Project Quality Management

This module focuses on the importance of quality management in project planning and
implementation. Participants will learn about quality planning, assurance, and control, and
explore modern quality control practices and tools to enhance the quality of IT projects.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, students will be able to:

1. Discuss the importance of Project Quality Management (PQM).

2. Discuss quality planning, assurance, and control.
3. Apply tools and techniques in quality control.
4. Describe modern quality control practices.
5. Use tools to improve IT project quality.

Concept Grounding

What is Quality Management in Project Management? Quality management ensures that all
project activities necessary to design, plan, and implement a project are effective and efficient
with respect to the purpose of the objective and its performance.

Processes Involved in PQM:

1. Quality Planning:
o Identifying relevant quality standards and how to satisfy them.
o Outputs: Quality management plan, quality metrics, quality checklist, updates to
quality management plan.
o Example: Planning for system growth, ensuring consistent information
production, timely replacement of hardware under warranty.
2. Quality Assurance:
o Periodically evaluating overall project performance to ensure satisfaction of
quality standards.
o Outputs: Requested changes, recommended corrective actions.
3. Quality Control:
o Monitoring specific project results to ensure compliance with quality standards
and identifying improvement opportunities.
o Outputs: Quality control measurements, validated defect repairs, validated
deliverables.

Quality Characteristics
 [Link] is the degree, by which equipment performs its intended function.
Concerns:Mandatory features against optional features
2. Performance, its how well a product or service performs the customer’s intended use.
Concerns:Volumes of data that the system can handle, number of users using
simultaneously the system, type of h/w must the system run on, response time under
different circumstances
[Link], it’s the ability of the service or product to perform as intended under
normal conditions.
Concerns: should test plans be on 100 users at the same time, willingness of users to
have the system unavailable for system maintenance, for system failure tolerance,
willingness of sponsor to pay more for higher reliability and fewer failures
4. Relevance, it’s the characteristic of how a product or service meets the actual needs of
the beneficiaries, it should be pertinent, applicable, and appropriate to its intended use or
application
5. Timeliness, how the product or service is delivered in time to solve the problems
when its needed and not after
6. Suitability, defines the fitness of its use, it appropriateness and correctness
7. Completeness, the quality that the service is complete and includes all the entire scope
of services.
8. Consistency, services are delivered in the same way for every beneficiary.

Tools and techniques in Quality Control

Tools and Techniques in Quality Control:

[Link] Analysis-involves identifying the vital few contributors that account for most
quality problems in a system. It is referred to as the 80-20 rule, meaning that 80% of
problems are often due to 20% of the causes.
Pareto diagrams are histograms, or column charts representing frequency
distribution

2. Statistical Sampling-involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection.

Formula for sample size:
Sample size= .25 x (certainty factor/acceptable error)2
Commonly used certainty factor
Desired certainty Certainty factor
95% 1.960
90% 1.645
80% 1.281
3. Six Sigma - a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and
maximizing business success. It is driven by close understanding of customer needs,
disciplined use of facts, data and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing,
improving and reinventing business process.
 Application of six sigma can be in the design and production of a product, a Help Desk,
or other customer –service process

Five-Phase improvement process of Six Sigma Principle(DMAIC)

D-Define- define the problem/opportunity, process and customer requirements. Tools

used include project charter,description of customer requirements, process maps and
Voice of the Customer (VOC) data. Ex of VOC data include complaints, surveys,
comments, and market research that represent the views and needs of the organization’s
customers.
M-Measure- define measures, then collect, compile and display data. Measures are
defined in terms of defects per opportunity
A-Analyze- scrutinize process details to find improvement opportunities. A team
investigates and verifies data to prove the suspected root causes of quality problems and
substantiates the problem statement. Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram are the tools used.

I-Improve- generate solutions and ideas for improving the problem. A final solution is
verified with the project sponsor and the six sigma team develops a plan to pilot test the
solution. The Six Sigma Team reviews the results of the pilot test to refine solution, if
needed and then implements the solution where appropriate.
C-Control-Track and verify the stability of the improvements and predictability of the
solution. Control charts are used in this phase.

Quality Assurance is a process to provide confirmation based on evidence to ensure to

the donor, beneficiaries, organization management and other stakeholders that product
meet needs, expectations, and other requirements. It assures the existence and
effectiveness of process and procedures tools, and safeguards are in place to make sure
that the expected levels of quality will be reached to produce quality outputs.

Quality Audits
• Quality audits are structured reviews of the quality management activities that help
identify lessons learned that can improve the performance on current or future project
activities.
• Audits are performed by project staff or consultants with expertise in specific areas. The
purpose of quality audit is to review how the project is using its internal processes to
produce the products and services it will deliver to the beneficiaries. Its goal is to find
ways to improve the tools, techniques and processes that create the products and services.

The PDCA Cycle

• The most popular tool used to determine quality assurance is the Shewhart Cycle. This
cycle for quality assurance consists of four steps:
Plan, Do, Check, and Act. These steps are commonly abbreviated as PDCA.
The four quality assurance steps within the PDCA model stand for:
• Plan: Establish objectives and processes required to deliver the desired results.
 • Do: Implement the process developed.
• Check: Monitor and evaluate the implemented process by testing the results against the
predetermined objectives
• Act: Apply actions necessary for improvement if the results require changes.

Assurance vs. Control

• Quality control is done at the end of a process or activity to verify that quality
standards have been met. Quality control by itself does not provide quality, although it
may identify problems and suggest ways to improving it. In contrast, quality assurance is
a systematic approach to obtaining quality standards.

• Quality assurance is something that must be planned for from the earliest stages of a
project, with appropriate measures taken at every stage. Unfortunately far too many
development projects are implemented with no quality assurance plan, and these projects
often fail to meet quality expectations of the donor and beneficiaries.

QUALITY CONTROL
• Quality control is the use of techniques and activities that compare actual quality
performance with goals and define appropriate action in response to a shortfall. It is the
process that monitors specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant
standards and identifies different approaches to eliminate the causes for the unsatisfactory
performance.

Using Pareto diagram

Create a Pareto diagram based on the info. Below. First create a spreadsheet in excel
using the data in the [Link] the most frequent customer problems first. Add a column
called “%” of Total” and another one called “cumulative %”. Then enter the formulas to
calculate those items. Next, use excel chart wizard to create the pareto diagram based on
the data. Use Line-Column on 2 axis custom type chart.

Complaints Frequency /Week

Customer is on hold too long 90
Customer gets transferred to a
wrong area or cut-off 20
Service rep cannot answer
customer’s questions 120
Service rep does not follow
through as promised 40