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This chapter covers key concepts related to Project Quality Management.
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The knowledge area of Project Quality Management consists of the following processes -
Quality Management Processes
Process | Project Phase | Key Deliverables |
Plan Quality Managment | Planning | Quality Management Plan,
Quality Metrics |
Perform Quality Assurance | Execution | Change Requests |
Perform Quality Control | Monitoring and Controlling | Quality control measurements |
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The process of Plan Quality Management includes defining quality requirements of the project and documenting how the project will ensure compliance. The ITTO of Plan Quality Management process are given below.
Plan Quality Process
Inputs | Tools and Techniques | Outputs |
Scope baseline | Cost-benefit analysis | Quality management plan |
Stakeholder register | Cost of quality | Quality metrics |
Cost performance baseline | Control charts | Quality checklists |
Schedule baseline | Benchmarking | Process improvement plan |
Risk register | Design of experiments | Project document updates |
Enterprise environmental factors | Stastical sampling | |
Organizational process assets | Flowcharting | |
| Proprietary quality management methodology | |
| Additional quality planning tools | |
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Grade refers to category or rank given to entities having same functional use but different technical characteristics.
As an example, for different grades of hotels, the customers expectations are different. Poor
grade may be acceptable, but poor quality is not.
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The aim of quality is to ensure "Conformance to requirements" and "fitness for use".
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Quality Policy defines the company goals and how to adhere to them. This acts as an input
to Quality Planning for a project. Quality Policy is part of Organizational Process assets.
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Deming suggested a process of Plan-Do-Check-Act to improve quality. According to Deming, each process should go through
these steps to improve the quality.
- Kaizen Theory - Apply continuous small improvements to reduce costs and ensure consistency.
- Marginal Analysis - You compare the cost of incremental improvements against the increase
in revenue made from quality improvements. Optimal quality is reached when cost of improvements
equals the costs to achieve quality.
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The value of sigma of Normal Distribution are given below. These are important for the exam.
Normal Distribution Sigma values
Sigma | Percentage covered |
One sigma | 68.26% |
Two sigma | 95.46% |
Three sigma | 99.73% |
Six sigma | 99.99% |
Based on the above table, we can see that in six sigma one out of 10,000 items can have defects. In three sigma, twenty seven out of 10,000 items can have defects.
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Giving extras i.e. doing more than the project scope is called gold-plating. PMI does not recommend gold-plating.
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Quality must be planned in and not inspected in. Prevention is more important than inspection.
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Quality Assurance is done during execution of the project. It includes -
- Process of evaluating overall performance on a regular basis
- Re-evaluating quality standards
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Quality audits - structured review of quality activities that identify lessons learned. These
lessons learned are used for process improvement.
Perform Quality Assurance involves reviewing the quality requirements and auditing the results from quality control measurements. Perform Quality Assurance uses data created during Perform Quality Control.
ITTO of Perform Quality Assurance
Inputs | Tools and Techniques | Outputs |
Project management plan | Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control tools and techniques | Organizational process updates |
Quality metrics | Quality audits | Change requests |
Work performance information | Process analysis | Project management plan updates |
Quality control measurements | | Project document updates |
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Perform Quality Control focuses on correctness of work. It includes inspections. The inputs, tools and techniques and outputs (ITTO) used for Perform Quality Control process are -
ITTO of Perform Quality Control
Inputs | Tools and Techniques | Outputs |
Project management plan | Cause and effect diagram | Quality control measurements |
Quality metrics | Control charts | Validated changes |
Quality checklists | Flowcharting | Validated deliverables |
Work performance measurements | Histogram | Organizational process assets updates |
Approved change requests | Pareto chart | Change requests |
Deliverables | Run chart | Project management plan updates |
Organizational process assets | Scatter diagram | Project document updates |
| Statistical Sampling | |
| Inspection | |
| Approved change requests review | |
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In Just-In-Time (JIT) Quality, the amount of inventory is zero. The inputs are made available,
just when they are required. This reduces the storage cost.
- Rule of seven : In control charts, if there are seven points on one side of mean,
then an assignable cause must be found.
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The process of Analogous Estimation involves looking at the history of past projects, and use
them to make estimates.
Questions on Project Quality Management are available in
Quality Questions.
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