When a dev shop (or any other organisation) is registered as ISO 9001 what impact can this have on a programmer's day-to-day experience? Are any special requirements made of a developer? Is an organisation which conforms to this standard likely to be a better place to work than one that isn't? Is the quality of code/coders proportionally higher in a ISO 9001 company or is there simply no correlation?
What are you experiences dealing with ISO 9001?
My experience of it is simply that you have an established process in place. Whatever it is can vary wildly from one company to another, and in truth I don't think it has any bearing whatsoever on the relative quality of the code or the output. Nor does it make working there better, just different - expect a little extra bureaucracy in exchange for more accountability. Whether this is a gain or a loss depends entirely on the people you work with and the particulars of your company's process. What it does mean though, at least in theory, is that the quality of the work is largely consistent, which might reassure some customers.
ISO 9001 is about documenting your software development process. And measuring it. And continuously improving it. Once you've got it in place, it doesn't make too much difference to your day-to-day life. Getting accreditation from scratch is a lot of work.
Recruitment is a whole other area of expertise. So being ISO 9001 compliant doesn't mean you know how to select the right employees. So there's probably not a strong correlation between ISO 9001 and having good developers. Most of my employers have had accreditation and there was broad range of developer talent in each, ie. weak, awesome and everything in between.
Done right, ISO 9001 is definitely not a bad environment to work in. Expect more documentation and less plain hacking. The level of documentation often depends on how long an organisation has been accredited. The auditors will expect improvement year-on-year, so there will be fewer expectations on a newly-accredited organisation.
I've worked for two outfits where ISO 9001 was a factor. In the first, this standard had already been established for a number of years. There was a great deal of upfront documentation to complete, some of it useful, some of it not so much. Having the opportunity to create detailed specifications is always very good, but copying and pasting the same Configuration Management plan with a few modifications was something that I saw happen a lot.
My other experience was working for a company that sought, and eventually acquired ISO 9001 status. This was definitely more gradual, and we were doing a lot of the right things anyway.
From a practical standpoint, when ISO 9001 is done right - it's a rewarding experience. The project lifecycle automatically accommodates all of the documentation you need to do up-front.
Done wrong, it's a nightmare. This typically happens when documentation has not been done as part of the process, and the auditors are in next week. If you're going to work in an ISO 9001 outfit, make sure you own your responsibilities within the setup and don't be afraid to be vocal if you believe that standards are not being maintained.
From my own experience, quality standards such as ISO 9001 or CMMi refer mostly to quality of development process, not quality of product.
From a developer viewpoint, they usually involve many administrative paperwork.