The journey to a useful intranet [Part 2] – Quality Management

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In my previous blog post The journey to a useful intranet [part 1] I very spoke briefly about our Quality Assurance certification and how we have used the Bluewire Wiki (intranet) to meet certain requirements. As the Quality Manager at Bluewire, I wanted to share my experience and how we have integrated these mandatory requirements into our existing wiki.

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Initially our quality manual was a 20 page PDF document on the server that no one ever read (as often happens with these types of documents). It meant that a majority of the information was there because it had to be and really didn’t add any value to the business, team or overall customer satisfaction which is the entire point of it’s existence.

What changed?

We made the decision to move the entire document into the Bluewire wiki. Rather than being a stand alone document, it now filters throughout the entire wiki like a spider web linking relevant information together across all areas/disciplines. What this means is that all staff when adding to or finding information are reading and interacting with the very information that was once hidden away.

Sounds complicated? It really wasn’t.

When you first open the Bluewire wiki, we have a link on the home page directly to the Quality Manual. It’s there for everyone to see and access.

The Quality Manual itself is a one page article. It doesn’t even have a contents list… it doesn’t need to.

Each section of the standard is a heading.
Under each heading there is relevant information, kept to a few words or sentences.
There is a link to more in depth policy and/or procedure.

The following is an example of one section, with blue indicating a link to more in depth information:

We have managed to keep the entire manual to 8 headings on 1 page… it’s no longer a daunting document.

It’s a snapshot of our entire Quality Management System and gives the reader the ability to click through to more detailed information if they choose. For example, if you click through to ‘Internal Audit’ you will find around 10 separate pages of information and how-tos.

The exciting part is that there are dozens of articles that then point back to the Quality Manual, closing the loop. Even procedures written by other team members (i.e. our testing procedure written by the development team) form part of the entire picture. Whether you start at the beginning and work your way through or look for a particular article and find your way back to the start it all works together and the entire team is using it.

It really proved that there’s no need to redesign the wheel. We’ve simply built on what we’re already doing well and have started dusting off other manuals and adding them to the Bluewire Wiki too!