ITQ - IT Quality in workplace software

Yngve Sundblad, yngve@nada.kth.se

Åke Walldius, aakew@nada.kth.se

Partners

• Bengt Sandblad, Uppsala University
• Lars Bengtsson, Gävle University College
• Torbjörn Illar, Luleå Technical University
• Ove Ivarsen, LO/UsersAward
• Torbjörn Lind, UsersAward
• Dan Sjögren, VINNOVA

The network UsersAward

Since 1998, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), in collaboration with the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) and CID, and with support from VINNOVA, heads the project UsersAward, a network in which trade union and consumer organisations cooperate with researchers, private and public enterprises and software suppliers. The network has the following goals:

- to develop new forms for cooperation between end-users, procurers and suppliers of Enterprise Resource Planning software,

- to develop new guidelines and recommendations for how such software should be designed and implemented,

- to certify Enterprise Resource Planning software according to the method, User-driven software certification, that has been developed within the ITQ project,

- to report and inform about new knowledge and new experiences gained from the project.

Background - the ITQ-project 1998-2002

The network UsersAward was created between 1998 and 2002 through a broad research and development project initiated by the LO. The IT Quality project, or ITQ for short, was the research part of that project. ITQ comprised some ten pilot projects as well as participation in project and user panels, user conferences and the yearly competition The User's IT Prize, founded in 2000 by the LO. All these activities laid the ground for User Certified, the method for quality assurance which was the main task for the ITQ project to develop and which was implemented in two software certifications in 2002, (TimeCare and Monitor).

In January of 2003, the network UsersAward entered a new phase when the LO, the TCO and VINNOVA decided to establish UsersAward AB as a development company, owned by the LO. This meant that the involvement from CID and the other universities engaged also entered a new phase, concentrated on the mission to participate in, document and further develop certifications according to the User Certified method. The following presentation details the new project, User-driven software certification. Read more about the project UsersAward - User-driven software certification, the successor of the ITQ-project, here.

Uppdaterade 2004-03-11