Quality & Productivity
by Debby King-Rowley »
Productivity relationships
This chapter looks at the relationship that exists between QM and the productivity of architectural firms. The question may readily be asked: is that relationship positive, negative or inverse? If you take the currently most popularly held view, you might quickly respond that it is a negative relationship.
Your argument might be that since you are spending more time on writing and referring to documentation, you have less time to do your ‘real work’, and therefore you are less productive. You may be a little less cynical and respond that it is at least a positive relationship, and that the effort you expend on QM is matched by an increase in the productive output of you and your firm. The desirable relationship is of course that of an inverse relationship between the two concepts. That is, over time the amount of effort that has to be expended on QM decreases while the productive output of your firm as a result of implementing QM increases. (continued)
An abridged version of this paper was first published as Chapter 5.5 in Managing Quality in Architecture.
Read Debby’s complete paper below: