Evaluating the Need for C-level Executives to Drive Quality Initiatives in Technology Companies

Quality management is essential to ensure that the products and services offered by organizations satisfy customer requirements and sustain the business. While quality management was mainly based on manufacturing processes in the last century, IT (Information Technology) companies have also come to realize the importance of quality initiatives over the years. Organizations employ quality control engineers and several types of testers across the product stack to detect defects and fix them as software and/or hardware are being built. However, these technical staff members usually report to the corresponding project team’s people managers. These managers tend to represent the interests of their leadership on a broad level and quality is often an afterthought in most teams. Despite information security being a type of quality-related discipline, there is a dedicated Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to oversee initiatives on an organizational level. However, most IT companies do not have a designation comparable to a Chief Quality Officer. Thus, this research seeks to evaluate the need to have a C-level executive responsible for company-wide quality management and gauge the potential impacts of considering quality as a strategic leadership function. This will be achieved by means of studying the corporate hierarchy of top IT firms and evaluating their commitment to quality initiatives. Based on the available literature and best practices in defining organizational structures, this research will make recommendations on ways to incorporate a culture of quality management into executive decision-making.