtual networking

5.  Entertainment and Fun, those memorable moments - Most conferences are designed with some entertainment and fun aspects.   It is not always serious business.  After a long set of presentations, discussions and breakout sessions, some entertainment and fun really makes the event more memorable for participants.

The forthcoming ASQ World Conference has all the 5 'value' elements discussed above.  Looking forward to meet you there.

Some more Ideas to promote STEM education in next generation

This month, Bill writes about the importance of promoting Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) education and discusses on aspects of how to create and encourage the next generation of STEM professionals.  In 2014, through an ASQ survey, members were asked to provide advice to engineering students on how to develop the STEM skills.

The advice from ASQ members were on topics such as - i) improve analytical thinking and develop ability for big picture thinking, ii) improve communication skills, iii) find qualified mentors, iv) take business courses, v) have well-rounded interests including arts, and, vi) form team projects and strong organizations.

The survey from ASQ was a fantastic effort and another great social initiative from ASQ.  While the member survey resulted in various useful advice to students and the budding engineering community, I would like add and complement some more thoughts, as listed below:

1. Firm up fundamentals - Many a times, the student missed to learn the basics of science and technology courses and, in turn, they find it difficult to take up advanced courses.  The school curriculums should be adjusted to firm up to teach students on fundamental topics which will help lay a strong foundation in students and can generate or promote interest to learn science, technology and mathematics.  Educational organizations can provide more opportunities for those students to catch up on learning STEM fundamentals

2. Foster ideation, innovation by setting up local clubs and chapters - Young generation always have tons of innovative ideas.   Many have and think about their ideas and, unfortunately, do not proceed further to build or test the ideas.  It is important for schools and other business organizations to build local clubs or chapters (similar to Toastmasters club) to foster ideation and innovation etc

3. Promote education through social media - The new generation really embraces social media and daily find time to spent there.  Social media can transform as a channel to foster new generation education.   Business organizations and schools must leverage social media to promote networking, knowledge sharing, learning amongst students

4. Intrinsically motivate to learn through gamification - Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are getting popular now a days.  Top schools around the world now offer free online education to millions of students.  With proper use of gamification and MOOCs, students can be intrinsically motivated to learn STEM topics

5. Provide more infrastructure for hands-on experiments - While there will be plenty of avenues to learn theoretical topics, it is important to have the best infrastructure available to try-out what the students have learned.  Universities, schools, business organizations must join hands to set up "open-labs" for students to come and try hands-on experiments and practical exercises.  Simulations will play a big role, with emergence of mobile, big data and cloud, online infrastructure also needs to be set up for such needs.

STEM is extremely important and the foundation of growth for world economies.  It is therefore important for the world community to participate and contribute towards various initiatives to develop strong STEM professionals.