CHAPTER EIGHT

PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT

WHAT IS PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT?

• The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality as “the totality
of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs” or
“the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements”.
• The purpose of project quality management is to ensure that the project will satisfy the
needs for which it was undertaken.
• Project quality management involves three main processes:
1. Planning quality management includes identifying which quality requirements and
standards are relevant to the project and how to satisfy them. For an IT project, quality
standards might include allowing for system growth, planning a reasonable response
time for a system, or ensuring that the system produces consistent and accurate
information.
2. Managing quality involves translating the quality management plan into executable
quality activities
3. Controlling quality involves monitoring specific project results to ensure that they are
complete, correct, and meet customer expectations
PLANNING QUALITY MANAGEMENT

• Important scope aspects of IT projects that affect quality include functionality and features, system
outputs, performance, and reliability and maintainability.
• Functionality is the degree to which a system performs its intended function. Features are the
system’s special characteristics that appeal to users. It is important to clarify what functions and
features the system must perform, and what functions and features are optional.
• System outputs are the screens and reports the system generates.
• Performance addresses how well a product or service performs the customer’s intended use. What
volumes of data and transactions should the system be capable of handling? How many
simultaneous users should the system be designed to handle? …
• Reliability is the ability of a product or service to perform as expected under normal conditions.
• Maintainability addresses the ease of performing maintenance on a product.
So, Project managers and their teams need to consider all of the above project scope issues in
determining quality goals for the project.
MANAGING QUALITY

• Important inputs for managing quality are the quality management plan, project
documents, and organizational process assets.
• A kaizen approach is used by many organizations to continuously improve the way they
do business.
• An important tool for managing quality is a quality audit. A quality audit is a structured
review of specific quality management activities that help identify lessons learned and
that could improve performance on current or future projects
CONTROLLING QUALITY

• Although one of the main goals of quality control is to improve quality, the main
outcomes of this process are acceptance decisions, rework, and process adjustments.
Acceptance decisions determine if the products or services produced as part of the
project will be accepted or rejected
Rework is action taken to bring rejected items into compliance with product
requirements, specifications, or other stakeholder expectations.
Process adjustments correct or prevent further quality problems based on quality control
measurements.
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR QUALITY CONTROL

• The Seven Basic Tools of Quality:

1. Cause-and-effect diagrams trace complaints about quality problems back to the
responsible production operations.
• In other words, they help you find the root cause of a problem.
• They are also known as fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams, named after their creator, Kaoru
Ishikawa.
• Figure 8-2 tries to discover why users cannot log in to the EIS.
• This diagram lists the main areas that could be the cause of the problem: the EIS system’s
hardware, the user’s hardware or software, or the user’s training.
2. A control chart is a graphic display of data that illustrates the results of a
process over time.
• Control charts allow you to determine whether a process is in control or out of control.
• Figure 8-3 provides an example of a control chart for a process that manufactures 12-inch
wood rulers by machines on an assembly line.
• The customer has specified that all rulers it purchases must be between 11.90 and 12.10
inches long, or 12 inches plus or minus 0.10 inches.
• The scale on the vertical axis goes from 11.90, the lower specification limit, to 12.10, the
upper specification limit.
• The seven run rule states that if seven data points in a row are all below the mean or
above the mean, or are all increasing or decreasing, then the process needs to be examined
for nonrandom problems.
3. A checksheet is used to collect and analyze data. It is sometimes called a tally sheet or
checklist
4. A scatter diagram helps to show if there is a relationship between two variables.
• The closer data points are to a diagonal line, the more closely the two variables are related
5. A histogram is a bar graph of a distribution of variables.
6. A Pareto chart is a histogram that can help you identify and prioritize problem areas
7. Flowcharts are graphic displays of the logic and flow of processes that help you analyze
how problems occur and how processes can be improved
Six Sigma

• Six Sigma is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and
maximizing business success.
• Projects that use Six Sigma principles for quality control normally follow a five-phase
improvement process called DMAIC (pronounced de-MAY-ick), which stands for Define,
Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.
1. Define: Define the problem/opportunity, process, and customer requirements.
2. Measure: Define measures and then collect, compile, and display data.
3. Analyze: Scrutinize process details to find improvement opportunities.
4. Improve: Generate solutions and ideas for improving the problem
5. Control: Track and verify the stability of the improvements and the predictability
of the solution
Testing

• Testing needs to be done during almost every phase of the systems development life
cycle, not just before the organization ships or hands over a product to the customer.
• A unit test is done to test each individual component (often a program) to ensure that it is
as defect-free as possible. Unit tests are performed before moving on to the integration
test.
• Integration testing occurs between unit and system testing to test functionally grouped
components. It ensures that a subset or subsets of the entire system work together.
• System testing tests the entire system as one entity.
• User acceptance testing is an independent test performed by end users prior to accepting
the delivered system.
MODERN QUALITY MANAGEMENT

• Modern quality management requires customer satisfaction, prefers prevention to

inspection, and recognizes management responsibility for quality.
• Several noteworthy people helped develop theories, tools, and techniques that define
modern quality management.
• The suggestions from these quality experts led to many projects to improve quality and
provided the foundation for today’s Six Sigma projects.
• Major contributions have been made by Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and
Feigenbaum.
IMPROVING IT PROJECT QUALITY

• Strong leadership, understanding the cost of quality, providing a good workplace to

enhance quality, and working toward improving the organization’s overall maturity level
in software development and project management can all help improve quality.
The Cost Of Quality

• The cost of quality is the cost of conformance plus the cost of nonconformance.
• Conformance means delivering products that meet requirements and fitness for use.
• The cost of nonconformance means taking responsibility for failures or not meeting quality
expectations.
• The five major cost categories related to quality include the following:
1. Prevention cost: The cost of planning and executing a project so that it is error-free or within an
acceptable error range.
• Preventive actions such as training, detailed studies related to quality, and quality surveys of
suppliers and subcontractors fall under this category.
2. Appraisal cost: The cost of evaluating processes and their outputs to ensure that a project is error-
free or within an acceptable error range.
• Activities such as inspection and testing contribute to appraisal costs of quality
3. Internal failure cost: A cost incurred to correct an identified defect before the customer
receives the product
• Items such as scrap and rework, charges related to late payment of bills, inventory costs
that are a direct result of defects, costs of engineering changes related to correcting a
design error all contribute to internal failure cost.
4. External failure cost: A cost that relates to all errors not detected and corrected before
delivery to the customer.
• Items such as warranty cost, field service personnel training cost, product liability suits,
complaint handling, and future business losses are examples of external failure costs.
5. Measurement and test equipment costs: The capital cost of equipment used to perform
prevention and appraisal activities.
(1. a; 2. c; 3. d; 4. d; 5. b; 6. c; 7. b; 8. a; 9. b;
10. c)
1. is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
a. Quality
b. Conformance to requirements
c. Fitness for use
d. Reliability
2. What is the purpose of project quality management?
a. To produce the highest-quality products and services possible
b. To ensure that appropriate quality standards are met
c. To ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken
d. All of the above
3. generates ideas for quality improvements by comparing specific project
practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products within or outside
the performing organization.
a. Quality audits
b. Design of experiments
c. Six Sigma
d. Benchmarking
4. What does the term kaizen mean?
a. Minimize waste
b. Maximize value
c. Do it right the first time
d. Improvement
5. What tool can you use to determine whether a process is in control or out of
control?
a. A cause-and-effect diagram
b. A control chart
c. A run chart
d. A control panel diagram
6. Six Sigma’s target for perfection is the achievement of no more than
defects, errors, or mistakes per million opportunities.
a. 6
b. 9
c. 3.4
d. 1
7.The seven run rule states that if seven data points in a row on a control chart are all below
the mean, above the mean, or all increasing or decreasing, then the process needs to be
examined for problems.
a. random
b. nonrandom
c. Six Sigma
d. quality
8. What is the preferred order for performing testing on IT projects?
a. Unit testing, integration testing, system testing, user acceptance testing
b. Unit testing, system testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing
c. Unit testing, system testing, user acceptance testing, integration testing
d. Unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, system testing
ity
9. is known for his work on quality control in Japan, and he developed the
14 Points for Management in his text Out of the Crisis.
a. Juran
b. Deming
c. Crosby
d. Ishikawa
10 PMI’s OPM3® is an example of a model or framework for helping
organizations improve their processes and systems.
a. benchmarking
b. Six Sigma
c. maturity
d. qual
END
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