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What Is 'Quality'?

• Quality is “fitness for purpose.”
• There are eight common dimensions of Quality you can use to improve your offer.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'Quality'

What makes something “good”?

Quality, in the broadest sense, is “fitness for purpose”: Does the offer deliver the intended benefits, and is it suitable for use in the intended Environment?

Quality is often subjective—some aspects, like manufacturing Tolerances, can be measured, but fuzzy factors, like “Does the end user like using it,” are more difficult to quantify.

In 1987, David A. Garvin, a professor at Harvard Business School, proposed a practical framework managers and executives can use to define, measure, and improve Quality. I like to think through Garvin’s eight factors in terms of questions:

1. Performance—how well does it serve the intended purpose?
2. Features—how many useful or valuable benefits does it offer?
3. Reliability—what is the probability it will break, malfunction, or fail when used?
4. Conformance—how well does it meet established standards? Are defects common? Are acceptable replacements available if I need them?
5. Durability—how long will it work?
6. Serviceability—if something goes wrong, is it easy to fix?
7. Aesthetics—is the subjective experience of using it pleasurable, attractive, or reassuring?
8. Perception—does it have a good Reputation and deliver better results than anticipated, to avoid the Expectation Effect?

The nice thing about this Deconstruction is that it can serve as a Checklist of how to improve your offer over time. Nothing is perfect: there is always something you can do to improve the Quality of your offer.

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"Strive for perfection in everything. Take the best that exists and make it better. If it doesn’t exist, create it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."

Henry Royce, engineer and cofounder of Rolls-Royce

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