CBG Inc. - Management System Professionals Support

Karen Creditor For quality professionals, interacting with project managers is undoubtedly the most frustrating part of their job. It’s not that project managers are bad people. In fact, I must confess that I am a project manager myself, and I have sometimes done my best work while making my quality colleagues crazy. For that I am truly sorry. Well, mostly sorry. Why are project managers so frustrating to quality professionals? I believe it’s because of the differences in world view. Concepts like value, frameworks, goals, and speed, along with the inherent differences in personality types drawn to each profession, make us view each other from slightly different perspectives. At our worst, we tend to look at each other like we live on different planets. Here’s an example I share with my students to illustrate the differences. Once upon a time I managed a team of project managers in a technology company. I had just hung up the phone from a planning call for the upcoming ISO audi...

Software testers are increasingly being challenged to provide better test coverage for the applications they test. Persona Based Testing ( PBT ) puts testers in the customer’s shoes like never before to enhance testing coverage with the ultimate goal of not only meeting customer expectations, but exceeding them. One of the main objectives of software testers is to ensure that the software they are testing meets the specified requirements and maintains a certain level of quality. What would happen if the software that is delivered to the customer not only meets the requirements but instead, exceeds them? Undoubtedly, you would have a very happy and repeat customer. Software testers are often required to put themselves in the customer’s place to ensure that the software is providing what the customer requires. This can be challenging when teams are basing their tests solely on written requirements (that in most cases may not fully capture the customer experience or how they will uti...

The theme of World Standards Day 2012 is, "Less waste, better results – Standards increase efficiency". IEC, ISO and ITU emphasize that one of the key issues that organizations are facing in today’s business environment is the continuously increasing pressure “to achieve better results with less waste." At CBG Inc. we are celebrating World Standards Day this year by offering you a gift – a free live online webinar of “ Make Lean Happen ” presented by Hemant Gham who is one of the leading experts in North America on Wasteless Lean processes and systems. Mr. Gham will explain key features of Lean transformation, answer your questions, and help you to decide what is right for you. Register now ! Note : World Standards Day is celebrated internationally every year on 14 October to honor the efforts of experts who develop standards within the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and International Telecom...

Later this decade, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil will host the two largest sporting events in the world, the World Cup and the Olympics. This year the city was the venue of another event of major international proportions but instead of sports the focus was sustainability. The Rio +20 event was arguably the largest single event related to sustainable development. This UN Conference gathered delegations from 188 member states, including heads of state of over 130 countries. There were also over 40,000 credential passes issued for the massive event. Some of the conference results were also record breaking. There were over 700 voluntary commitments by governments, businesses, NGOs, and other institutions reaching a total of over $500 billion. This included a pledge of $175 billion by eight multilateral development banks to support sustainable transport in developing countries . The predominant conclusion of the Rio+20 event was a document approved by 193 countries entitled “The Future We...

As our world becomes smaller we need to constantly rethink the social and environmental impact of our actions on personal, community and business levels. Modern technology wired us together – but nothing will replace the face to face meetings. It can be a social gathering or a team building event, Olympics or a scouts outing. In June 2012 ISO published a new standard that provides practical tools for sustainable managing of events of all types and sizes. The first international event that proudly followed the ISO 20121 guidelines was London 2012 Olympics.   The standard is beneficial to a variety of actors and parties involved in event organization, planning and execution. It provides guidelines on how to cut costs and use resources efficiently via monitoring and measuring.   However, ISO 20121 is NOT a checklist and is difficult to understand . If you’re interested in learning more about sustainability please contact us at http://c-bg.com/...

The Change Is Never Over   For any organization leading a change or transformation program such as Lean, work is never over. This is similar to working continuously to achieve your most ambitious and desired personal goals in life. Every arrival point of a change in the organization is a departing point. By this, I do not mean drifting away from the objectives set for the long-term. I mean departing from the old habits that stifle productivity, innovation, company growth, and employee morale to finally embrace change. When employee morale is down, people are not quite willing to participate in the change movement. They tend to resist the change or move to other organizations. This causes an inevitable change in company culture that might have a negative impact on its growth. To minimize this negative impact, you must generate enough enthusiasm to create a belief in the company, particularly, in the employees that “the need for a change is greater than the resistance to change”....

Auditing Remotely   Modern technologies have changed the way we communicate and collaborate with each other over the last five years (2007 - 2012) much more than it had done so over the previous twenty years (1987-2007) and even more than the previous 110 years (1877-1987). New ways to collaborate that became available over the last several years include: social networking, tele-presence, virtual group meetings, instant sharing of text, video and audio, as well as virtual content creation. New information technologies pushed the boundaries of what seemed to be impossible in the last century allowing real-time collaboration of people from remote locations. Companies that offer certification, registration, and consulting services increasingly prefer virtual sessions over in-person visits.  These technologies open a world of new possibilities for organizations but also introduce a number of challenges.       Risk-based Auditing Risk-based audits have been ...