Chapter 7: Project Quality Management

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Chapter 7Project Quality Management
adopted from PMIs PMBOK 2000 and Textbook
Information Technology Project Management
(author Dr. Kathy Schwalbe)
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Contents

• Importance of Project Quality Management
• Project Quality Management Processes
• Quality planning, Quality assurance, Quality
  control
• Quality Model Malcolm Baldridge National Quality
  Award (MBNQA), CMM and ISO 9000
• Software test
• Methods to improve IT Project Quality
• leadership
• cost of quality
• organizational and workplace factors
• maturity models

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Quality of Information Technology Projects

• Many people joke about the poor quality of IT
  products (MS windows joke!!)
• People seem to accept systems being down
  occasionally or needing to reboot their PCs
• But quality is very important in many IT projects
• Software quality is the key development in modern
  IT industry. MicroSoft has spend 25 of the RD
  in software reliability.

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What Is Project Quality Management?

• The International Organization for
  Standardization (ISO) defines quality as the
  totality of characteristics of an entity that
  bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied
  needs
• Other experts define quality based on
• conformance to requirements meeting written
  specifications
• fitness for use ensuring a product can be used
  as it was intended

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Project Quality Management Processes

• Project quality management includes those
  processes required to ensure that the project
  satisfies the needs for which it was undertaken.
• There are 3 processes in Project quality
  Management
• Quality planning planning phase
• Quality assurance executing phase
• Quality control control phase
• Compare to Jurans quality trilogy Quality plan,
  Control control and Quality improvement

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Modern Quality Management

• Modern quality management
• requires customer satisfaction
• prefers prevention to inspection
• recognizes management responsibility for quality
• Noteworthy quality experts include Deming, Juran,
  Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and Feigenbaum

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Quality Experts

• Deming was famous for his work in rebuilding
  Japan and his 14 points
• Juran wrote the Quality Control Handbook and 10
  steps to quality improvement
• Crosby wrote Quality is Free and suggested that
  organizations strive for zero defects
• Ishikawa developed the concept of quality circles
  and using fishbone diagrams
• Taguchi developed methods for optimizing the
  process of engineering experimentation
• Feigenbaum developed the concept of total quality
  control

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Quality Planning

• 11th of 21 of planning phase process
• It is important to design in quality and
  communicate important factors that directly
  contribute to meeting the customers requirements
• know what customer want is the key in quality
• but it is quite difficult to get this information
• Design of experiments helps identify which
  variable have the most influence on the overall
  outcome of a process
• Many scope aspects of IT projects affect quality
  like functionality, features, system outputs,
  performance, reliability, and maintainability

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Inputs to Quality Planning

• Quality policy
• Defined by the ISO as the overall intentions and
  direction of an organization with regard to
  quality as formally expressed by top management.
  
• The performing organizations quality policy can
  serve as the policy for the project.
• Scope statement
• provides a documented basis for making future
  project decisions and for confirming or
  developing common understanding of project scope
  among stakeholders.
• The scope statement describes major product
  deliverables and objectives that define the
  project.

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Inputs to Quality Planning (2)

• Project description
• documents the characteristics of the product or
  service that the project was undertaken to
  create. It details various technical issues or
  concerns that may impact Quality Planning.
• Standards and regulations
• Inputs from authorities outside the performing
  organization may impact Quality Planning.
• Other process outputs
• Outputs from the other PM knowledge areas may
  impact Quality Planning.

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Tools techniques

• Benefit/cost analysis
• involves estimating tangible and intangible
  benefits and costs of meeting quality
  requirements and then using financial measures to
  assess the relative desirability of the
  identified alternatives.
• Benchmarking
• compares actual or planned project practices to
  other projects to generate ideas for improvement
  and to provide a standard against which to
  measure performance.
• Flow-charting
• involves creating any diagram detailing how
  elements of a system relate to one another.
  Flow-charting techniques commonly used in quality
  management includes a) cause-and-effect
  diagrams b) process flow charts.

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Tools techniques (2)

• Design of experiments
• An analytical technique that helps identify with
  variables have the most influence on the overall
  outcome and helps determine an optimal solution
  from a relatively limited number of cases.
• Cost of quality
• The financial cost incurred to ensure quality.
  These are associated preventing, detecting, and
  correcting defects.
• Cost of quality includes (known as PAF cost)
• preventive costs
• appraisal costs
• failure costs (internal and external)

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Outputs from Quality Planning

• Quality management plan
• Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the
  PM team implements the quality policy. For the
  project, it covers a) quality control b) quality
  assurance c) quality improvement.
• Operational definitions
• Also called metrics. They describe the specifics
  of what something is (such as work procedure or
  operation) and how the Quality Control process
  measures it.
• For example, convert a general objective of
  increase success rate to increase success rate
  by 15 in 2 months to make it specific.
• Checklists
• verify required steps have been performed or
  followed.
• Inputs to other processes
• provides the feedback loops to other processes to
  determine if Quality Planning can identify a need
  for further activity in anther knowledge area.

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Quality Assurance

• 2nd of 7 of executing phase process
• Quality assurance includes all the activities
  related to satisfying the relevant quality
  standards for a project
• Another goal of quality assurance is continuous
  quality improvement
• Benchmarking can be used to generate ideas for
  quality improvements
• Quality audits help identify lessons learned that
  can improve performance on current or future
  projects

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Inputs to Quality Assurance

• Quality management plan
• Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the
  PM team implements the quality policy.
• For the project, it covers a) quality control b)
  quality assurance c) quality improvement.
• Results of quality control measurements
• records of quality testing and measurements,
  presented in a format useful for comparison and
  analysis
• Operational definitions (also called metrics)
• describe an element and how the element is
  measured by the Quality Control process.

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Tools techniques

• Quality planning tools and techniques
• includes benefit/cost analysis, benchmarking,
  flow-charting, and Design of Experiments.
• Quality audits
• A structured review of other QM activities to
  identify the lessons learned that can improve the
  performance of this project and other projects in
  the organization.
• Such audits are an independent review of quality
  management activities to a performance standard.

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Outputs from Quality Assurance

• Quality improvements
• Actions that increase the effectiveness and
  efficiency of the project and provide added
  benefits to stakeholders.
• Implementing them usually involves preparing
  change requests or taking corrective action in
  accord with procedures for overall change
  control.

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Quality Control

• 6th of 8 controlling phase process
• determine the correctiveness of the work results
• involves monitoring specific project results to
  determine if they comply with relevant quality
  standards
• identify ways to eliminate causes of
  unsatisfactory performance
• The main outputs of quality control process are
• acceptance decisions
• rework
• process adjustments
• Some tools and techniques include
• pareto analysis
• statistical sampling
• quality control charts
• testing

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Inputs to Quality Control

• Work results
• The results of activities performed to accomplish
  the project.
• Quality management plan
• Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the
  PM team implements the quality policy. For the
  project, it covers a) quality control b) quality
  assurance c) quality improvement.
• Operational definitions
• describe an element and how the element is
  measured by the Quality Control process.
• Checklists
• used to verify that a set of required steps has
  been performed.

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Tools techniques

• Inspection
• activities such as measuring, examining, and
  testing undertaken to determine if results
  conform to requirements. It is also reference to
  reviews, product reviews, audits, and
  walk-through.
• Control charts
• graphically display the results of a process. It
  helps to verify the process is statistically in
  control
• Pareto diagrams
• histograms, ordered by frequency of occurrence,
  that show how many results were generated by type
  or category of identified cause. The ranking of
  categories can be used to guide corrective action.

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Tools techniques (2)

• Statistical sampling
• chose part of a population of interest for
  inspection. Appropriate sampling can often reduce
  the cost of quality control.
• Flow-charting
• A graphical method of analysis that helps
  determine how and where quality problems occur.
  It can help to develop approaches to resolving
  the problems.
• Trend analysis
• use mathematical techniques to forecast future
  outcomes based on historical results.
• technical performance can be monitor to determine
  how many defects or errors have identified and
  corrected, it is also possible to monitor cost
  schedule performance.

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Outputs to to Quality Control

• Rework
• any action taken to bring a defective or NC item
  into compliance with required
• Acceptance decisions
• the results of inspecting items delivered.
• Completed checklists
• These documents are part of the project.

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Outputs to to Quality Control (2)

• Quality improvements
• outputs form the related process of quality
  assurance (QA). They represent actions intended
  to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of
  the project.
• They provide added benefits to stakeholders.
  Implementing quality improvements require
  preparation of change requires or taking
  corrective actions.
• Any improvements are managed according to
  procedures for Overall Change Control.
• Process adjustments
• Immediate corrective or preventive action as a
  result of Quality Control measurements.

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Testing in software

• Many IT professionals think of testing as a stage
  that comes near the end of IT product development
• Testing should be done during almost every phase
  of the IT product development life cycle

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Types of Tests

• A unit test is done to test each individual
  component (often a program) to ensure it is as
  defect free as possible
• Integration testing occurs between unit and
  system testing to test functionally grouped
  components
• System testing tests the entire system as one
  entity
• User acceptance testing is an independent test
  performed by the end user prior to accepting the
  delivered system

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Improving Information Technology Project Quality

• Several suggestions for improving quality for IT
  projects include
• Leadership that promotes quality
• Understanding the cost of quality
• Focusing on organizational influences and
  workplace factors that affect quality
• Following maturity models (CMM) to improve quality

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Maturity Models

• Maturity models are frameworks for helping
  organization improve their processes and systems
• Software Quality Function Deployment Model
  focuses on defining user requirements and
  planning software projects
• The Software Engineering Institutes Capability
  Maturity Model provides a generic path to process
  improvement for software development
• Several groups are working on project management
  maturity models

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Project Management Maturity Model

• 1. Ad-Hoc The project management process is
  described as disorganized, and occasionally even
  chaotic. The organization has not defined systems
  and processes, and project success depends on
  individual effort. There are chronic cost and
  schedule problems.
• 2. Abbreviated There are some project management
  processes and systems in place to track cost,
  schedule, and scope. Project success is largely
  unpredictable and cost and schedule problems are
  common.
• 3. Organized There are standardized, documented
  project management processes and systems that are
  integrated into the rest of the organization.
  Project success is more predictable, and cost and
  schedule performance is improved.
• 4. Managed Management collects and uses detailed
  measures of the effectiveness of project
  management. Project success is more uniform, and
  cost and schedule performance conforms to plan.
• 5. Adaptive Feedback from the project management
  process and from piloting innovative ideas and
  technologies enables continuous improvement.
  Project success is the norm, and cost and
  schedule performance is continuously improving.

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Summary

• Importance of Project Quality Management
• Project Quality Management Processes
• Quality planning, Quality assurance, Quality
  control
• Compare to Jurans quality trilogy Quality plan,
  Control control and Quality improvement
• Quality Model Malcolm Baldrige Award, CMM
  andISO 9000
• Quality Planning identify customers
  requirements and define critical success factors
• Quality Assurance continuous quality
  improvement, Benchmarking and Quality audits

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Summary (2)

• Quality control tools and techniques gt Pareto
  analysis, statistical sampling, quality control
  charts and testing
• Software test is very key factors
• unit test, Integration testing, System testing,
  User acceptance testing
• ways to improve IT Project Quality
• leadership
• cost of quality
• organizational and workplace factors
• maturity models

Chapter 7