Can Whiteboards fullfil the needs of a QSM system?

[Lisa Forstberg]

Hi,

I have in the past worked in two assignments using Confluence + drawing apps to visualise the company QMS (Quality Management System) .  I am now embarking on a third assignment in this topic and I really want to explore if Whiteboards could fullfil the requirements. 

The definition

"A quality management system (QMS) is defined as a formalized system that documents processes, procedures, and responsibilities for achieving quality policies and objectives." An ISO 9001 standard.

The requirements

Visualise and hold:

• The organization’s quality policy and quality objectives
• Quality manual
• Procedures, instructions, and records
• Data management
• Internal processes
• Customer Satisfaction from product quality
• Improvement opportunities
• Quality analysis

In practice, what elements are really needed:

• Overall picture of the elements in a QMS
• Being able to click and get to underlying processes, to get into details of a specific process, procedures or instructions.
• Clickable links to reports, portals etc
• Management and control over the elements and the whole

What  do you think? If combining Confluence, Whiteboards, Dashboards, Jira and Jira SM I'd say we have a pretty decent competitor to all those expensive purpose made  applications (or worse; power points on a hard drive.. or even worse; paper in a dusty binder) 

Anyone else having experience on building tooling to support QSM? 

All the best

Lisa

[Susan Waldrip]

Hi @Lisa Forstberg , I'd say you're right -- using many or all of the Atlassian tools you mentioned would put you in a great position to monitor, manage, and update your QMS. Hopefully, Confluence experts like @Robert Hean , @Andy Gladstone , and (many) others will comment with suggestions and verification of whether what you're trying to do is doable using Confluence and the other tools. We'll be using Confluence and JSM together for a similar purpose so I appreciate the post -- and good luck!

[Robert Hean]

Hey @Lisa Forstberg - I haven't done QSM myself, but based on what you're describing it should be possible.

Whiteboards can visualize the process with branching conditions, and also support linking to other resources (Jira, confluence pages etc). Personally I find it not as robust as lucidchart, but more than sufficient for process maps.

Confluence could easily take care of your documentation needs (that's what it's for :D).

Would love to learn more about what your figure out, and happy to connect if you want to kick around ideas. 

[Mike Rink -drawio Diagrams-]

You might know about this already, @Lisa Forstberg , but if you're interested in building a QMS in Confluence, then SoftComply's eQMS app is definitely worth checking out. It's not specific to ISO 9001 but there might be overlap with what you're doing? 

[Lisa Forstberg]

Thank you! I’m sticking it on the list of possible solutions. 

[Andy Gladstone]

@Lisa Forstberg having implemented an ISO:9001 standard in a previous life - while using Confluence, I think the issue you are going to run in to with Whiteboards is version control. I have not looked at the ISO standards for almost a decade, but that was a big part of the requirements back then. Whiteboards are too fluid to be the basis of the process charting. I'd imagine that you'd need to build everything in the Whiteboard but store it as a dated and versioned PDF to qualify.

Good luck!

[Lisa Forstberg]

Oh, that might be it. Good input!

I also think that scaling it up the QSM, I would imagine they need custom made whiteboard templates to achieve an overall consistent design of each defined process. 

thanks! 

Lisa

[Eddy Lambert May]

Regarding versioning of Confluence, I've had some limited but successful experience using Comala Document Management as a supplementary tool in the highly regulated public sector. Although I've still to try this with Whiteboards, I'd imagine it should be able to handle formalised dokument versioning and quality assurance.

[Robert Hean]

I'm not familiar with the specific requirements of ISO:9001, but wonder if exporting the whiteboard as a PDF would satisfy versioning? (also trying to stay within vanilla Confluence).

e.g.

1. Finalize the design

2. Name is "version 1.x"

3. export as PDF

4. Upload PDF as a child page named "version 1.x"

5. Repeat steps 1.4 as necessary

Certainly not as ideal as an actual versioning system, but wonder if that would work?

[Susan Waldrip]

Hi @Lisa Forstberg , to follow on what @Andy Gladstone said, the only references I could find in AS9100D regarding document versioning is that they need "protection from inappropriate change" (as defined in Clause 7.5.3.2). Sounds like if you PDF whiteboards in a way that they can't be modified, date and version the PDFs, and make sure they're stored where they can be accessed until they're obsoleted (but not on a wall or piece of equipment! we got busted for that one year 😒), you should be okay. I've never had a problem with handling documents that way for an AS9100 audit (defense contractors) but you may have additional requirements in your industry.