Quality Planning

Like the other disciplines of project management, the PMBOK discusses Quality Planning, Perform Quality Control, and Perform Quality Assurance using what it refers to as inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs.

Under Quality Planning, the PMBOK lists as inputs Enterprise Environmental Factors, Organization Process Assets, Project Scope Statement, and Project Management Plan. The Enterprise Environmental Factors are frequently the result of federal, state, and local regulations, procedures, and so on that bear on the subject matter the project is dealing with. Organizational Process Assets include such things as quality policy, lessons learned, quality-related programs and processes, and organizational standards. Ideally each organization should have a quality policy that would direct or influence project quality policy.

Q.	An organization's quality policy should come from:
		A.	The project manager
		B.	The customers
		C.	Top management
		D.	Accounting

The answer is C, top management. In fact, the policy should reflect the top management view of quality and its importance in the strategic planning processes.

Q.	The project quality policy should be written by:
		A.	The customer for each project
		B.	The project team for each project
		C.	Top management for each project
		D.	Accounting for each project

The answer is B, the project team for each project. The project team, led by the project manager, puts together the quality policy for each project using what is known about the customer's desires in terms of quality in order to conform to the quality policy of the company, which comes from top management.

Organizational Process Assets could be a database or file of lessons learned and best practices that relate directly to the project application as well as a chosen set of quality processes and procedures such as Six Sigma, the Crosby Quality Education System, and so on.

Q.	Organizational Process Assets do not include:
		A.	Lessons learned
		B.	Quality methodology
		C.	Federal regulations
		D.	Best practices

The answer is C. Federal regulations fall under the category of Enterprise Environmental Factors.

The next input to a Project Quality Plan is the Scope Statement. If properly crafted, it should circumscribe the project, making its boundaries quite clear to every stakeholder and to the project team.

Q.	The Scope Statement for a project is written during Initiation as a part of:
		A.	Project Scope Planning
		B.	Project Quality Planning
		C.	Project Policy Guidance
		D.	Project Boundary Definition

The answer is A, Project Scope Planning.

The Scope Statement includes justification for the project, objectives of the project, a list of deliverables, and a description of the product that will result on completion of the project. The product should reflect the defined requirements, which are derived from the stakeholders' needs, wants, and expectations. In addition, the Scope Statement covers the defined thresholds and acceptance criteria for the project. Thresholds generally relate to cost, time, and resource parameters for the project, whereas acceptance criteria address how well the product meets the stakeholders' requirements.

The actual product (or process in the case of a service) is further defined in the Product Description and may include technical descriptions and details, which often have a direct bearing on the manner in which quality is approached in the Project Quality Plan.

Q.	How many of the other eight processes called out in the PMBOK are considered to potentially have an input to Project Quality Planning?
		A.	All of them
		B.	All except Project Risk Management
		C.	All except Project Human Resources Management
		D.	All except Project Integration Management

The answer is A. All the other processes can have an influence on Project Quality Planning, which is an indication of how interdependent every process in the PMBOK is on the other eight processes during the Planning phase. Therefore, it should be no surprise that the PMBOK lists the project plan as a major input to Project Quality Planning.

Q.	The manner in which the inputs to quality are handled is referred to by the PMBOK as:
		A.	Definitions
		B.	Guidelines
		C.	Tools and techniques
		D.	Descriptions

The answer is C, tools and techniques, which include Cost/Benefit Analyses, Benchmarking, Design of Experiments, Calculation of the Cost of Quality, and what the PMBOK refers to as "additional quality tools." Such tools may be brainstorming techniques like the Crawford Slip, flowcharting, affinity diagramming, and various matrix constructs. The PMBOK says that the outputs of all these processes are the Quality Management Plan, Quality Metrics, Quality Checklists, Process Improvement Plan, the Quality Baseline, and Updates to the Project Management Plan.

Q.	The Quality Management Plan describes:
		A.	How quality policy will be implemented
		B.	Where in the project quality is important
		C.	Why there is a need for quality
		D.	When to apply quality

The answer is A, how quality policy will be implemented. One of the other outputs in Quality Management Planning is called Quality Metrics.

Q.	Another term for a Metric is:
		A.	Standards and regulations
		B.	Operational definition
		C.	Product appearance
		D.	Fitness for use

The answer is B, operational definition, because these definitions are used to measure the degree to which quality is being obtained.

The PMBOK lists yet another output of the Quality Management Planning process as Checklists. These are useful to make sure no steps are skipped, and when generalized for use in other projects, they may be subject to constant improvements through the lessons learned processes. Such generalized checklists can be a handy reference for project managers to carry with them just to make sure they are asking the right quality-related questions of team members.

The fourth output of Quality Management Planning is the Process Improvement Plan, although it is actually a subset of the Project Management Plan. The Process Improvement Plan is aimed at better satisfying the stakeholders by increasing the customer value of the product. It includes Process Boundaries, Configurations, and Metrics as well as identifying Targets for Improved Performance.

Q.	The Process Improvement Plan does not include which of the following:
		A.	Process Metrics
		B.	Process Configurations
		C.	Targets for Improved Performance
		D.	The Project Management Plan

The answer is D, the Project Management Plan. The Process Improvement Plan is part of the Project Management Plan. The next output of Project Quality Planning is the Quality Baseline. As a baseline, this output facilitates the measuring of the degree of quality being achieved as the project progresses.

Finally, there are the updates to the project plan. These must pass through the Integrated Change Control Process so that their effects on the project plan are correctly recorded and implemented by the project team.