IT Quality Survey

Pattern number within this pattern set: 
101
Aake Walldius
CID/NADA/KTH
Yngve Sundblad
CID/NADA/KTH
Problem: 

The prerequisites for perfect market competition is largely absent from the market for workplace software, a fact that puts customers and end-users at the mercy of other interest groups as far as articulating and expressing their demands on fair quality at a fair price.

Context: 

Activities and markets in which the quality of services is intensely debated, and in which documentation of proven quality enhancements represent important competitive advantages.

Discussion: 

Examples
Swedish Customer Satisfaction Index, American Customer Satisfaction Index,
Nielsen Media Ratings, J D Powers Automotive Ratings, UsersAward's Annual IT-Map

UsersAward's IT-Map is performed annually or as an ad hoc activity by the Users' Award Development company in cooperation with the networks's research group. The survey is based on questionnaires to workers and clerks in industry, health care, and the service sector. With carefully articulated questions on the diverse quality aspects of the most frequently used IT services, the survey establishes a common understanding within the network in regards to the strengths and weaknesses of the IT services surveyed.

Counter-forces
- Market imperfections such as oligopolistic ownership and control of production,
distribution, and marketing resources
- concentration of communicative resources on the hands of producers and
retailers

Pro-forces
- regional, national, and international regulations that counteract market
imperfections
- the spread of communication resources through competitive consumer markets
- a media sector in which the cycles of social, economic, and cultural activities
can create the space needed for non-centralized media channels to reach large audiences
- a research and development sector in close contact with the many diverse
interest groups of a democratic society.

Dependencies
From A Pattern Language (APL, ref. 1):
Network of learning, University asmarketplace.

From this proposed language, Users' IT quality network (92):
Users IT quality centre (101), IT research consortium (103), IT quality conference (383), Users' IT quality certification (384).

Solution: 

Create or support initiatives in which research-based organisations and user
organisations work together in order to measure and communicate concise,
relevant information on quality dimensions. These initiatives need to be talked about and discussed among friends and colleagues. They often need the engagement of large groups of individuals in order to carry out data collection and interpretation. Mostly, they also need a long-term financial backing from public funding.

Pattern status: 
Released