Chapter 8: Introducing Project Quality Management

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Overview

What is quality? Quality is the “totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.” Every project has an anticipated level of quality for the project deliverables. Project quality management is the process to ensure that the project fulfills its obligations to satisfy the project needs. As projects vary, so too will the anticipated level of quality.

Picture this: it’s late on a hot summer night and you’re hungry. You pull up a gravel road and see a diner with a neon “open” sign. The sign, you notice, really says “Ope” since the “n” is burned out. Inside the diner, stale smoke drifts around like fog. Grease, onions, and garlic seep into your clothes. You opt for a booth only to find the table smeared with catsup, a little gravy, and, guessing by the stickiness, a glob of maple syrup.

Now picture this: You step off the elevator on the 43^rd floor. A maitre d’ welcomes you and guides you to a table next to a window offering a sweeping view of the city. A piano player massages a song into the evening. The waiter snaps open a napkin and drapes it across your lap. Another waiter pours you a glass of cold, crisp water and presents the menu. By the soft candlelight, everything looks, and feels, grand.

With these two contrasting scenarios, which one do you think will have better quality? Or can they both have an acceptable level of quality? For the first scenario—the diner—you expect a certain level of quality when it comes to service, food, and atmosphere. With the second scenario—the fancy restaurant—you also have an expected level of quality regarding service, food, and atmosphere. Both experiences are measured by that expected level of quality.

In the diner, you might get one of the best bacon cheeseburger/milkshake combos you can find late at night in the middle of nowhere. Just what you’d expect from this kind of place. And the fancy downtown restaurant? A fancy meal cooked to perfection—also what you’d expect. The difference between the two restaurants is grade. The expected level of service, food, and atmosphere is the quality of the experience.

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