Overview

Project Quality Management processes include all the activities of the performing organization that determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It implements the quality management system through the policy, procedures, and processes of quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control, with continuous process improvement activities conducted throughout, as appropriate. Figure 8-1 provides an overview of the Project Quality Management processes, and Figure 8-2 provides a process flow diagram of those processes and their inputs, outputs, and other related Knowledge Area processes. The Project Quality Management processes include the following:

8.1 Quality Planning - identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them.

8.2 Perform Quality Assurance - applying the planned, systematic quality activities to ensure that the project employs all processes needed to meet requirements.

8.3 Perform Quality Control - monitoring specific project results to determine whether they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance.

These processes interact with each other and with the processes in the other Knowledge Areas as well. Each process can involve effort from one or more persons or groups of persons based on the needs of the project. Each process occurs at least once in every project and occurs in one or more project phases, if the project is divided into phases. Although the processes are presented here as discrete elements with well-defined interfaces, in practice they may overlap and interact in ways not detailed here. Process interactions are discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

Quality is 'the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements'^[6]. Stated and implied needs are the inputs to developing project requirements. A critical element of quality management in the project context is to turn stakeholder needs, wants, and expectations into requirements through Stakeholder Analysis (Section 5.2.2.4), performed during Project Scope Management.

Quality and grade are not the same. Grade is a category assigned to products or services having the same functional use but different technical characteristics^[7]. Low quality is always a problem; low grade may not be. For example, a software product can be of high quality (no obvious defects, readable manual) and low grade (a limited number of features), or of low quality (many defects, poorly organized user documentation) and high grade (numerous features). The project manager and the project management team are responsible for determining and delivering the required levels of both quality and grade.

Precision and accuracy are not equivalent. Precision is consistency that the value of repeated measurements are clustered and have little scatter. Accuracy is correctness that the measured value is very close to the true value. Precise measurements are not necessarily accurate. A very accurate measurement is not necessarily precise. The project management team must determine how much accuracy or precision or both are required.

• Customer satisfaction. Understanding, evaluating, defining,and managing expectations so that customer requirements are met. This requires a combination of conformance to requirements (the project must produce what it said it would produce) and fitness for use (the product or service must satisfy real needs).

• Prevention over inspection. The cost of preventing mistakes is generally much less than the cost of correcting them, as revealed by inspection.

• Management responsibility. Success requires the participation of all members of the team, but it remains the responsibility of management to provide the resources needed to succeed.

• Continuous improvement. The plan-do-check-act cycle is the basis for quality improvement (as defined by Shewhart and modified by Deming, in the ASQ Handbook, pages 13-14, American Society for Quality, 1999). In addition, quality improvement initiatives undertaken by the performing organization, such as TQM and Six Sigma, can improve the quality of the project's management as well as the quality of the project's product. Process improvement models include Malcolm Baldrige, CMM^®, and CMMI^SM.

The cost of quality refers to the total cost of all efforts related to quality. Project decisions can impact operational costs of quality as a result of product returns, warranty claims, and recall campaigns. However, the temporary nature of the project means that investments in product quality improvement, especially defect prevention and appraisal, can often be borne by the acquiring organization, rather than the project, since the project may not last long enough to reap the rewards.

8-1. : Project Quality Management Overview

Note

Note: Not all process interactions and data flow among the processes are shown. 8-2. : Project Quality Management Process Flow Diagram