by Brad Egeland
Planning for quality…seems logical, right? But so many times we put too little time into the actual planning of the project that quality can get missed along the way.
Once the project manager has assembled the needed inputs, and evaluated the product description and project scope, he should get to work creating a plan on how to satisfy the quality demands. He’ll need to rely on the documentation created to date, his project team, and the project’s key stakeholder for much of the input. In addition, the project manager will use several different techniques to plan on meeting quality.
As planning is an iterative process, so too is quality planning. As events happen within the project, the project manager should evaluate the events and then apply corrective actions. This is a common PMI theme: plan, implement, measure, react – and document. Throughout the project implementation, things will go awry, team members may complete less-than-acceptable work, stakeholders will demand changes, etc. All of these variables must be evaluated for their impact on project quality. What good is a project if it’s “completed” on time, but the quality of the deliverable is unacceptable? Technically, if the product is unacceptable, the project is not finished since it failed to meet the project scope. Let’s look at some tools and techniques the project manager will use to plan for quality.
Using a Benefit/Cost Analysis
Benefits should outweigh costs.
A benefit/cost analysis is a process of determining the pros and cons of any process, product, or activity. The straightforward approach, when it comes to project management, is concerned with the benefits of quality management activities versus the costs of the quality management activities. There are two major considerations with the benefit/cost analysis in quality management:
Benefit. Completing quality work increases productivity because shoddy work does not have to be redone. When work is completed correctly the first time, as expected, the project does not have to spend additional funds to redo the work.
Costs. Completing quality work may cost more monies than the work is worth. To deliver a level of quality beyond what is demanded costs the project additional funds. The types of quality management activities that guarantee quality may not be needed for every project.
Gold plating. The customer does not need or want more than what was requested. Gold plating is the process of adding extra features that may drive up costs and alter schedules. The project team should strive to deliver what was expected.
Applying Benchmarking Practices
Benchmarking, when it comes to quality project management, is all about comparing this project to another. Benchmarking is a technique to take what the project manager has planned or experienced regarding quality and compare it to another project to see how things measure up. The current project can be measured against any other project – not just projects within the performing organization or within the same industry.
Benchmarking allows the project manager and the project team to see what’s possible and then strive toward that goal. Benchmarking can also be used as a measurement against industry standards, competitors’ pricing, or competitors’ level of performance.
Creating a Flowchart
Technically, a flow chart is any diagram illustrating how components within a system are related. An organizational flow chart shows the bottom crew of operations up to the one person on top. A HVAC blueprint shows how the air flows through a building from the furnace to each room. Flow charts show the relation between components, as well as help the project team determine where quality issues may be present and, once done, plan accordingly.
Design of Experiments
The design of experiments approach relies on statistical what-if scenarios to determine what variables within a project will result in the best outcome. Design of experiments approach is most often used on the product of the project, rather than the project itself. Design of experiments is also used as a method to identify which variables within a project, or product, are causing failures or unacceptable results. The goal of design of experiments is to isolate the root cause of an effect and then make adjustments to that cause to eliminate the unacceptable results.
Considering the Cost of Quality
The cost of quality considers the expense of all the activities within a project to ensure quality. The cost of quality is broken into two major categories:
Cost of conformance to requirements. This approach is the cost of completing the project work to satisfy the project scope and the expected level of quality. Examples of this cost include training, safety measures, and quality management activities to ensure that quality is met.
Cost of nonconformance. This approach is the cost of completing the project work without quality. The biggest issue here is the money lost by having to redo the project work; it’s always more cost effective to do the work right the first time. Other nonconformance costs include loss of sales, loss of customers, downtime, and corrective actions to fix problems caused by incorrect work.
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