Following the formal recognition of our user centred design (UCD) process via the ISO9241:2010 accreditation in 2012, Cyber-Duck learnt today that it been formally awarded the prestigious ISO 9001:2008 by British Standards International (BSI).
Update: June 2022, Cyber-Duck was awarded ISO9001:2015 accreditation.
Cyber-Duck is the first digital agency to be accredited for both the ISO9001:2008 and ISO9241:2010 credentials. For those that don’t know, an ISO is an International Standard Organisation. The ISO9001:2008 certificate means that Cyber-Duck Ltd adheres to the rigorous principles laid out in the industry standard requirement. In a nutshell this means that the business has to have a quality management system (QMS) and a quality policy. These documents outline the vision and quality objective for the business and each department. This then drip feeds into each staff members KPI, meaning that everyone without exception understands the objectives, targets and importance of client care.
ISO9001 requires that each certified organization has a quality policy and quality management system (QMS).
Validated learning
It doesn’t stop there; ISO9001:2008 advocates a culture of analysis and validated learning (similar to agile and lean) so each and every aspect of our digital agency including client satisfaction, project KPIs, the logging and visualisation of non-conformities is at the heart of what we do. With a huge emphasis on identifying and logging corrective and preventive actions, we now have a bird’s eye view of our operations. Key to all of this is continual improvement via in-house auditing, regular management reviews and stringent recurring procedures and process documents. Jack Welch summarized this mindset very succinctly, “An organisation’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage”.
So what benefits has ISO9001 really brought to Cyber-Duck?
After a 9 month process of implementing ISO9001:2008 the benefits are very clear. Rather than me doing the talking or writing, pictures speak louder than words. I asked three internal departments to vote internally and draw out 3 key benefits each. They are summarized below.
Business operations and strategy
Our strategy and operations team outlined that ISO9001 benefits include (1) a better scoping out of projects, (2) a more focused business strategy via quality objectives and that (3) regular and formal client feedback means continual improvement in our digital agency.
User experience (UX) and design department
The user experience (UX) team outlined that ISO9001 benefits helped Cyber-Duck to (4) analyse and rethink our processes and make them better,(5) ISO9001 improve existing project management and (6) tie with our user centred design (UCD) philosophy by enhancing the existing ISO 9241:2010 processes that we devised internally.
The development department
The development team stand alongside ‘Chewie’ its very own mascot. They outlined that ISO9001 benefits helped Cyber-Duck with (7) the improvement of reliability of all development work and that (8) ISO9001 helps to make Cyber-Duck more trustworthy and credible. The other benefit (9) that they highlighted was increased reactivity and pro-activity!
The QA department
The QA team include Nash and ‘Dave’ the duck. Nash listed his top three benefits. The first one (10) was that ISO9001 helped to standardize both quality assurance (QA) processes and support. He also mentioned that the ISO helped (11) to improve and cement integrated work-flows between department. Nash’s final point (12) was that ISO9001 helped to add value and accountability not only to his department; but to the entire team.
Summary
Before ISO9001:2008, our agency prided itself in fulfilling the ISO9241:2010 for human centred design and all senior team members were certified Scrum Masters by the Scrum Alliance. This meant that we combined the best of UCD and agile into products and projects. With the ISO9001:2008 under our belt, we now offer industry leading quality management within our agency meaning that we are more customer centric and even supplier focused. Everyone is motivated by higher level quality objectives. The ISO9001 ultimately enhanced our existing UCD and agile process by integrating these philosophies into a wider and focused business framework.
