ITM750 Week 10

Chapter 8: Project Quality Management

The Importance of Project Quality Management
Importance of  Many people joke about the poor quality of IT products
Quality  People seem to accept systems being down occasionally or needing to
reboot their PCs
 Quality: “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils
requirements”
o Conformance to requirements: the project’s processes and
products with written specifications
o Fitness for use: a product can be used as it was intended

Project Project quality management: ensures that the project will satisfy the needs for
Quality which it was undertaken. Processes include—
Management 1. Planning quality management: identifying which quality standards are
relevant to the project and how to satisfy them; a metric is a standard of
measurement
2. Performing quality assurance: periodically evaluating overall project
performance to ensure the project will satisfy the relevant quality
standards
3. Performing quality control: monitoring specific project results to ensure
that they comply with the relevant quality standards

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Planning Quality Management

Planning  Design of experiments: a technique that helps identify which variables
Quality have the most influence on the overall outcome of a process—important
to prevent defects by:
o Selecting proper materials
o Training and indoctrinating people in quality
o Planning a process that ensures the appropriate outcome

Scope Aspects  Functionality: the degree to which a system performs its intended
of IT Projects function
 Features: the system’s special characteristics that appeal to users
 System outputs: the screens and reports the system generates
 Performance: addresses how well a product or service performs the
customer’s intended use
 Reliability: the ability of a product or service to perform as expected
under normal conditions
 Maintainability: addresses the ease of performing maintenance on a
product

Who’s  PMs are ultimately responsible for quality management on their projects
Responsible  Several organizations and references can help project managers and their
for the Quality teams understand quality
of Project?

Performing Quality Assurance

Quality All the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project
Assurance  Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality improvement.
Kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement or change for the better
 Lean involves evaluating processes to maximize customer value while
minimizing waste
 Benchmarking generates ideas for quality improvements by comparing
specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other
projects or products within or outside the performing organization
 Quality audit is a structured review of specific quality management
activities that help identify lessons learned that could improve
performance on current or future projects

What Went Kanban uses five core properties:

Right?  Visual workflow
 Limit work-in-progress
 Measure and manage flow

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 Make process policies explicit

 Use models to recognize improvement opportunities

Controlling Quality
Quality Control To improve quality, the main outcomes of this process are acceptance decisions,
rework, and process adjustments
 Acceptance decisions—determine if the products or services produced
as part of the project will be accepted or rejected
 Rework—action taken to bring rejected items into compliance with
product requirements, specifications, or other stakeholder expectations
 Process adjustments—correct or prevent further quality problems based
on quality control measurements

Tools and Techniques for Quality Control

Seven Basic 1. Cause-and-effect diagrams: trace complaints about quality problems
Tools of back to the responsible production operations
Quality  Helps you find the root cause of a problem
 Also known as Fishbone/Ishikawa diagrams
 Can also use the 5 whys technique where you repeated ask the
question “why” (five is a good rule of thumb_) to peel away the
layers of symptoms that can lead to the root cause

2. Control chart: a graphic display of data that illustrates the results of a

process over time
 The main use is to prevent defects, rather than to detect or reject
them
 Allows you to determine whether a process is in control or out of
control
o When a process is in control, any variations in the results
of the process are created by random events; processes

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that are in control do not need to be adjusted

o When a process is out of control, variations in the results
of the process are caused by non-random events; you
need to identify the causes of those non-random events
and adjust the process to correct or eliminate them
 Seven run rule: states that if seven data points in a row are all
below the mean or above the mean, or are all increasing or
decreasing, then the process needs to be examined for non-
random problems

3. Checksheet: used to collect and analyze data

 Sometimes called a tally sheet or checklist, depending on its
format
 Ex. most complaints arrive via texts, and there are more
complaints on Monday and Tuesday
 Might be useful in improving the process for handling complaints

4. Scatter diagram: helps to show if there is a relationship between two

variables
 The closer data points are to a diagonal line, the more closely the
two variables are related

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5. Histogram: a bar graph of a distribution of variables

 Each bar represents an attribute or characteristics of a problem or
situation, and the height of the bar represents its frequency

6. Pareto chart: a histogram that can help you identify and prioritize
problem areas
 Pareto analysis: also called the 80-20 rule, meaning that 80% of
problems are often due to 20% of the causes

7. Flowcharts: graphic displays of the logic and flow of processes that help
you analyze how problems occur and how processes can be improved

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 They show activities, decision points, and the order of how information
is processed

 Run chart: display the history and pattern of variation of a process over
time—you can use them to perform trend analysis and forecast future
outcomes based on historical results

Statistical Involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection

Sampling  The size of a sample depends on how representative you want the
sample to be
 Sample size formula = 0.25 * (certainty factor/acceptable error)^2

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Six Sigma “a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining, and maximizing
business success. Six Sigma is uniquely driven by close understanding of
customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and statistical analysis, and
diligent attention to managing, improving, and reinventing business processes”
 The target for perfection is achievement of no more than 3.4 defects per
million opportunities
 The principles can apply to a wide variety of processes
 Six Sigma projects normally follow a five-phase improvement processes
called DMAIC: a systematic, closed-loop process for continued
improvement that is scientific and fact based
o Define—the problem/opportunity, process, and customer
requirements
o Measure—define measures, then collect, compile, and display
data
o Analyze—scrutinize process details to find improvement
opportunity
o Improve—generate solutions and ideas for improving the
problem
o Control—track and verify the stability of the improvements and
the predictability of the solution

How is six sigma quality control unique?

 It requires an organization-wide commitment.
 Training follows the “Belt” system
 Six Sigma organizations have the ability and willingness to adopt contrary
objectives, such as reducing errors and getting things done faster
 It is an operating philosophy that is customer focused and strives to drive
out waste, raise levels of quality, and improve financial performance at
breakthrough levels

Six Sigma and Project Management:

 Joseph M. Juran stated, “All improvement takes place project by project,
and in no other way”
 It’s important to select projects carefully and apply higher quality where
it makes sense; companies that use Six Sigma do not always boost their
stock values
 As Mikel Harry puts it, “I could genetically engineer a Six Sigma goat, but
if a rodeo is the marketplace, people are still going to buy a Four Sigma
horse.”
 Six Sigma projects must focus on a quality problem or gap between the
current and desired performance and not have a clearly understood
problem or a predetermined solution
 The training for Six Sigma includes many project management concepts,

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tools, and techniques

 For example, Six Sigma projects often use business cases, project
charters, schedules, budgets, and so on
 Six Sigma projects are done in teams; the project manager is often called
the team leader, and the sponsor is called the champion

Six sigma and statistics:

 Standard deviation: measures how much variation exists in a distribution
of data
o The word sigma means standard deviation
o A key factor in determining the acceptance number of defective
units found in a population
o Six sigma projects strive for no more than 3.4 defects per million
opportunities, yet this number is confusing to many statistics
 Normal distribution: a bell-shaped curve that is symmetrical around the
mean or average value of the population
 It uses a scoring system that accounts for time, an important factor in
determining process variation
o Yield: represents the number of units handled correctly through
the process steps
o Defect: any instance where the product or service fails to meet
customer requirements

Six 9s of Quality: a measure of quality control equal to 1 fault in 1 million

opportunities
 In the telecommunications industry, it means 99.9999 percent service
availability or 30 seconds of down time a year
 This level of quality has also been stated as the target goal for the
number of errors in a communications circuit, system failures, or errors in
lines of code

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Testing: testing should be done during almost every phase of the IT product
development life cycle. The types include—
 Unit testing: tests each individual component (often a program) to
ensure it is as defect-free as possible
 Integration testing: occurs between unit and system testing to test
functionality grouped components
 System testing: tests the entire system as one entity
 User acceptance testing: an independent test performed by end users
prior to accepting the delivered system

Testing Alone is not Enough:

 Watts S. Humphrey, a renowned expert on software quality, defines a
software defect as anything that must be changed before delivery of the
program
 Testing does not sufficiently prevent software defects because:
o The number of ways to test a complex system is huge
o Users will continue to invent new ways to use a system that its
developers never considered
 Humphrey suggests that people rethink the software development
process to provide no potential defects when you enter system testing;
developers must be responsible for providing error-free code at each
stage of testing

Modern Quality Management

Modern Quality Modern quality management—
Management  Requires customer satisfaction
 Prefers prevention to inspection
 Recognizes management responsibility for quality

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: originated in 1987 to recognize

companies that have achieved a level of world-class competition through
quality management. Three awards each year in different categories:
 Manufacturing
 Service
 Small business
 Education and health care

ISO Standards: a quality system standard that—

 Is a three-part, continuous cycle of planning, controlling, and
documenting quality in an organization
 Provides minimum requirements needed for an organization to meet its

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quality certification standards

 Helps organizations around the world reduce costs and improve
customer satisfaction

Improving IT Project Quality

Suggestions for Several suggestions for improving quality for IT Projects:
Improving  Establish leadership that promotes quality
Quality  Understand the cost of quality
 Focus on organizational influences and workplace factors that affect
quality
 Follow maturity models

Leadership  As Joseph M. Juran said in 1945, “It is most important that top
management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere
manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below”
 A large percentage of quality problems are associated with
management, not technical issues

The Cost of The cost of conformance plus the cost of nonconformance:

Quality  Conformance: means delivering products that meet requirements and
fitness for use
 Cost of nonconformance: taking responsibility for failures or not
meeting quality expectations

Five Cost Categories Related to Quality:

 Preventive cost: cost of planning and executing a project so it is error-
free or within an acceptable error range
 Appraisal cost: cost of evaluating processes and their outputs to ensure
quality
 Internal failure cost: cost incurred to correct an identified defect before
the customer receives the product
 External failure cost: cost that relates to all errors not detected and
corrected before delivery to the customer
 Measurement and test equipment costs: capital cost of equipment
used to perform prevention and appraisal activities

Organizational  Study by DeMarco and Lister showed that organizational issues had a
Influences, much greater influence on programmer productivity than the technical
Workplace environment or programming languages
Factors, and  Programmer productivity varied by a factor of one to ten across
Quality organizations, but only by 21 percent within the same organization

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 Study found no correlation between productivity and programming

language, years of experience, or salary.
 A dedicated workspace and a quiet work environment were key factors
to improving programmer productivity

Expectations  PMs must understand and manage stakeholder expectations.

and Cultural Expectations vary by—
Differences in o Organization’s culture
Quality o Geographic regions

Maturity Frameworks for helping organizations improve their processes and systems
Models  The Software Quality Function Deployment (SQFD) Model focuses on
defining user requirements and planning software projects
 The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement approach that provides
organizations with the essential elements of effective processes. CMMI
levels, from lowest to highest—
1. Incomplete
2. Performed
3. Managed
4. Defined* (companies may not get to bid on government projects
unless they have a CMMI Level 3)
5. Quantitatively managed
6. Optimizing

PMI’s Maturity  PMI released the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model
Model (OPM3) in December 2003
 Model is based on market research surveys sent to more than 30,000
project management professionals and incorporates 180 best practices
and more than 2,400 capabilities, outcomes, and key performance
indicators
 Addresses standards for excellence in project, program, and portfolio
management best practices and explains the capabilities necessary to
achieve those best practices

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