Increasing competition within the business world, rapid changes in technologies, and globalization and consequent mergers and acquisitions are heating up the business environment. Organizations realize that constant improvement of their processes, products, services, and customer relationships are essential for their health, if not for their survival. The new business approach has prompted several engineering organizations to formulate an impressive array of process standards, maturity models, measurement techniques, and frameworks, like the capability maturity model (CMM), capability maturity model integration (CMMI), people CMM (PCMM), ISO 9000 series, software process improvement and capability determination (SPICE), and six sigma, to name only the prominent ones [1].

ISO 9000, administered by the International Organization for Standards, is a set of standards and guidelines for process improvement. Strict adherence to ISO 9000, coupled with continuous audit, would enable an engineering organization to implement a quality management system (QMS). The term “ISO” is not an acronym. It stands for the Greek word iso, meaning “equal,” as in “isobar” (contour line of equal pressure) or “isometric” (equality of measurement) [2]. Unintentionally, however, the word also embodies the idea of Edward Deming, a vigorous champion of quality in industries around the globe: “create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and services” (page 67). The first revision of ISO 9000:1987 appeared in 1994, labeled as ISO 9000:1994. That revision contained only minor changes, and resolution of some ambiguities in specifications and language. The next revision, in the year 2000, involved reformulation of the standards. It was released under the label ISO 9001:2000. Twenty clauses of ISO 9000:1994 were replaced by five first-level paragraphs that specified the requirements for an effective QMS. The 138 requirements of the first-level paragraphs are distributed among 23 second-level paragraphs of ISO 9001:2000.

Bamford and Deibler have been deeply involved with ISO 9000/9001 since 1989, imparting training, and helping organizations in implementing ISO 9000/9001. They have adopted an approach exactly as their subtitle states: “an engineering approach.” Throughout the book, the focus is maintained on the 138 requirements of ISO 9001:2000. Contrary to anyone’s expectations, the standards contain several inconsistencies. A concept appearing in one paragraph is repeated in several other places. There are inconsistencies in the identification of requirements and relationships among other requirements. Some requirements appear in numbered paragraphs (for example, 8.5.2), while some are in lettered paragraphs (for example, 5.3.b). Clarity, correctness, and consistency are catchwords that characterize standards. Compromising on these attributes will confuse any implementation team, leading to wasteful rework, schedule slippage, and thus despair. The book is a reengineered version of the critical paragraphs of the ISO document.

The book is organized into eight chapters and eight appendices. The first two chapters cover the preliminaries, like a roadmap for implementing ISO 9001:2000, and the terminology and definitions. Of the eight paragraphs in the ISO document, five paragraphs (4 through 8) cover the requirements. Each of these five paragraphs was scrutinized to determine the requirement(s) unique to the paragraph. In the ISO context, a requirement is normally stated with the word “shall” preceding the statement. Since the paragraphs of ISO 9001 are not independent, the implementation team has to be careful to see which paragraph impacts others. Appendix C displays a chart showing the paragraph where a requirement occurs first, the paragraphs where the same requirement is referenced, and a brief explanation for the significance of the particular interconnect. This enables an implementing team to trace backward and forward from any requirement to all others it is related to, in accordance with ISO 9001. This strategy allows an organization to select for implementation all of the requirements that are relevant to the organization, its employees, and its stakeholders.

The book provides a critical analysis of ISO 9001:2000; it does not provide ISO 9001:2000, which is copyrighted. The book dissects ISO 9001:2000, and shows how it can be perceived as a framework for engineering processes. The book will be of immense value to anyone interested in the quality aspects of the manufacturing/service/software/hardware sector. It will be very useful for software engineering or information technology (IT) courses. The publishers deserve accolades for bringing out a book that is written in an elegant style, and devoid of any syntactic or semantic errors.