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The Project Quality Management processes are used to implement an organization’s quality management system within a project.
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Quick reference
Project Quality Management
The Project Quality Management processes are used to implement an organization’s quality management system within a project.
When to use
The Project Quality Management processes interact with each other and other processes to ensure the project and product quality requirements are fulfilled on a project.
Instructions
Project Quality Management
“Project Quality Management includes the processes for incorporating the organization’s quality policy regarding planning, managing and controlling project and product quality requirements, in order to meet stakeholder’s expectations.” PMBOK® Guide
The Project Quality Management processes address far more than just the inspection and test criteria for some of the project deliverables. These processes are concerned with whether the organization’s quality management system is being properly applied to the project activities. These are concerned with compliance with industry and company policies and procedures. They are also concerned with the actual performance and results of each deliverable. A key point of clarification; these processes are used to ensure that the project deliverables are completed according to the cited specifications and requirements. This does not mean that the deliverables will necessarily provide the expected benefit to project stakeholders. That is determined in the Validate Scope process. It is possible in some cases to meet specifications and not be acceptable to stakeholders. It is also possible in some cases to not meet specifications and be acceptable to stakeholders.
Project Quality Management Processes
There are three Project Quality Management Processes. They relate to each other as shown in the diagram below. The three processes are:
- 8.1 Plan Quality Management: “The process of identifying quality requirements and/or standards for the project and its deliverables, and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance with quality requirements and/or standards.” PMBOK® Guide
- 8.2 Manage Quality: “The process of translating the quality management plan into executable quality activities that incorporate the organization’s quality policies into the project.” PMBOK® Guide
- 8.3 Control Quality: “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.” PMBOK® Guide
Definitions are taken from the Glossary of the Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc., 2017, Pages 702, 710, 713, and 717. PMBOK is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
Basic Quality Tools
The PMBOK® Guide has defined several quality tools or techniques as basic quality tools used is most quality processes.
- Flowchart/Process Map: The steps in a process arranged sequentially in their normal flow. This is used to understand how activities interact with each other.
- Cause and Effect Diagram: This is a decomposition of a problem or defect to find the potential underlying or contributing causes in order to conduct further analysis.
- Histogram: This is a vertical bar chart. It displays the magnitude of the items being graphed as they relate to each other and against an absolute standard.
- Pareto Chart: This is a special case of the Histogram in which the items being graphed are ordered from largest to smallest to identify which create 80% of the occurrences.
- Scatter Diagram: This diagram shows correlation between two factors. A positive correlation pattern slopes up to the right, a negative slopes down to the right.
- Control Chart: This chart is a time dependent chart showing how a parameter changes over time. It tracks variation to determine if the factor is under statistical control.
- Check Sheet: This is a form that is used to collect data at the point where the checks are made. Based upon the data a check or mark is made a particular location on the sheet in order to track what is actually observed.
- 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen,
- 00:06 I like to talk with you about the Project Quality Management knowledge area.
- 00:11 The project management body of knowledge, the PMBOK Guide, defines this area as,
- 00:16 Project Quality Management includes the processes for
- 00:19 incorporating the organization's quality policy, regarding planning, managing, and
- 00:23 controlling project and product quality requirements,
- 00:26 in order to meet the stakeholder's expectations.
- 00:30 The quality management processes apply to both the project quality requirements and
- 00:34 the product quality requirements, both the project results and the project processes.
- 00:40 Many of the project teams that I have worked with did not have
- 00:43 a person from the quality department on the team.
- 00:45 That does not mean that there are no quality requirements.
- 00:49 Every project has either stated or implied quality requirements,
- 00:52 based upon the project charter, project scope requirements, and
- 00:55 project management methodology.
- 00:57 The customer has quality expectations, and the organization has quality expectations.
- 01:02 These quality expectations can't be dumped on some other department.
- 01:06 The project team needs to own them.
- 01:08 There are three project management quality processes.
- 01:11 The first one is plan quality management.
- 01:14 This process is similar to the equivalent process in other knowledge areas.
- 01:18 It creates the policies, procedures, and plans the approaches that will be used for
- 01:22 quality on the project.
- 01:24 Manage quality is the executing process.
- 01:27 It conducts audits and reviews to ensure that the project team is following
- 01:31 the policies of procedures, and that they are using the quality measurements
- 01:35 from the quality management plan.
- 01:37 Control quality looks at the results of the activities.
- 01:40 It ensures that the results are correct, and deliverables meet the standards.
- 01:45 So while the emphasis for manage quality is to be certain that the team is doing
- 01:48 the right things, control quality determines if they did the things right.
- 01:53 Both manage quality and control quality rely on several quality analysis tools.
- 01:58 Many of these tools are visual analysis tools,
- 02:00 that will help to identify quality problems, and point to solutions.
- 02:04 Let's look at several.
- 02:05 One of these is the cause and
- 02:07 effect diagram, sometimes referred to as a fish bone or diagram.
- 02:11 This diagram starts with the problem at the arrow end,
- 02:13 and then looks to find the underlying root causes.
- 02:17 Next is a flow chart, or process map.
- 02:19 This creates a picture of all the steps in the process or procedure.
- 02:23 Depending on the information added to the process,
- 02:26 it can identify which steps create problems in the process.
- 02:29 This is a great tool for showing the before and
- 02:31 after conditions of a quality improvement.
- 02:34 The third one is a control chart.
- 02:36 This is a time-based plot of a critical item,
- 02:39 to determine the level of variability in the item, and
- 02:41 therefore understand that the process is under control or unpredictable.
- 02:46 This is often used with statistical analysis for deeper levels of insight.
- 02:50 The fourth one is a scatter diagram.
- 02:52 This determines if there's a relationship between two factors.
- 02:55 If the plot shows that the points follow along a line, there is a relationship.
- 03:00 If a plot shows that the points are scattered, then there is no pattern and
- 03:03 there is no relationship.
- 03:05 Histogram is next.
- 03:06 This is a vertical bar chart that allows us to categorize information.
- 03:11 The bars provide insight into the occurrence of a problem or condition.
- 03:15 A special case of a histogram is the Pareto diagram.
- 03:18 This orders the bars of the histogram to put the tallest first and
- 03:21 the shortest last.
- 03:23 If you have limited time and money to fix a problem, and face it,
- 03:26 on a project you always are working under the conditions of limited time and money,
- 03:30 the Pareto diagram tells you which problem or condition you should fix first..
- 03:35 The final tool is the check sheet, this is a data collection tool.
- 03:39 The individuals, doing the work in a process or procedure,
- 03:42 are asked to track the number of occurrences of a problem or situation.
- 03:46 If you don't have automated systems with electronic capture capability,
- 03:49 you will often need to collect data using a check sheet.
- 03:54 Let's look now at how the quality management processes are linked together.
- 03:57 We'll start with the plan quality management.
- 04:00 This process creates the quality management plan,
- 04:03 which is a component of the project management plan.
- 04:05 And just like with the other knowledge areas,
- 04:08 the project management plan is an input to the other processes, and
- 04:11 even an input back to the first process, plan quality management.
- 04:15 Plan quality management also provides quality metrics,
- 04:18 which are one of the controlled project documents.
- 04:21 The manage quality process is ensuring the appropriate quality activities
- 04:25 are completed according to plan, and generating test and
- 04:28 evaluation documents and quality reports, throughout the life cycle of the project.
- 04:33 These are several of the project documentation elements that are maintained
- 04:36 and controlled.
- 04:38 Meanwhile, control quality is monitoring project and
- 04:40 product performance, and providing periodic quality control measurements,
- 04:44 as part of project documentation.
- 04:46 Both manage quality and control quality are also providing updates,
- 04:50 to both the project plan, and to the other project documents as needed.
- 04:56 >> Quality is everyone's responsibility.
- 04:58 I think I've heard that somewhere before.
- 05:00 But quality management activities on a project
- 05:03 are usually being watched by the project manager, or the PMO.
- 05:07 These processes can assist to find and
- 05:09 fix problems when they are small, before they grow into a crisis.
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PMI, PMP, CAPM and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.