Software Mind S.A. invites to the 6th Quality of IT Systems Conference, which will be held on 28 May 2009 in Warsaw. It is the most important event in Poland devoted to the issues of information systems’ quality.

We operate in difficult times of an economic slowdown and increasing competition on the IT market. IT Solutions are to be cheaper and better – a solution to this conflict will provide continuous attention to quality from the beginning to the end of the processes of development of these solutions. This is the main subject of this year’s conference.

As every year, the primary assumption of the conference is its strong practical dimension. “By practitioners for practitioners”; this is the motto of the conference organizers, i.e. the Association of Information Systems Quality (AISQ) and the Computerworld weekly magazine.

Software Mind, as a company operating in the IT sector, continually undertakes actions to spread best practices to improve the quality of information systems. The company puts a strong emphasis on the appropriate streamlining of production processes, and – by working on innovative projects for demanding clients – it sees tangible benefits, provided by the high quality of the products supplied.

During the conference, do not miss the lecture which will be given by Mrs. Monika Braun, Quality Director of Software Mind – “Good beginnings of evil.”

Lecture summary:

Project start, i.e. the initialisation phase, is often neglected or simply ignored. The identification of a project’s stakeholders in and their needs is unfortunately often marginalised, and the Stakeholders Matrix is a rarity in the projects. Business goals are more often identified, even though this task ends with determining one main business goal, which tends to be difficult to measure. Unfortunately, it is still rare to see the development of a Quality Plan, establishing a certain level of quality in the project. More and more often “Kick-Off Meetings” with clients are organised but these meetings are still not paid enough attention to. It is at such meetings that the Project Managers and teams of both parties determine the most important points of cooperation, the common objectives of business and get to know each other. It is worth remembering to organise a Kick-Off meeting for the project team. A well-informed and motivated team can do great things, while an insufficiently-informed and unmotivated one thwarts even the best-prepared project.

Rarely does it happen that we discuss what impact on the project it has when the starting meeting is omitted.

It is also very rare for us to think about how big an impact on the design a well-selected and motivated team has. We are bothered too little by the main objectives of the project.

The presentation will cover the issues concerning what to remember when starting a project, what the consequences of neglecting a project are, and how they affect the quality of the final project.