Two-Minute Drill

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Ensuring Project Quality

q	The project manager is responsible for the overall quality management of the project and must set quality expectations based on the requirements of the customers and stakeholders.
q	The project manager must integrate the quality control of the project with the quality assurance program of the performing organization.
q	Quality is planned into a project, not inspected in.

Enforcing Project Quality

q	The project team members (the people actually completing the project work) have the power and responsibility of the quality of the deliverables.
q	The project team, as guided by the project manager and the quality management plan, should be empowered to stop the project work when preset, quality thresholds are exceeded.
q	Quality planning is an iterative process. As quality concerns creep into the project the planning processes are revisted to ensure actions-preventive and corrective actions-are taken to ensure quality.

Implementing Quality Control

q	Quality control monitors specific results within a project.
q	Quality control is concerned that the results must satisfy relevant quality standards.
q	Quality control can rely on root cause analysis used to eliminate unsatisfactory results.
q	Quality control is completed through inspection.

Implementing Quality Assurance

q	Quality assurance monitors overall results.
q	Quality assurance may use a QA program to set quality standards.
q	Quality assurance represents the implementation of the quality plan.

Relying on Quality Management

q	Quality management is the process to ensure the project is completed with no deviations from the requirements. There are several quality management philosophies:
q	Total Quality Management (TQM) The organization strives for constant improvement for products and business practices.
q	Kaizen The organization applies small changes to products and processes to improve consistency, reduce costs, and provide overall quality improvements.
q	Marginal analysis The cost of the quality is not greater than the increased sales because of the level of quality implemented. Ideally, the revenue generated because of the quality improvements far exceeds the cost of the quality.

Evaluating Quality Costs

q	The cost of quality is the amount of monies the performing organization must spend to satisfy the quality standards. This can include training, safety measures, additional activities implemented to prevent nonconformance.
q	The cost of nonconformance to quality is the monies or events attributed to not satisfying the quality demands. These can include loss of business, downtime, wasted materials, rework, and cost and schedule variances.
q	Optimal quality is reached when the cost of quality meets or exceeds the incremental cost to achieve quality.

Charting Quality Control

q	Fishbone diagram This is a cause-and-effect diagram that illustrates the factors which may be contributing to quality issues or problems. It is also known as an Ishikawa diagram.
q	Flow charts Flow charts demonstrate how a system works from start to finish, and illustrate how system components are integrated.
q	Pareto diagrams These histograms are related to Pareto's 80/20 rule, '80 percent of the problems come from 20 percent of the issues.' The diagram charts the problems, categories, and frequency. The project team should first solve the larger problems and then move onto smaller issues.
q	Control Charts These charts plot out the results of inspections against a mean to examine performance against expected results. Upper and lower control limits are typically set to ± three or six sigma. Results that are beyond the control limit value are considered out of control. Out of control results have an assignable cause that requires investigation to determine why the result occurred. In addition, seven consecutive results on one side of the mean indicate an assignable cause and is known as the 'Rule of Seven.'

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