Review By: Julie Cole
07/09/2010

In "ISO 9001: 2000: Achieving Compliance and Continuous Improvement in Software Development Companies," author Vivek Nanda uses a clear, concise writing style to explain the various aspects of achieving compliance with the ISO 9001: 2000 standards, which has been difficult for many organizations to attain over the years. The book is organized into logical chapters that give the reader plenty of background information on understanding, implementing, and maintaining an organization’s processes, procedures, and documentation as they relate to ISO 9001: 2000 standards.

The introduction gives a brief overview of ISO 9001: 2000 and the instructions on how to obtain documents for registering or self-declaring an organization’s adherence to the standards. Also in the introduction, the author suggests key chapters of the book for individuals who would benefit from this information, including senior management representatives, quality practitioners, middle managers, department managers and staff, ISO 9000 auditors, software engineers, and software quality students.

The book also includes a CD with electronic versions of the various templates and appendix information featured in the book, which is helpful for the software development practitioner as she moves toward ISO 9001: 2001 registration.

This book is a helpful guide to the QA professional working on an implementation strategy and registration for ISO 9001: 2000. It helps users of the quality management system as well as the non-quality-oriented user understand the need and the “how-to” of obtaining the registration. As helpful as it is, the book does require extensive knowledge of the various ISO clauses or access to the descriptions of its standards. Without access, the book can be confusing since the clauses are not completely described. The later chapters of the book specifically cover the various phase clauses, explaining the phased implementation of a quality management system and the practices and procedures surrounding the system.

Process is embraced and followed throughout the book, making it understandable to software organizations that already follow IEEE and CMMI standards and methods. This is a clear departure from books that lump all organizations together and don't recognize the idiosyncrasies of software development.

The book can help both the organization that wants to register with ISO and the group/organization that wants to self-identify with the ISO standards. The implementation strategy is very straightforward and easy to follow. Students of software quality process also can utilize the book to provide them with an overview and basic terminology of many quality concepts. If you are a quality professional charged with researching implementation and registration of ISO 9001: 2000 standards at your workplace, this is the book for you. The author has provided a great resource to assist in your implementation planning and adherence to these standards with the specific needs of software development companies in mind.