HBMG Inc

Ability to monitor and maximize quality. Quality is a matter of meeting explicit requirements and expectations. To assure that project deliverables are high quality, HBMG focuses first on gathering all requirements and expectations, documenting them in an understandable format, prioritizing them and reaching consensus with the client on those that are to be satisfied by the project and those that should be deferred for future consideration.  Deferred requirements play an important part in architecting and designing a solution that is extensible to address anticipated future requirements.  Quality can not be tested into a poor architecture or design. It must be instilled by laying out a solid, complete architecture as the first step in designing in quality.  Architecture lays down a blueprint and definitions that assure the pieces fit when they are finally integrated and determines the style for design and implementation. Architecture presents a model of the system that is an early way to get assurance that the ultimate project output will satisfy customer needs. It also provides early definition of component functionality and interfaces so that cost effective test requirements and tests can be defined and built to be ready on time when the project gets to the testing stage. It enables managing the project better by componentizing the effort.  This importance of architecture is why HBMG is staffed with people with architecture skills, experience, and mind frame.

The companion best practice is thorough review, testing, or verification, as a part of each development phase to assure that all requirements and expectations are being addressed and met correctly and that the total solution will perform as expected. Each problem discovered and corrected in an early phase of a project prevents the introduction of multiple problems in work based on that phase that will need to be corrected by latter phases as they are discovered. Discovering problems before they surface in the field is the best way to assure the delivery of a quality product to the warfighter.  No test requirement should be ignored or test be skipped to meet schedule. Otherwise, problems will occur in the field where they much more costly to fix.

Statistical techniques and models are also important to monitoring and maximizing quality both during the project and in its deployment. HBMG incorporates these into its project plans.  One the members of our team, Signature Science, specializes in statistical data evaluation for quality assurance and quality control programs.