Part 48: Project Quality Management Processes

Project Quality Management includes

  • Plan Quality Management
    • KEY BENEFIT: Develops a plan for managing and validating quality
    • In this process, we
      • Identify quality requirements and standards for the project and its deliverables
      • Identify ways in which the project will comply with quality standards
      • Develop the Quality Management Plan
    • Quality planning is performed in parallel with other planning processes

  • Manage Quality
    • KEY BENEFIT: Improves quality processes
    • In this process, we
      • Implement the Quality Management Plan
      • Build confidence that the future output will meet expectations
      • Confirm that the processes used meet the quality objectives of the project
    • Quality Assurance Department (might be separate from the project team) usually handles quality assurance activities
    • Perform Quality Assurance provides continuous, iterative, process improvement to reduce waste and eliminate activities that do not add value
    • Everybody is responsible for improving quality, including the entire project team, the sponsor, and the customer

  • Control Quality
    • KEY BENEFIT: Identify causes of poor product quality and recommend actions to eliminate them; validate that project deliverables meet the requirements specified by the stakeholders
    • In this process, we
      • Monitor and record results from quality activities to assess performance and recommend changes
    • A Key Point to remember is that we Audit Processes, but we Inspect Deliverables
    • Definitions
      • To help with the definitions, lets pretend we’re manufacturing white, oil-based paint in one-gallon buckets.  Our process is to manufacture the paint, fill up the buckets automatically, and ship them.  If the paint is the wrong color, it will fail.  If we underfill the buckets, the customers will be upset.
      • PREVENTION
        • Prevention means keeping errors out of a process
        • In this case, we design our paint manufacturing process to ensure that the correct paint is produced.  We check for contaminants in the paint mixture.  We use high quality nozzles when we fill up the buckets.
        • It’s cheaper to produce the paint correctly the first time, than to throw out a bad bucket of paint after manufacturing it.
      • INSPECTION
        • Inspection means keeping errors out of the hands of the customer
        • We inspect each bucket of paint before it leaves the factory.
        • It’s cheaper to throw out a bad bucket of paint at the factory than to ship it to the store and deal with an unsatisfied customer later
      • ATTRIBUTE SAMPLING
        • Determine quality on a pass/fail scale
        • We want to make sure that the paint is oil-based.  If we produce oil-based paint, it will pass.  If we produce water-based paint, it will fail.  There is no numerical measure for oil-based or water-based paint.
      • VARIABLE SAMPLING
        • Determine quality on a continuous scale that measures degrees of conformity
        • We want to measure how much paint we put inside each bucket.  If the bucket is supposed to hold 1 gallon of paint, we can check.  Was it 1 gallon?  Was it 0.9 gallons?  Was it 1.2 gallons?  There is a range of quantities that could be present.  Too little paint and the customers will be ripped off.  Too much paint and we will be giving away paint and creating spills.
      • TOLERANCES
        • The tolerance is the specified range of acceptable results
        • It is the range that our customer is willing to accept
        • Since no process is perfect, our customer might be willing to accept buckets with 0.95 gallons to 1.05 gallons of paint.  Anything outside of this tolerance will fail.  That is, buckets with less than 0.95 gallons or more than 1.05 gallons will be rejected.
        • A bucket with 0.99 gallons of paint will pass.  A bucket with 1.10 gallons of paint will fail.
      • CONTROL LIMITS
        • Control Limits are the boundaries of common variation in a statistically stable process
        • They are narrower than the tolerances specified by our customers.  They are the tolerance that our quality control process is willing to accept.
        • Just because our customer is willing to accept a bucket with 0.95 gallons of paint does not mean that our factory should accept it as well.  A 5% variation might mean that something is wrong with the nozzle that fills up the buckets.  A slight problem now could lead to a bigger problem later.  If our nozzle is leaking 0.05 gallons of paint now, it might get worse over
        • Thus, we might set our own limit.  For example, we would say that the buckets should contain 0.98 to 1.02 gallons of paint (only a 2% variation).  If we see buckets that are outside of this range, we would suspect that there is a problem and make a closer inspection of our manufacturing process.