Project Quality Management is a knowledge area that covers only 2 phases of the entire life cycle of the project. During each phase, certain processes pertaining to this knowledge area take place. Important outputs verified deliverables and quality reports.

Although the highest quality should always be a goal, the highest grade is not necessarily so. the project manager and the project management team are responsible for managing the trade-offs associated with delivering the required levels of both quality and grade. Prevention  (keeping errors out othe process) by designing quality into deliverables and inspection (keeping errors out of the hands of the customer), attribute sampling(conforming results) and variable sampling (result scaled for degree of conformity), tolerances (range of results) and control limits (boundary identification).

• Quality: the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.
• Grade:  The performance specification to which a product is produced.

The cost of quality includes all costs incurred over the life of the product by investment in preventing non-conformance to requirements, appraising the product for conformance to requirements. Failure costs  are either internal ( found by the project team through a control process, planning, design, culture) and external ( found by the customer).

Trends in quality management include define requirements per real use through team interaction, continual improvement through total quality management, six sigma may improve the quality of project management as well as the quality of the end product, management participation, partnership with suppliers.

Tailoring of project management include existing procedures and tools in the organization, industry standards, collaborative environment for stakeholders and suppliers.

Project Initiation

There are no processes taken place during this phase.

Project Planning

During this phase, there are 1 process taking place: Quality Management Planning.

It describes the activities and resources necessary for the project management team to achieve the quality objectives set for the project by identifying quality requirements and document demonstrating compliance with quality requirements.

The quality management plan may be formal or informal, detailed, or broadly framed.  The style and detail of the quality management plan are determined by the requirements of the project.

Plan Quality Management

The focus is on projects value proposition, reductions in costs, and schedule overruns.

Inputs

1. Project Charter – high level product characteristics, approval requirements, project objectives, and success criteria.
2. Project management plan
   • Requirements Management Plan – approach for managing requirements
   • Risk Management Plan – approach for monitoring risks
   • Stakeholder Engagement Plan – approach for documenting stakeholders needs and expectations
   • Scope baseline – in scope statement there are WBS, deliverables, acceptance criteria)
3. Project Documents
   • Assumption log – about quality requirements and standard compliance
   • Requirements documentation – about product and project
   • Requirements traceability matrix – links product requirements to deliverables for testing
   • Risk register – quality related threats and opportunities
   • Stakeholder register – the customer and project sponsor needs and expectations
4. Enterprise environmental factors – governmental regulations, industry standards, geographic distribution, organizational structure, market place conditions, project operating conditions, cultural perceptions.
5. Organizational process assets – procedures, check sheets,traceability matrix, lessons learned repository.

Tools & Techniques

1. Expert judgment – about quality assurance, control, measurement, improvements, and systems.
2. Data gathering
   • Benchmarking – compare projects quality practices to those used in comparable projects to identify best practices and provide a basis for measuring performance.
   • Brainstorming – gather data from internal or external subject matter experts to develop the quality management plan.
   • Interviews – project participants, stakeholders, and subject matter experts about project and product quality needs and expectations.
3. Data analysis
   • Cost-benefit analysis – estimate the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives so that the quality activities are cost effective (rework, productivity, costs, profitability, satisfaction)
   • Cost of quality – prevention costs (training, document processes, equipment, time to do it right), appraisal costs (testing, inspections, destructive testing loss), and failure costs ( rework, scrap, liabilities, warranty work, lost business).
4. Decision making
   • Multicriteria decision analysis – weighted prioritization matrix
5. Data representation
   • Flowcharts – activities, decision points, branching loops, and other details within a horizontal value chain (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers). flow diagrams of processes can be used to identify quality defects.
   • Logical data model – visual representation of organization’s data used to identify where data integrity can arise.
   • Matrix diagrams – using key quality metrics, find relationships among different factors, causes, and objectives.
   • Mind mapping – visually organize the information around a single quality concept to rapidly gather project quality requirements, constraints, dependencies, and relationships.
6. Test and inspection planning the PM and the team determine how to test and meet product’s performance depending on industry standards ( strength, inspection,field tests)
7. Meetings – project manager, project sponsor, selected team members and stakeholders meet to develop the quality management plan.

Outputs

1. Quality management plan – quality standards, objectives,roles and responsibilities, deliverables, control activities,tools and procedures for dealing with non-conformance, corrective actions procedures, and continuous improvement procedures.
2. Quality metrics – describe attributes to be verified for compliance ( % tasks completed on time, cost performance measured by CPI, failure rate, number of defects per day, total down time per month, errors found, customer satisfaction scores, % requirements covered by the test plan)
3. Project management plan updates
   • Risk management plan – risk approach affected by quality approach
   • scope baseline – quality activities added as necessary and WBS dictionary records quality requirements.
4. Project documents updates
   • Lessons learned register – challenges encountered in this process
   • Requirements traceability matrix – specified quality requirements
   • Risk register – new risks found during this process
   • Stakeholder register – new stakeholders identified

Project Execution

There is 1 process taken place during this phase: Quality Assurance Performance.

It is the process of translating the quality management plan into executable quality activities that incorporate the organization’s quality policies into the project. Quality requirements identified during planning are turned into test and evaluation instruments, which are are latter applied to verify they are met.

Quality assurance is about using processes effectively by following and meeting standards. Manage Quality include quality assurance activities , as well as product design and process improvements. It is part of the conformance work of the cost of quality. the activities are defined to design an optimal product by implementing design guidelines, build confidence through techniques such as quality audits, design of experiments, quality improvement, and failure analysis (as used by the organization’s quality assurance department), confirm processes are used per objectives, and improve processes for better results. In traditional projects, quality management is the responsibility of specific team members.

Manage Quality

Inputs

1. Project management plan
   • Quality management plan – the acceptable level of project and product quality and how to ensure that in its deliverables and processes, as well as what to do with nonconforming products and what corrective action to implement.
2. Project documents
   • Lessons learned register – from previous process
   • Quality control measurements – evaluate the quality of processes and deliverables against the specified requirements.
   • Quality metrics – used for test scenarios for its deliverables
   • Risk report – identify drivers of overall risk exposure
3. Organizational process assets – procedures, templates(check sheets, traceability matrix, test plan, test documents), audit results, lessons learned.

Tools & Techniques

1. Data gathering
   • Checklists – a component specific structured tool used to verify that a set of steps has been performed or a list of requirements has been satisfied. They include the acceptance criteria.
2. Data analysis
   • Alternatives analysis – evaluate most appropriate quality option
   • Document analysis – of quality/test/performance reports and variance analysis jeopardizing requirements
   • Process analysis – examines problems, constraints, and non value added activities
   • Root cause analysis – determine the basic underlying reason that causes variance, defect, or risk.
3. Decision making
   • Multicriteria decision analysis – evaluate criteria. project decisions include choosing implementation scenarios or suppliers. product decisions evaluate the life cycle cost, schedule, stakeholder satisfaction, and risks associated with resolving product defects.
4. Data representation
   • Affinity diagrams – organize potential causes of defects into groups
   • Cause-and-effect diagrams (Ishikawa) – break down the problem into branches depicting the causes (people, process, equipment, material, environment, management)
   • Flowcharts – a series of steps that lead to a defect
   • Histograms – show a number of defects per deliverables, a ranking of the cause of defects, the number of times each process is non-compliant.
   • Matrix diagrams – show the relationship among the factors, causes and objectives.
   • Scatter diagrams – demonstrate a relationship between any element of a process, environment, or activity versus a quality defect.
5. Audits – determines if project activities comply with procedures. it is conducted by a team external to the project for the purpose of identifying implemented practices, nonconformity, gaps, shortcoming, sharing good practices, assisting implementation, updating lessons learned with the contributions brought by the audit. They confirm the implementation of updates, corrective actions, defect repairs, and preventive actions.
6. Design for X – guidelines applied to the design of a product for the optimization of a specific aspect of the design (reliability, deployment, assembly, manufacturing, cost, service, usability, safety, and quality.
7. Problem solving – finding solutions for issues . it includes gathering information, critical thinking, creative, quantitative, logical approaches. It includes: defining the problem, identifying the root-cause, generate solutions, chose the best solution, implement the solution, verify the effectiveness.
8. Quality improvement methods – plan-do-check -act and Six Sigma are tools to analyze and evaluate opportunities for improvement as they arise from quality control processes, audits, and manage quality processes.

Outputs

1. Quality reports – graphical, numerical, qualitative and include all quality management issues escalated by the team, recommendations for process, project, product improvement; corrective actions (rework, repairs,inspection) and the Quality Control processes findings.
2. Test and evaluation documents – as industry or organization templates. they are inputs to the quality control process and to evaluate achievement of quality objectives. (checklist, requirements traceability matrix)
3. Change requests – any changes to project management plans, project documents, management processes that occur during manage quality process to be integrated.
4. Project management plan updates
   • Quality management plan – due to actual results
   • Scope baseline – as a result of specific quality management activities
   • Schedule baseline – as a result of specific quality management activities
   • Cost baseline – as a result of specific quality management activities
5. Project documents updates
   • Issue log – new issues occurring during this process
   • Lessons learned register – challenges encountered and could they have been avoided and what went well
   • Risk register – new risks identified in this process

Project Controlling

In this phase, 1 process takes place: Quality Control Performance.

It is the process of monitoring and recording the results of executing the quality management activities to assess performance and ensure the project outputs are complete, correct, and meet customer expectations. I t is to determine if the project output do what they were intended to do. It measures the completeness, compliance, and fitness for use of a product prior to delivery. It is done by measuring all steps, attributes, and variables as specified. In traditional projects, quality control activities are performed towards the end of the phase , by specific team members.

Control Quality

Inputs

1. Project management plan
   • Quality management plan – how quality control will be performed.
2. Project documents
   • Lesson learned register – earlier in the project
   • Quality metrics – attributes and their verification
   • Test and evaluation documents – evaluate achievement of the quality objectives
3. Approved change requests – repairs, revised work methods, revised schedules. the implementation should be retested and certified.
4. Deliverables – unique, verifiable to be produced in a phase or project. Deliverables outputted by Direct and Manage Project Work process are to be inspected against acceptance criteria defined in the scope statement.
5. Work performance data – observations, quality metrics, measurements for technical performance, project quality information on schedule performance and cost performance.
6. Enterprise environmental factors – pm information system, quality management software tracking errors in deliverables; governmental regulations; industry standards.
7. Organizational process assets – quality standards, templates, issue reporting procedures

Tools & Techniques

1. Data gathering
   • Checklists – structured control activities
   • Check sheets – organize facts to collect data about a quality problem ( frequencies, consequences)
   • Statistical sampling – choosing a part for inspection to measure controls and verify quality as specified in Plan Quality Management
   • Questionnaires and surveys – gather data about customer satisfaction after deployment. the cost of such defects are considered external.
2. Data analysis
   • Performance reviews – evaluate the quality metrics against the actual results.
   • Root cause analysis – to identify the source of defects
3. Inspection – examination and measurement against standards ( reviews, peer reviews, audits, walkthroughs.
4. Testing/product evaluations – investigation for nonconformance of a product in accordance with the project requirements
5. Data representation
   • Cause-and-effect diagrams – to identify effects of quality defects
   • Control charts – to determine a stable and predictable process within limits established through statistical methods. They are used for manufacturing lots, cost ans schedule variance scope changes.
   • Histogram – the number of defects by source or component
   • Scatter diagrams – planned vs actual performance
6. Meetings
   • Approved change requests review  – to verify their implementation, testing, and certification.
   • Retrospective lessons learned – team to discuss successful elements, what could be improved, incorporated, and added.

Outputs

1. Quality control measurements – documented results of control quality activities
2. Verified deliverables – the results of performing the control quality process ( to determine correctness of deliverables) are verified deliverables that become an input to the Validate Scope process for formalized acceptance
3. Work performance information – information on project requirements fulfillment, causes for rejections, rework required, recommendations for corrective actions, list of verified deliverables, status of quality metrics, and the need for process adjustments.
4. Change requests – are processed for review and disposition
5. Project management plan updates
   • Quality management plan
6. Project documents updates
   • Issue log – if a deliverable does not meet the requirements is documented as an issue
   • Lessons learned register – document the source of quality defects and how they could have been avoided.
   • Risk register – new risks identified
   • Test and evaluation documents – change as needed.

Project Closure

There are no processes taken place during this phase.

 

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