- Processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was designed
- Includes all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives, and responsibilities. These are implemented by quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement
- Quality Planning – identifying quality standards that are relevant to the project (Plan); Project Manager, Project Owner
- Quality Assurance – evaluating overall project performance to provide confidence that project will satisfy relevant quality standards (Implement or Execution); Project Team
- Quality Control – monitoring specific results to comply with quality standards and eliminating unsatisfactory performance causes (Check or Control); Project Manager, Project Team
- Compatible with ISO 9000 and 10000 series
- Proprietary and non-proprietary approaches (total quality management
- Must address the management of the project and the product of the project
Quality – the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs
- Critical aspect is to turn implied needs into stated needs through project scope management
- Do not confuse with grade – category or rank given to entities having the same functional use but different requirements for quality
- Customer satisfaction – conformance to specifications (must produce what is stated) and fitness for use (must satisfy real needs)
- Prevention – avoid mistakes vs. cost of correction
- Management responsibility – requires participation of team; responsibility of management to provide resources
- Processes within phases – plan-do-check-act cycle
- Recognize that the investment in product quality improvements may be borne by the performing organization since the project may not last long enough to reap reward
Quality Planning
Identify quality standards are relevant and how to satisfy
Inputs to Quality Planning
- Quality Policy – the overall intentions and direction of an organization with regard to quality as expressed by management
- Scope Statement
- Product Description
- Standards and Regulations
- Other Process Outputs – processes from other knowledge areas (procurement planning)
Tools &Techniques for Quality Planning
- Benefit/Cost Analysis – consider trade-offs, benefit is less rework; cost is expense of project management activities
- Benchmarking – comparing actual or planned practices to those of other projects
- Flowcharting
- Cause and effect diagramming (Ishikawa or fishbone diagrams) illustrate how causes relate to potential problems or effects
- System or Process flowcharts – show how various elements of the system interrelate
- Helps anticipation of what and where quality problems may occur
- Design of Experiments – analytical technique which defines what variables have most influence of the overall outcome
- Cost and schedule tradeoffs
Outputs from Quality Planning
- Quality Management Plan – describes how team will implement its quality policy; describes the project quality system – organizational structures, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources needed to implement quality management
- Operational Definitions – defines how an item is measured by the quality control process. Also known as Metrics.
- Checklists – structured tool used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed
- Inputs to other processes – may identify a need for further activity in another area
Quality Assurance
All planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system to provide confidence that the project will satisfy quality standards
Inputs to Quality Assurance
- Quality Management Plan
- Results of quality control measurements (testing)
- Operational definitions
Tools & Techniques for Quality Assurance
- Quality planning tools & techniques
- Quality Audits – structured review of quality management activities to identify lessons learned
Outputs from Quality Assurance
- Quality improvements – taking action to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the project to provide added benefits to the stakeholders
- Most likely will involve change control
Quality Control – monitoring specific results to determine if they comply with quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory results
- Includes project (deliverables) and management (cost and schedule performance) results
- Awareness of statistical quality control
- Prevention (keep errors out of process) and inspection (keep errors from customers)
- Attribute sampling (result conforms) and variable sampling
- Special Causes (unusual events) and random causes
- Tolerances (acceptable range) and control limits (result falls within range)
Inputs to Quality Control
- Work results – include process and product results
- Quality Management Plan
- Operational Definitions
- Checklists
Tools & Techniques for Quality Control
- Inspection – activities such as testing to determine if results comply with requirements
- Control Charts – plot results over time
- Pareto diagrams – frequency of occurrence that identifies type or category of result (80/20 rule) – guides corrective action
- Statistical sampling – select population of interest for inspection
- Flowcharting
- Trend Analysis – forecast future outcomes based on historical results
- Technical performance (# of errors identified; # of errors that remain)
- Cost and Schedule performance (activities per period with significant variances)
Outputs from Quality Control
- Quality Improvement
- Acceptance Decisions (accept/reject)
- Rework – action to bring defective item into compliance
- Frequent cause of project overruns
- Completed checklists
- Process Adjustments – immediate corrective/preventive actions
- Most likely involves change control
Tips from the Review Guide
- Philosophy: definition of quality, avoidance of “gold plating” – giving customer extras, prevention over inspection
- “Conformance to requirements, specifications and fitness of use”
- Quality Management – processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken
- Continuous Improvement - small improvements to reduce costs and ensure consistency
- Marginal Analysis – optimal quality is reached at the point when revenue from improvement equals the costs to secure it
- Just in Time - decrease amount of inventory/decrease investment
- ISO 9000 or 10000 – standards to ensure that corporations follow their own quality procedures
- Total Quality Management – continuous improvement in business practices
- Normal Distribution – most common probability – used to measure variations
- Standard deviation (sigma) – measure how far away from the mean (dotted vertical line)
- 3 or 6 sigma – represents level of quality
- +/- 1 sigma equal to 68.26%
- +/- 2 sigma equal to 95.46%
- +/- 3 sigma equal to 99.73%
- +/- 6 sigma equal to 99.99%
- Responsibility to quality – entire organization
- Ultimate – employee
- Overall or Primary – Project Manager
- Design and Test Specifications – engineer
- Prevention over inspection – quality must be planned in not inspected in
- Cost of conformance vs. non-conformance
- Quality Training vs. rework
- Studies vs. Scrap
- Surveys vs. Inventory Costs and warranty costs
- Quality Planning (Plan) – determine what will be quality on project and how quality will be measured – done during Planning Phases
- Identifying which standards are relevant to project –how to satisfy them
- Benchmarking – look at past projects to determine ideas for improvement
- Cost Benefit Analysis
- Flowcharts (fishbone)
- Design of Experiments
- Quality Assurance (Implement) – determine if your measurement of quality is appropriate – done during Execution phases
- Process of evaluating overall performance on a regular basis
- Quality Audits – structured review of quality activities that identify lessons learned
- Quality Control (Check) – perform the measurement and compare to the quality plan – done during Control phases
- Process of monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identify ways of eliminating unsatisfactory performance
- Performance of the measurement or process, using quality control tools – checking work
- Quality Control Tools
- Pareto Diagrams – 80/20 rule – the chart presents the information being examined in its order of priority and helps focus attention on the most critical issues
- Fishbone diagram (Cause and Effect)
- A creative way to look at the causes or potential causes of a problem
- Helps stimulate thinking, organizes thoughts and generates discussion
- Can be used to explore a desired future outcome and the factors to which it relates
- Checklists – list of items to inspect
- Control Charts – graphic displays of the results over time – used to determine if a process is in control
- Upper and Lower Control Limits – two dashed lines – show the acceptable range of a variation – range determined by company’s quality standard (sigma)
- Mean – line in the middle – shows middle of the range of acceptable results
- Specification Limits – 2 solid lines outside the upper and lower control limits – represent the customer's expectations/requirements of quality
- Out of Control – process is out of control when:
- A data point falls outside of the upper or lower control limit
- Non-random data points are within the upper control and lower control limits
- Rule of 7 – non-random points outside the mean - process should be investigated
- Assignable Cause – data point the requires investigation to determine the cause of the variation
PMI and Deming
- Cost of conformance – 85% of costs of quality are responsibility of Management
- Quality Training – Rework
- Studies – Scrap
- Surveys – Inventory and Warranty costs
- Performance standard is zero defects; measurement system is cost of non-conformance
- Continuous Improvement
- Japanese (Kaizen)
- Marginal Analysis – optimal quality is reached when incremental revenue from improvement equals incremental cost to secure
- Variable – characteristic to be measured
- Attribute – measurement (objective or subjective)
- Increase quality = increased productivity, increased cost effectiveness, decreased cost risk
Review Guide Tips
- Primary responsibility for quality management is the PM
- Results of increase in quality
- Increased productivity
- Increased cost effectiveness
- Decreased cost risk
- Quality attributes – can be subjective, objective and are specific characteristics for which a project is designed and tested
- Quality assurance – example is team training
- Cost of Conformance = team training
- Marginal Analysis: optimal quality is reached when incremental revenue from improvement equals the incremental cost to secure
- Standard Deviation: how far away from mean
- Variable: characteristic you want to measure
- Attribute: measurement (subjective or objective)
- Ultimate Responsibility – Employee
- Overall Responsibility – PM
- Design/Test Specifications - Engineer
- If quality sample size increases, the quality control band decreases
- Product Cost plus Operations and Maintenance costs increase perceived value when balanced
- Cost of Conformance = training
- Crosby Absolutes of Quality – performance of standard is zero defects and the measurement system is the cost of non-conformance
- Deming & Japanese are associated with Quality Improvement programs
- Quality Control – performed by operating personnel
- Quality objectives are approved in conceptual stage by project owner
- QA – auditing function that provides feedback to team and client about quality of output being produced
- If sample size is a constant and acceptance numbers increase, the producers risk decreases and consumer risk increases
- 85% of costs of quality are direct responsibility of management