Quality management system (QMS)

We manage the quality of our work through a quality management system (QMS). Our QMS covers the services and materials that we supply from our Delivery+ business unit only. It doesn’t cover other parts of dxw (see the scope section of our Quality Policy).

Your responsibilities

Quality is everyone’s responsibility. Regardless of your role or seniority, you need to:

• Know about the QMS – make sure you understand how the QMS works, what quality looks like for your discipline, and the importance of quality management for dxw
• Follow our __policies and processes__ in your work
• Give feedback and make suggestions about how we can improve (through retros, commenting on documents, sharing on Slack etc.)

The quality management system is run by our QMS team. Heads of and senior members of each discipline have responsibility for the quality processes for their disciplines. We get external support and audits from a consultancy that specialises in ISO certification.

You can see all the QMS-related roles and responsibilities here.

The Quality Management System

We have to:

• Understand the expectations of our clients and our industry about what quality work looks like. For example, our government clients expect us to follow the GDS Service Standard. We keep a record of the various internal and external issues and people and organisations that have an interest in our quality management system, and every quarter our QMS team reviews this.
• Identify __risks__ that might affect our ability to do quality work. For example, there is a risk that AWS might go down and our clients’ websites with it.
• Identify __opportunities __for us to improve the quality of our work and better meet our clients’ needs. For example by taking advantage of new technologies.
• Develop documented __standards and processes__ that allow us to deliver the quality work that our clients expect, taking account of the risks and opportunities. For example:
• • Policies, guidance, and checklists in the Playbook and elsewhere that guide us in how to do our work well.
  • Recruitment processes that ensure that we only recruit suitably skilled and experienced people, whether as permanent staff or as contractors.
  • Onboarding and training to make sure everyone understands what quality work looks like for their discipline.
  • Reviews and audits of our work to make sure that it is meeting our standards.
  • Processes for gathering feedback from our clients about the quality of our work, and from our team about ways to improve our processes and guidance.
• Implement those processes effectively, and support them with appropriate resources (including people, training, infrastructure, facilities, and supporting services).
• Document how we follow our processes and verify that we’ve produced quality work. For example, documenting user research permissions, or test logs on pull requests.
• Set and work towards __objectives__ for how we want to improve and maintain the quality of our work.
• Continually improve our ways of working and quality management, informed by evidence, feedback, and lessons learned.

We need ISO 9001 certification to bid for certain work. If our work does not meet our quality standards, we may cause our clients and their users problems, clients may not want to work with us again, and there could be legal consequences for the company.

Review meetings

The QMS team has quarterly meetings to review our QMS. There is one meeting for each discipline (User Research, Content Design, Development etc.) and one for the QMS as a whole.

During these meetings we review our processes and documentation, as well as the expectations of our clients, our objectives and metrics, our resourcing, and any feedback or audit results, to make sure that we can deliver quality work.

Audits

We carry out regular internal audits. During an audit, the QMS team and other key people will:

• Look at how our quality management system is performing
• Check how well policies have been implemented
• Check how well procedures are being followed
• Determine how healthy the element of the QMS under review is

An independent, external assessor audits us for ISO9001 certification.

After an audit, the auditor writes up their observations and recommendations and shares them with the QMS team, who then plan how to improve our QMS and processes.

Making changes to the QMS

The QMS will be continually evolving as we learn things and the world around us changes. Anyone can propose changes.

See the QMS Change Control Procedure and change log.

Last updated: 8 January 2026