Education Edge PMP PMBOK Week 4 Office Read - Quality Knowledge Area

Project Quality Management

 

Project Quality Management determines quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken.

 

Project Quality Management supports continuous process improvement activities as undertaken on behalf of the performing organization.

 

Quality is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.

 

Grade is a category assigned to products or services having the same functional use but different technical characteristics.

 

Precision means the value of repeated measurements are clustered and have little scatter.

 

Accuracy means that the measured value is very close to the true value.

 

Cost of quality refers to the total cost of all efforts related to quality throughout the product life cycle.

 

Quality Philosophies associated to:

 

W. Edwards Deming – PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), Quality is a Management problem, Started the TQM movement

Dr. Joseph Juran – 80/20 Principle, Fitness for Use, Quality & Grade

Phillip Crosby – Zero Defects, Quality is ‘Free’, Right’ the First Time, Prevention is the ‘Key’

 

Kaizen is a Japanese word that means gradual continuous improvement.

 

The knowledge area of Project Quality Management consists of the following three processes:

 

Process Name	Project Management Process Group	Key Deliverables
Plan Quality Management	Planning	Quality Management Plan, Process Improvement Plan
Perform Quality Assurance	Executing	Change Requests
Perform Quality Control	Monitoring and Controlling	Validated Deliverables, Validated Changes

 

Plan Quality Management is the process of identifying quality requirements and/or standards for the project and its deliverables.

 

Quality planning must consider cost-benefit tradeoffs by performing Cost-Benefit Analysis.

 

Cost of quality includes all costs incurred over the life of the product by investment in preventing non-conformance to requirements, appraising the product or service for conformance to requirements, and failing to meet requirements (rework).

 

Cost of Conformance – Money spent before or during project to avoid failures

Prevention Costs

Appraisal Costs

Cost of non-conformance – Money spent during and after the project because of failures

              Internal Failure Costs

External Failure Costs

 

Seven Basic Quality Tools

 

Cause-and-effect diagrams, which are also known as fishbone diagrams or as Ishikawa diagrams

 

Flowcharts, which are also referred to as process maps because they display the sequence of steps and the branching possibilities that exist

 

Check sheets, which are also known as tally sheets and may be used as a checklist when gathering data

 

Pareto diagrams exist as a special form of vertical bar chart and are used to identify the vital few sources that are responsible for causing most of a problem’s effects

 

Histograms are a special form of bar chart and are used to describe the central tendency, dispersion, and shape of a statistical distribution

 

Control charts, are used to determine whether or not a process is stable or has predictable performance

 

Scatter diagrams, plot ordered pairs (X, Y) and are sometimes called correlation charts because they seek to explain a change in the dependent variable

 

Benchmarking involves comparing actual or planned project practices to those of comparable projects to identify best practices.

 

Design of experiments (DOE) is a statistical method for identifying which factors may influence specific variables of a product or process under development or in production.

 

Statistical sampling involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection.

 

The Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Output of Plan Quality Management process are given below:

 

Project Management Plan	Cost-Benefit Analysis	Quality Management Plan
Stakeholder Register	Cost of Quality	Process Improvement Plan
Risk Register	Seven Basic Quality Tools	Quality Metrics
Requirements Documentation	Benchmarking	Quality Checklists
Enterprise Environmental Factors	Design of Experiments	Project Documents updates
Organizational Process Assets	Statistical Sampling
	Additional quality planning tools
	Meetings

 

Perform Quality Assurance is the process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements to ensure that appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used.

 

The key benefit of this process is that it facilitates the improvement of quality processes.

 

The quality metrics provide the attributes that should be measured and the allowable variations.

Seven Quality Management and Control Tools

 

Affinity diagrams is similar to mind-mapping techniques in that they are used to generate ideas that can be linked to form organized patterns of thought about a problem.

 

Process decision program charts (PDPC) used to understand a goal in relation to the steps for getting to the goal.

 

Interrelationship digraphs provide a process for creative problem solving in moderately complex scenarios that possess intertwined logical relationships for up to 50 relevant items.

 

Tree diagrams also known as systematic diagrams and may be used to represent decomposition hierarchies such as the WBS, RBS (risk breakdown structure), and OBS (organizational breakdown structure).

 

Prioritization matrices – Identify the key issues and the suitable alternatives to be prioritized as a set of decisions for implementation.

 

Activity network diagrams previously known as arrow diagrams. They include both the AOA (Activity on Arrow) and, most commonly used, AON (Activity on Node) formats of a network diagram.

 

Matrix diagrams used to perform data analysis within the organizational structure created in the matrix.

 

A quality audit is a structured, independent process to determine if project activities comply with organizational and project policies, processes, and procedures.

 

Process analysis follows the steps outlined in the process improvement plan to identify needed improvements.

 

The Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Output of Perform Quality Assurance process are given below:

 

Quality Management Plan	Quality Management and Control Tools	Change Requests
Process Improvement Plan	Quality audits	Project Management Plan Updates
Quality Metrics	Process analysis	Project Documents updates
Quality Control Measurements		Organizational Process Assets updates
Project Documents

 

Control Quality is the process of monitoring and recording results of executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes.

 

Control Quality should be performed throughout the project.

 

Prevention (keeping errors out of the process); Inspection (keeping errors out of the hands of the customer)

 

Attribute sampling (result conforms, or it doesn't)

 

Variables sampling (the result is rated on a continuous scale that measures the degree of conformity)

 

Statistical sampling (measures only a percentage of items e.g. 5 out of every 100)

 

Special causes (unusual events)

 

Common or random causes (normal process variation)

Tolerances (the result is acceptable if it falls within range specified by tolerance)

 

Control limits (the process is in control if the result falls within the control limits)

 

A deliverable is any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability that results in a validated deliverable required by the project.

 

An inspection is the examination of a work product to determine if it conforms to documented standards.

 

Rule of Seven which is when 7 values in a row are all below or all above the mean or increase/decrease in one direction.

 

Quality control measurements are the documented results of control quality activities.

 

The results of performing the Control Quality process are verified deliverables.

 

Work Performance Information is the performance data collected from various controlling processes, analyzed in context and integrated based on relationships across areas.

 

The Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Output of Control Quality process are given below:

 

Project Management Plan	Seven Basic Quality Tools	Quality Control Measurements
Quality Metrics	Statistical Sampling	Validated Changes
Quality Checklists	Inspection	Validated Deliverables
Work Performance Data	Approved Change Requests Review	Work Performance Information
Approved Change Requests		Change Requests
Deliverables		Project Management Plan Updates
Project Documents		Project Documents updates
Organizational Process Assets		Organizational Process Assets updates