Total quality management manifested through Ada

• Authors: John S. Medley
• Venue: WADAS '91 Proceedings of the eighth annual Washington Ada symposium & summer SIGAda meeting on Ada: software: foundation for competitveness
• Year: 1991

Depending on the source, Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy, methodology, style, system, concept, or tool, or some combination thereof. As a solution to the dire predictions of America's dwindling leadership in the world marketplace, it can be said that TQM is the product of good old American ingenuity, inspired in the marketplace, in particular the high technology market, TQM will be of prime importance.This paper alerts to the pitfalls of TQM implementations based upon short term visions, profits, and gains. It suggests such implementations will lead to large financial losses over the long term. This paper addresses the following premises:– TQM is the embodiment of that leadership, which, throughout the organization, has the responsibility and authority to cause cultural change– TQM is sufficently flexible to include the philosophy of leaders who are successful and who can change organizational processes– A successful firm's tried and tested practices and tools will be beneficial to long term financial objectives under TQM– TQM can be adopted by any leader, regardless of style– TQM, as a system, should serve the leadership that evolves from top management's commitment– The high quality performance envisioned under TQM, may be found in the environment of an Ada development project.Quality has been essential in developing the Ada programming language. As with Ada, the manifestation of TQM must have quality, unemcumbered by political motives, as its essential criterion. As Ada evolved through its strawman phase to its current environmental stoneman phase, it fostered a cultural change in the technical community. As Ada evolved it retained quality as its bedrock. TQM needs a cultural change to realize, fully, its quality objectives. Ada, because of its compelling adherence to good software engineering principles, produces a cultural change.This paper will show that the natural ingredients of TQM already exist in the successful organization. This will be shown using excerpts from the works of an actual project, the development of the largest management information system in Ada by Computer Sciences Corporation. Examples of pre-existing TQM ingredients and Ada's inherent ability to enforce engineering disciplines, will be presented as evidence of a TQM and Ada synergy. The Ada vision does not manifest itself as the final solution to software engineering problems. Nor should TQM be the final solution to American leadership in the world marketplace. Yet, there are aspects of the market that will benefit from combining Ada's power to generate quality software with TQM's power to multiply quality throughout the marketplace.