Quality Management

Overlooking quality creates defects and rework. The more work the team has to redo, the more time and money it wastes and the more likely it is to exceed its cost and schedule baselines. Poor attention to quality also introduces avoidable risk. Decide at the start of the project what counts as acceptable quality and how you will measure it to prevent problems later.

What Quality Means

Quality is the degree to which a project fulfills its requirements. To achieve quality, define both stated and unstated requirements in the project scope statement.

Quality management means establishing and following policies and procedures so the project meets its defined needs from the customer’s perspective. It ensures the project does not deviate from its requirements. It includes Plan Quality, Perform Quality Assurance, and Perform Quality Control.

Quality Theorists

• Philip Crosby. Defined quality as “conformance to requirements” and popularized the cost of poor quality, prevention over inspection, and “zero defects.”
• Joseph Juran. Defined quality as “fitness for use,” advocated involving top management in quality issues, and promoted Vilfredo Pareto’s 80/20 principle.
• W. Edwards Deming. Promoted the 14 points for quality management and the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

Actions That Support Project Quality

• Review the Project Charter and project scope statement.
• Ask customers what quality means to them.
• Identify the desired performance of products and their components.
• Decide where the project can be controlled, such as at the work package, activity, or a more detailed level.
• Identify the activity levels and processes applicable to the project.
• Decide which quality standards and processes to use, when to apply them, and which parts of the project they cover.
• Set standards to reach the desired level of quality performance.
• Set metrics that reflect customers’ and stakeholders’ views of quality.
• Define procedures for controlling processes and checking compliance with standards.
• Test assumptions before they cause problems.
• Make sure team members understand what quality means for their own work.
• Collect problems, errors, and complaints, then review how to prevent them from recurring.
• Have teams look across the project for ways to improve quality.

Gold Plating

Gold plating means giving the customer more than the project calls for, such as extra functionality, higher-quality parts, expanded scope, or higher performance. Some organizations encourage teams to go beyond customer requests. Quality specialists advise against gold plating because teams can mistake their ideas about what customers value for what customers actually want. Many projects already struggle to meet their objectives. Adding extras on some projects can also create expectations that other projects will fail to meet.

Marginal Analysis

Marginal analysis identifies the point at which the benefit or revenue from improving quality equals the additional cost of achieving that quality.

Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)

Continuous improvement means looking continually for small improvements to a process. The Japanese term Kaizen combines “kai,” meaning “change,” and “zen,” meaning “for the better.”

Just in Time (JIT)

Under JIT, suppliers deliver raw materials as they are needed. This reduces inventory to nearly zero and cuts the unnecessary cost of carrying high inventory.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

TQM encourages companies and their employees to improve the quality of products and business practices continuously at every level of the organization.

Responsibility for Quality

The project manager is ultimately responsible for product or project quality. The entire organization also shares responsibility for quality.

Effects of Poor Quality

Poor quality increases costs and risks, lowers morale and customer satisfaction, causes rework, and delays the schedule.

Three Quality Management Processes

• Plan Quality. Define quality for the project and decide how to achieve it.
• Perform Quality Assurance. Review the work in progress and make sure the team follows the planned processes to produce project deliverables.
• Perform Quality Control. Examine the actual deliverables and verify that they are correct and meet the planned quality level.

Plan Quality

Plan Quality identifies relevant organizational and industry practices, standards, and requirements for the project, its product, and the work of managing it. The Quality Management Plan is a result of this process.

Inputs to Plan Quality

• Organizational process assets
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Stakeholder Register
• Scope baseline, including the scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary
• Schedule baseline
• Cost baseline
• Risk Register

Standards and Measurements

Look for established standards and practices that help the project reach higher quality levels and save the team from reinventing the wheel. Examples include the following.

• ISO 9000. The International Organization for Standardization created ISO 9000 to help organizations establish and follow quality procedures.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA sets standards for worker safety in plants.
• United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The CISG governs international sales transactions.

Make sure the project complies with applicable organizational process assets, enterprise environmental factors, and customer quality standards. Define any additional project-specific standards and procedures and check that they are compatible with other relevant standards.

Determine what work is needed to meet the standards. Specify measurements to take weekly, monthly, or for each deliverable to check compliance. Match the effort to the project’s needs and balance quality with other project constraints.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Weigh the benefits of quality efforts against their costs to determine an appropriate level of quality and suitable project requirements.

Cost of Quality (COQ)

Compare the costs of conformance with the costs of nonconformance to find an appropriate balance. The cost of conformance should be lower than the cost of nonconformance.

Control Charts

Set up control charts during Plan Quality to define quality. Use them during Perform Quality Control to plot samples and see whether process results fall within acceptable limits.

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Control charts can track cost and schedule variances. Their main purpose is to show whether production and other processes are within acceptable limits, or in control. Special cause variation indicates that a process is out of control.

Upper and Lower Control Limits

The two dashed lines mark the acceptable range of variation in process results. The project manager and stakeholders set the acceptable measurement range based on the organization’s quality standard. The range is calculated at ±3 sigma, or three standard deviations on either side. A point outside the range indicates that the process is out of control.

Mean

The center line shows the mean, or average, at the middle of the range of acceptable variation.

Specification Limits

Specification limits represent the customer’s expectations or contractual requirements for performance and quality. Customers state them directly. A point outside the control limits indicates an out-of-control process. A point outside the specification limits indicates that the process is producing defects.

Out of Control

A process is out of statistical control if a point falls outside the control limits or if the data show a nonrandom pattern, even within the limits. The rule of seven is one example. An out-of-control process or result lacks consistency and predictability.

Rule of Seven

Seven consecutive points on one side of the mean suggest a nonrandom pattern. This rule of thumb indicates that the process may be out of control even when all seven points are within the limits.

Assignable Cause or Special Cause Variation

Investigate the cause when an individual point or a series of points shows an assignable cause or special cause variation.

Benchmarking

Look at other projects for ideas to improve the current project and for a benchmark against which to measure quality performance.

Design of Experiments (DOE)

Use statistical experiments to determine which variables improve quality. DOE offers a faster and more accurate way to vary important process factors systematically and see which combination has the least impact on the project.

Statistical Sampling

Auditing every manufactured item may take too long, cost too much, or damage the items being tested. In these cases, examine a sample of the population. Determine sample size and measurement frequency during Plan Quality, then take samples during Perform Quality Control.

Flowcharting

A SIPOC diagram provides a high-level view of a process. SIPOC stands for Supplier, Inputs, Process, Output, and Customer.

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A flowchart shows how a process or system moves from start to finish and how its elements relate. Flowcharts can be used in many areas of project management.

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Outputs of Plan Quality

• Quality Management Plan. Defines quality and sets out how to manage it.
• Quality metrics. Identify what matters enough to measure and which measurement systems are acceptable.
• Checklist. Lists items to inspect or steps to perform, or shows a picture of the item, with space to record defects.
• Process Improvement Plan. Forms part of the Project Management Plan. It helps the team work more efficiently and prevent problems, saving time and money and increasing the likelihood of customer satisfaction.
• Project Management Plan and project document updates. Update both throughout the project management process.

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Perform Quality Assurance

Perform Quality Assurance during execution, while the work is underway.

Tools and Techniques

• Tools from Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control. Use tools and techniques from both processes in quality assurance.
• Quality audits. Auditors check whether the project complies with company policies, standard practices, and procedures, and whether those policies, practices, and procedures are efficient and effective.
• Process analysis. Plan to analyze processes at specific points in the project. This supports continuous improvement by identifying where processes may need to change.

Outputs of Perform Quality Assurance

• Change requests
• Updated standards and processes
• Updated Project Management Plan and project documents

Perform Quality Control

Perform Quality Control measures products or services to see whether they meet quality standards and verifies that deliverables reach the required quality level. Quality control continues throughout the project. In a large company, a quality control department may do much of the work and report its findings to the project manager, who must be able to interpret the measurement reports.

Statistical Concepts

• Mutual exclusivity. Two events are mutually exclusive when they cannot both occur in a single trial.
• Probability. The likelihood that an event will occur. Express it as a decimal or fraction on a scale from zero to one.
• Normal distribution. A bell-shaped distribution described in this lesson as the most common probability density function. It is used to measure variation.
• Statistical independence. Two events are independent when the occurrence of one does not change the probability of the other.
• Standard deviation (sigma). A measure of spread that describes how far values tend to lie from the mean.

Seven Basic Tools of Quality

The seven basic tools of quality covered in this lesson are the cause-and-effect diagram, flowchart, histogram, Pareto chart, run chart, scatter diagram, and control chart.

Cause-and-Effect Diagram (Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram)

Use this diagram to look creatively at the causes of a problem. It stimulates thinking, organizes ideas, and generates discussion. It can also help explore factors that could contribute to a desired future outcome.

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Histogram

A histogram displays data in bars or columns. It helps identify problems worth addressing. The bars in a typical histogram follow no particular order of frequency.

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Pareto Chart

A Pareto chart is a type of histogram that orders results from most frequent to least frequent so you can identify the root causes behind most problems. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of problems come from 20% of causes. Use the chart to focus on critical issues, prioritize potential causes, and distinguish the critical few from the less important many.

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Run Chart

A run chart shows past measurements in sequence so you can look for patterns of variation and use them to control quality.

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Scatter Diagram

A scatter diagram shows paired values for two variables so you can look for a relationship between them.

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Outputs of Perform Quality Control

• Measurements
• Validated changes
• Updates to the Project Management Plan and project documents
• Change requests
• Lessons learned
• Validated deliverables