Quality Control & Quality Assurance

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About this lesson

Quality Control and Quality Assurance are processes used for managing the project.  Quality Control determines if the overall project result meets the requirements and Quality Assurance determines if appropriate standards and procedures are used to do the work of the project.

Quick reference

Quality Management

Quality management on projects are proceses and tools that aid the project core team and the organization in their effort to both do the right things and do things the right way on projects.  It includes a focus on both corrective actions and preventive actions.

When to use

Quality Management is used throughout the project.  At the beginning of the project, Quality Control processes are used to establish the performance baseline for the project.  At the same time Quality Assurance processes are identifying the correct standards and procedures to use.  Throughout the execution of the project, Quality Control is tracking project performance against baselines and Quality Assurance is auditing to ensure the correct standards and procedures are being used.  At the end of the project, Quality Control performs the final verification or validation testing and analysis to ensure the project result meets its requirements.  Quality Assurance performs a final audit and creates findings for use to improve the project management methodology and to review during Lessons Learned.

Instructions

There are several quality management professional disciplines and certifications with extensive tools and practices that go beyond what can be covered in this reference guide.  However, some points that are particularly relevant to project work are highlighted.

Quality: “The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.”  PMBOK® Guide

Quality Approaches

Approaches to project quality management increase in their effectiveness as they become more proactive.  The levels or approaches are:

  • Customers find problems - normally a recipe for failure.
  • Project team finds and fixes problems - a reactive approach; wait for a problem to occur and then fix it.
  • Manage processes for quality - a process control approach that recognizes problems when small and applies corrective actions.
  • Design in quality - a proactive approach that prevents problems from occurring by designing out the circumstances that lead to problems.
  • Create a quality culture - quality is no longer a functional department or a checklist item, it is the embedded in all processes, systems and decisions.

Quality tools and techniques

There are numerous quality tools and techniques.  Several have been found to be particularly useful on projects:

  • Cause and Effect Diagrams - a visual representation of the underlying causes that could contribute to or enable a problem or failure on a project
  • Flow Charts - a visual representation of the steps in a process highlighting handoffs and decision points
  • Check sheets – data recording document to determine what was done
  • Pareto Diagrams – a special form of the Histogram for focusing improvement efforts
  • Histograms – diagram for separating performance by factors or categories
  • Control Charts – diagram for tracking ongoing process performance to determine if the process is stable
  • Scatter Diagrams – diagram for identifying correlation between factors

Precision and grade

Some terms are often confused when discussing quality. 

The first two that are confused is quality and grade.  Quality is the degree to which something meets the standard for which it is designed.  Grade is the determination of the acceptable standard.  Often when a product or process is accused of having bad quality it is because different grades or standards are being used when making the judgement.  First ensure agreement on the correct grade expectations, then judge the quality.

Two other terms that are often confused are precision and accuracy.  Accuracy is the degree to which the average results of the item being evaluated meets the desired performance. It is a measurement of the average and individual instance could be very good or very bad.  Precision is the degree to which multiple occurrences meet the same value.  Normally we desire both high accuracy and high precision.  However, if the results are not meeting the desired performance, it is critical to understand if there is an accuracy issue or precision issue because the solution approach is very different.  Precision problems are normally addressed by an adjustment to the current process to align expectations.  Accuracy problems normally require a new process that has less variation.

This definition is 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.

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  • 00:05 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:06 I'd like to talk now about quality management on projects.
  • 00:10 I wanna differentiate between the process of task accountability and
  • 00:13 quality management.
  • 00:15 Task accountability is focused on completing project tasks.
  • 00:19 It's unique to each task.
  • 00:21 Quality management is a business process focused on methodology and
  • 00:25 management systems.
  • 00:27 The project management body of knowledge, the PMBOK Guide, defines quality
  • 00:32 as the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
  • 00:37 That means you need to do things right.
  • 00:41 The quality management activities are comparing the overall project performance
  • 00:45 against the stakeholder expectations for the project.
  • 00:49 It often includes a fair amount of inspection, test, and audit.
  • 00:53 This might be done by the project team or by an outside group,
  • 00:56 such as the project management office or the quality department.
  • 01:00 Project quality management is to understand what problems have occurred
  • 01:04 that cause poor quality, which enables a team to then fix this and
  • 01:08 other teams to avoid these problems leading to continuous improvement,
  • 01:13 which is not just a buzz word, it's a practice followed by the quoting.
  • 01:17 In other words, they not only do things right, they do right things.
  • 01:22 There are lots of approaches to quality management.
  • 01:24 The level of discipline and
  • 01:25 sophistication is based upon the level of investment in systems and training.
  • 01:30 The worst case is not to perform quality management and to let the customer and
  • 01:34 users of the project results find the problems.
  • 01:37 I don't recommend this approach.
  • 01:39 The next level is the reactive level.
  • 01:41 In my experience, most projects operate at this level.
  • 01:44 They find and fix problems as they arise.
  • 01:48 Organizations that establish comprehensive project management methodology
  • 01:52 will move to the next level.
  • 01:53 In this case, they rely on the processes to protect them from quality issues, and
  • 01:58 to provide them with quality information.
  • 02:01 Of course, they'll still find and
  • 02:02 fix the issues that are due to their project unique circumstances and context.
  • 02:07 The next level is proactive level of quality management.
  • 02:10 Building on the project management methodology,
  • 02:13 quality attributes and metrics are used from initiation through the closing.
  • 02:17 And the quality system integration is designed into the methodology and
  • 02:22 into the unique project solution and results.
  • 02:26 The final level is the establishment of a quality culture
  • 02:29 where everyone is embedding quality characteristics into everything they do.
  • 02:33 This is not a procedure or a spec, it's a way of life.
  • 02:36 And it should be no surprise if the effect of this project quality management goes up
  • 02:40 as an organization and team move up the scale.
  • 02:43 The work of quality management is characterized
  • 02:46 by several quality management principles.
  • 02:48 They are the focus of senior stakeholders and quality policies that
  • 02:52 are supported by quality tools that are used to do the analysis.
  • 02:57 There's nothing surprising in the quality management principles.
  • 02:59 The point for
  • 03:00 us in this is the application to project management methodology.
  • 03:04 The customers are usually the project stakeholders
  • 03:07 who also share in the ultimate management responsibility.
  • 03:10 Prevention instead of inspection, continuous improvement,
  • 03:13 and understanding the cost of quality are classic quality principles.
  • 03:17 However, every project is unique.
  • 03:19 So even if the principles are the same,
  • 03:21 the results of applying them will often be unique within each project.
  • 03:26 The quality tools listed are those endorsed by the project management
  • 03:29 institute in the PMBOK Guide.
  • 03:31 This is a good list of tools.
  • 03:32 There are many others that I've also used, but this is a good place to start.
  • 03:37 Some of these are good for problem solving, such as the cause and
  • 03:40 effect diagram, and the flowcharts.
  • 03:42 Some are good data collection and presentation, such as Check Sheets,
  • 03:46 Histograms, and Pareto charts, which are special form of histograms.
  • 03:50 And controlled charts and scanner diagrams are data analysis techniques that
  • 03:54 are helpful for establishing process control.
  • 03:57 A caution with these tools.
  • 03:59 Many of them are best used when there is data from multiple projects
  • 04:03 to understand systematic issues.
  • 04:05 Be careful when using data from just one or two projects, and
  • 04:09 drawing conclusions about all projects.
  • 04:11 I would like to shift gears slightly with my remaining time and
  • 04:14 address two quality definition issues.
  • 04:17 The first one is the difference between quality and grade.
  • 04:21 These are two different concepts, but they are often mixed together
  • 04:24 leaving the confusion and frustration on the part of team members and stakeholders.
  • 04:28 Grade is the standard of performance that is desired.
  • 04:32 Quality is how well that's standard is met.
  • 04:35 Let's start with an illustration.
  • 04:37 I need to drive to work every morning.
  • 04:39 The objective is to reliably get to work on time.
  • 04:42 However, I don't have to suffer while doing this, so
  • 04:46 I have a very nice automobile that is known for comfort and luxury.
  • 04:50 Now, although it's very comfortable, mechanically it is very unreliable.
  • 04:54 In this case, the automobile is very high grade.
  • 04:57 After all, it is a luxury automobile, but
  • 05:00 it is low quality since it does not get me to work reliably.
  • 05:04 So when my automobile's in the shop, I use a taxi to get to work.
  • 05:08 The taxi is very reliable.
  • 05:10 It gets me there on time everyday, but it's not very comfortable.
  • 05:13 Seats are hard, smells bad, it's not very clean.
  • 05:17 The grade is very low, but the quality is high, I get to work.
  • 05:22 What I finally do, is get a new car that is both comfortable and reliable.
  • 05:26 Now, I have high grade and high quality.
  • 05:29 Few final comments.
  • 05:31 Grade is the specified requirement or performance level.
  • 05:34 It can be changed with stakeholder approval.
  • 05:36 Quality is how well the requirements are being met.
  • 05:40 When someone complains about bad quality on our project,
  • 05:43 often it's because they disagree on what is the appropriate grade.
  • 05:47 Low quality is always a problem, but
  • 05:49 low grade may be exactly what the stakeholders want.
  • 05:53 The second quality definition issue is the difference between accuracy and precision.
  • 05:57 The problem with misunderstanding these is that the corrective action for
  • 06:01 each is quite different.
  • 06:02 Let's say I'm shooting at a target, your choice of whether you're using a rifle,
  • 06:06 bow and arrow, darts, or spit balls.
  • 06:09 On this target, the average is right dead center, but
  • 06:12 the actual hits are scattered widely.
  • 06:14 The accuracy is high, but the precision is low.
  • 06:19 At the next target, all the hits are clustered together.
  • 06:22 They are just far from the bull's eye.
  • 06:24 This is a case of high precision, but low accuracy.
  • 06:28 The final target shows high accuracy and high precision.
  • 06:32 So why do we care?
  • 06:33 A problem with accuracy is usually a singular root cause.
  • 06:37 We can find that one issue, fix it, and
  • 06:40 the results shift to our desired region of performance.
  • 06:43 However, precision problem is usually a systemic issue
  • 06:47 based upon the inherent variability in the management control systems.
  • 06:51 To improve this, we need a whole new system.
  • 06:54 I've seen project teams chasing precision problems like there were accuracy issues,
  • 06:58 and often making the problem even worse.
  • 07:03 Quality management processes improve the overall project management methodology,
  • 07:07 and can help you achieve the goals and objectives of your project.

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