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Tl 9000: A Guide to Measuring Excellence in Telecommunications

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This book is akin to the Rosetta Stone for decoding the TL 9000 quality management system. TL 9000 is currently defined by two documents, both of which are available from Amazon: TL 9000 Quality Management System Requirements Handbook (Book 1, Release 3.0) and TL 9000 Quality Management System Measurements Handbook (Book 1, Release 3.0). Like any other standards documents these are terse (the System Requirements Handbook is 100 pages and the System Measurements Handbook is 200 pages), and are written to be an unambiguous as possible.

While terseness and lack of ambiguity are qualities one would want in a standards document, they make for onerous reading when you're trying to understand the standard in the first place. This book explains the TL 9000 standard, its goals and objectives, and its elements in a readable style that you'll appreciate if you've had to plow through the two handbooks cited above. It also gives a good summary of the registration and accreditation process.

If you're researching TL 9000, but do not know exactly what it is, how it applies to you or whether or not you should buy a book on the subject the following may help.

WHAT: TL 9000 is a quality standard for service, hardware and software providers to the telecommunications industry. The standard is under the cognizance of the QuEST Forum (Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications), which currently has 13 service provider and 101 supplier members.

TL 9000 Release 3.0 is aligned to ISO 9001:2000, so understanding that standard is also essential (I recommend ISO 9001:2000 Explained by Cianfrani, Tsiakals and West). You can envision TL 9000 as a multi-layered model with ISO 9000 as the umbrella that provides the governing structure, with a set of common TL 9000 requirements below that are telecommunication-specific and govern hardware, software and service requirements. Under the requirements layer is another layer of TL 9000 metrics that apply to hardware, software and services.

WHY: If your company is one of an estimated 10,000 world-wide suppliers of hardware, software or services to the telecommunications industry being TL 9000 registered may make the difference between your company's continued success or eventual failure if you're not registered.