Project Quality Management

What Is Project Quality?

The International Organization for Standardization

(ISO) defines quality as

“the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics

fulfills requirements” (ISO9000:2000)

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 What Is Project Quality?
Other experts define quality based on:

Conformance to requirements: the project’s processes

and products meet written specifications
Fitness for use: a product can be used as it was
intended

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What Is Project Quality Management?

Project quality management ensures that the

project will satisfy the needs for which it was

undertaken

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What Is Project Quality Management?
Processes include:

Quality planning: identifying which quality standards are

relevant to the project and how to satisfy them

Quality assurance: periodically evaluating overall project

performance to ensure the project will satisfy the relevant
quality standards

Quality control: monitoring specific project results to

ensure that they comply with the relevant quality standards

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 Project Quality Management
 Project Quality Management Processes (per PMBOK);

Quality Planning
Quality Assurance
Quality Control

Process Groups Initiation Planning Execution Control Closing

Knowledge Areas          
Quality
Quality Quality Assuranc Quality
Management   Planning e Control  

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Project Quality Management Summary

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Quality Planning
 Quality Planning
Implies the ability to anticipate situations and
prepare actions to bring about the desired
outcome

Important to prevent defects by:

Selecting proper materials
Training and indoctrinating people in quality
Planning a process that ensures the appropriate
outcome
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Chapter 8 - Project Quality Management
 Quality Planning – Methods
Some commonly used tools & techniques
employed for Quality planning are:

Benefit/cost analysis
Benchmarking
Flowcharting
Design of experiments
Cost of Quality

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 Quality Planning – Methods
Benefit/cost Analysis

Must consider benefit/cost tradeoffs during quality planning.

The primary benefit of meeting quality requirements is less

rework which translates to higher productivity, lower costs, and

increased stakeholder satisfaction.
The primary cost of meeting quality requirements is the

expense associated with project quality management activities.

Understand that the benefits of the quality management

discipline outweigh the costs.

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 Quality Planning – Methods

Benchmarking

It involves comparing actual or planned project

practices to those of other projects (either within the
performing organization or external) to generate
ideas for improvement and to provide a standard by
which to measure performance

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 Quality Planning – Methods

Best practices for benchmarking

 Determine what to benchmark
 Form a benchmark team
 Identify benchmarking partners
 Collect and analyze benchmarking information
 Take action to match or exceed the benchmark

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 Quality Planning – Methods

Flowcharting
a technique which creates a diagram that displays how
various elements of a system relate

Can assist the project team with anticipating what and where
quality problems may occur and with developing approaches
for addressing the problems

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 Quality Planning – Methods
Flowcharts commonly used in quality management
include:

 Cause-and-effect diagrams: illustrate how various factors

may be linked to potential problems or effects. (also referred to
as Ishikawa or fishbone diagrams)

 System or process flow charts: show how various elements

of a system interrelate.

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 Quality Planning – Methods
Cost of Quality

It’s a term that's widely used – and widely misunderstood.

The "cost of quality" isn't the price of creating a quality product

or service. It's the cost of NOT creating a quality product or

service.

Every time work is redone, the cost of quality increases.

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 Quality Planning – Methods
Examples of COQ include:
The reworking of a manufactured item
The retesting of an assembly
The rebuilding of a tool
The correction of a bank statement
The reworking of a service, such as the reprocessing of a
loan operation or the replacement of a food order in a
restaurant

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 Quality Planning – Methods
 Cost of Quality
Refers to the total cost of all efforts to achieve
product/service quality

Includes all work to ensure conformance to requirements

as well as all work resulting from nonconformance to
requirements

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 Quality Planning – Methods
 Cost of Quality
 Three types of incurred costs:

1) Prevention:
 Costs of all activities specifically designed to prevent poor quality in products or
services

 Examples: New product review, Quality education and training

2) Appraisal:
 The costs associated with measuring, evaluating or auditing products or services
to assure conformance to quality standards and performance requirements

 Example: Inspection/tests, audits

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 Quality Planning – Methods
3) Failure Costs:

The costs resulting from products or services not

conforming to requirements or customer/user needs

Failure costs are divided into

o internal and external failure categories

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 Quality Planning – Methods
 Internal Failure Costs

Failure costs occurring prior to delivery or shipment of

the product, or the furnishing of a service, to the
customer

Examples are the costs of:

Scrap, Rework, Re-inspection, Re-testing, Material
review

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 Quality Planning – Methods
External Failure Costs

o Failure costs occurring after delivery or shipment of

the product — and during or after furnishing of a
service — to the customer.

o Examples are the costs of:

o Processing customer complaints, Customer returns,

Warranty claims

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 Quality Planning – Methods
Internal Failure Costs
Failure costs occurring prior to delivery or shipment of
the product, or the furnishing of a service, to the
customer.

Examples are the costs of: Scrap, Rework, Re-

inspection, Re-testing, Material review
Downgrading

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 Quality Planning – Methods
 Design of experiments is a quality planning technique that
helps identify which variables have the most influence on the
overall outcome of a process
 Computer chip designer would determine what combination of materials and
equipment will produce the most reliable chips at a reasonable cost

 Also applies to project management issues, such as cost and

schedule trade-offs
 Junior programmers cost less than senior programmers but will not produce the
same level of work in the same amount of time

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 Quality Planning – Methods

 An appropriately designed experiment to compute` project

costs and durations for various combinations of staff can help
determine an optimal mix of personnel

 Involves documenting important factors that directly contribute

to meeting customer requirements

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 Scope Aspects of IT Projects
 It is often difficult for customers to explain exactly what they want in
an IT project. Important scope aspects of IT projects that affect
quality include:

 Functionality is the degree to which a system performs its intended

function
 Features are the system’s special characteristics that appeal to users. It is
important to specify which are required and which are optional

 System outputs are the screens and reports the system generates.
Need to define clearly what they look like

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 Scope Aspects of IT Projects
Performance addresses how well a product or service

performs the customer’s intended use.

 Need to know volumes of data and transactions, number of

simultaneous users, required response time, etc.

Reliability is the ability of a product or service to perform as

expected under normal conditions (customers must define

expected level of service)
 Maintainability addresses the ease of performing maintenance on a

product

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 Who’s Responsible for the
Quality of Projects?
Project managers are ultimately responsible for
quality management on their projects
Several organizations and references can help
project managers and their teams understand quality
International Organization for Standardization (www.iso.org)
 When products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely, it is
often because they meet standards. The organization responsible for many
thousands of the standards which benefit the world is ISO (derived from the
Greek isos, meaning “equal”)
IEEE – Standards Association (www.ieee.org)
 A leading, developer of industry standards in a broad-range of industries
(Power and Energy, Information Technology, Telecommunications,
Transportation, Medical and Healthcare, nanotechnology, cybersecurity,
information assurance, and green technology) . Globally recognized
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Quality Assurance
 Quality Assurance
Quality assurance includes all the activities related to
satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project
Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality
improvement
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
A 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
 Performed by in-house auditors or third parties
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Quality Control
 Quality Control
Although one of the main goals of QC is to improve
quality, its main outcomes are:
Acceptance decisions- are the products/services
acceptable or should they be rejected and rework is then
necessary
Rework – action taken to bring rejected items into
compliance with products specs. Can be very expensive
Process adjustments – correct or prevent further quality
problems based on quality control measurements (purchase
faster server if response time is too slow)
There are Seven Basic Tools of Quality that help in
performing quality control
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Flow Charts
 What is a Flowchart?

A diagram that uses graphic symbols

to depict the nature
and flow of the steps in a process

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 Benefits of Flowcharts

Promote process understanding

Provide tool for training
Identify problem areas and improvement
opportunities

" Draw a flowchart for whatever you do. Until you

do, you do not know what you are doing, you just
have a job.”
-- Dr. W. Edwards Deming
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 Keys to Success

Start with the big picture

Observe the current process
Record process steps
Arrange the sequence of steps
Draw the Flowchart

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 Flowcharts
Don’t Forget to:

Define symbols before beginning

Stay consistent

Check that process is accurate

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 Flowcharts
 Flowcharts are
graphic displays of
the logic and flow of
processes that help
you analyze how
problems occur and
how processes can
be improved
 They show
activities, decision
points, and the order
of how information is
processed

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Pareto Charts
 Pareto Principle

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) Italian economist

20% of the population has 80% of the wealth

adapted by Joseph Juran

Remember the 80/20 rule states that approximately 80%

of the problems are created by approximately 20% of the

causes

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 What is a Pareto Chart?
 A Pareto chart is a histogram that can help you identify and
prioritize problem areas

The variables are ordered by frequency of occurrence to help

identify the key contributors that account for most quality
problems (hopefully following the 80-20 rule)

Bar charts arranged in descending order of height from left to

right

Bars on left relatively more important than those on right

Separates “vital few” from the “trivial many”

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 Pareto Charts
 In the following chart, Log-in Problems account for about
55% of the complaints and together with System lock-ups
accounts for about 80%

 Fixing these two problems can greatly reduce the volume of complaints

 Small problems should be investigated before addressing them in case

the user is in error

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 Sample Pareto Diagram

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