INFS 724 Project and Change Management

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INFS 724 Project and Change Management

• Amit V. Deokar, Ph.D.

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Chapter 8

• Project Quality Management

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Outline

• What is project quality management? Why?
• Quality planning
• Perform quality assurance
• Perform quality control
• Tools and techniques
• Pareto analysis
• Statistical sampling
• Six Sigma
• Control charts
• Testing
• Ishikawa and the Fishbone diagram
• Using software for project quality management

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What is project quality management? Why?
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Examples of quality problems related to IT

• In July 2004 newspapers reported that a new
  government welfare management system in Canada
  costing several hundred million dollars was
  unable to handle a simple benefits rate increase
  after being put into live operation. Reportedly
  the original contract allowed for only 6 weeks of
  acceptance testing and the system was never
  tested for its ability to handle a rate increase.
  
• A major U.S. retailer was reportedly hit with a
  large government fine in October of 2003 due to
  web site errors that enabled customers to view
  one another customers' online orders.
• According to news reports in April of 2004, a
  software bug was determined to be a major
  contributor to the 2003 Northeast blackout, the
  worst power system failure in North American
  history. The failure involved loss of electrical
  power to 50 million customers, forced shutdown of
  100 power plants, and economic losses estimated
  at 6 billion. The bug was reportedly in one
  utility company's vendor-supplied power
  monitoring and management system, which was
  unable to correctly handle and report on an
  unusual confluence of initially localized events.
  The error was found and corrected after examining
  millions of lines of code.
• See other examples at http//www.softwareqatest.co
  m/qatfaq1.htmlFAQ1_3

• In July 2004 newspapers reported that a new
  government welfare management system in Canada
  costing several hundred million dollars was
  unable to handle a simple benefits rate increase
  after being put into live operation. Reportedly
  the original contract allowed for only 6 weeks of
  acceptance testing and the system was never
  tested for its ability to handle a rate increase.
  
• A major U.S. retailer was reportedly hit with a
  large government fine in October of 2003 due to
  web site errors that enabled customers to view
  one another customers' online orders.
• According to news reports in April of 2004, a
  software bug was determined to be a major
  contributor to the 2003 Northeast blackout, the
  worst power system failure in North American
  history. The failure involved loss of electrical
  power to 50 million customers, forced shutdown of
  100 power plants, and economic losses estimated
  at 6 billion. The bug was reportedly in one
  utility company's vendor-supplied power
  monitoring and management system, which was
  unable to correctly handle and report on an
  unusual confluence of initially localized events.
  The error was found and corrected after examining
  millions of lines of code.
• See other examples at http//www.softwareqatest.co
  m/qatfaq1.htmlFAQ1_3

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Costs Per Hour of Downtime Caused by Software
Defects
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The Cost of Quality

• The cost of quality is
• the cost of conformance or delivering products
  that meet requirements and fitness for use
• the cost of nonconformance or taking
  responsibility for failures or not meeting
  quality expectations

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Five Cost Categories Related to Quality

• Conformance cost
• Prevention cost the cost of planning and
  executing a project so it is error-free or within
  an acceptable error range
• Appraisal cost the cost of evaluating processes
  and their outputs to ensure quality
• Measurement and test equipment costs capital
  cost of equipment used to perform prevention and
  appraisal activities
• Nonconformance
• Internal failure cost cost incurred to correct
  an identified defect before the customer receives
  the product
• External failure cost cost that relates to all
  errors not detected and corrected before delivery
  to the customer

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What Is Quality?

• Quality is a subjective term
• 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

• Quality planning identifying which quality
  standards are relevant to the project and how to
  satisfy them
• Perform quality assurance applying the planned,
  systematic quality activities to ensure that the
  project employs all processes needed to meet
  requirements
• Perform quality control monitoring specific
  project results to ensure that they comply with
  the relevant quality standards while identifying
  ways to improve overall quality

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Quality planning
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Quality Planning

• Quality is planned and not inspected
• Quality planning involves identifying which
  quality standards are relevant to the project and
  how to satisfy them
• Sometimes referred to as quality assurance
• Many scope aspects of IT projects affect quality
  like functionality, features, system outputs,
  performance, reliability, and maintainability

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Quality management plan

• Sometimes referred to as Quality Assurance Plan
• It describes the project quality system the
  organizational structure, responsibilities,
  procedures, processes, and resources needed to
  implement quality management (ISO 9000)
• Examples
• Software Quality Assurance Plan Example
• Quality Assurance Plan Template 1
• Quality Assurance Plan Template 2

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Perform quality assurance
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Perform Quality Assurance

• It is the application of all planned and
  systematic activities to ensure that the project
  will employ all processes needed to meet
  requirements
• Input
• Quality management plan
• Quality metrics
• Quality control measurements
• Tools
• Quality planning and control tools and techniques
  (to be discussed)
• Quality audits
• Process analysis
• Output Requested changes and corrective actions

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Quality audits

• It is a structured review of other quality
  management activities.
• The objective is to identify lessons learned that
  can improve the performance of the project
• In essence, quality audits are meta quality
  management activities

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Perform quality control
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Quality Control

• It involves monitoring specific project results
  to determine if they comply with relevant quality
  standards.
• Inputs
• Quality management plan
• Quality metrics
• Deliverables
• The main outputs of quality control are
• Validated defect repair
• Validated deliverables
• Some tools and techniques include
• Inspection
• Pareto analysis
• statistical sampling
• quality control charts

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Tools and techniques

• Pareto Analysis

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Pareto Analysis

• Pareto analysis involves identifying the vital
  few contributors that account for the most
  quality problems in a system
• Also called the 80-20 rule, meaning that 80 of
  problems are often due to 20 of the causes
• Pareto diagrams are bar graphs used to arrange
  information in such a way that priorities for
  process improvement can be established.

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Sample Pareto Diagram
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Steps for creating Pareto diagrams

• Collect data on defects (quality problems)
• Order by frequency of occurrence
• Plot as a histogram

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Tools and techniques

• Statistical sampling

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Statistical Sampling and Standard Deviation

• Statistical sampling involves choosing part of a
  population of interest for inspection
• The size of a sample depends on how
  representative you want the sample to be
• Sample size formula
• Sample size .25 X (certainty Factor/acceptable
  error)2

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Commonly Used Certainty Factors
95 certainty Sample size 0.25 X (1.960/.05) 2
384 90 certainty Sample size 0.25 X
(1.645/.10)2 68 80 certainty Sample size
0.25 X (1.281/.20)2 10
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Standard Deviation

• A small standard deviation means that data
  cluster closely around the middle of a
  distribution and there is little variability
  among the data
• A normal distribution is a bell-shaped curve that
  is symmetrical about the mean or average value of
  a population

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Normal Distribution and Standard Deviation
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Tools and techniques

• Statistical process control

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Quality Control Charts and the Seven Run Rule

• A control chart is a graphic display of data that
  illustrates the results of a process over time.
  It helps prevent defects and allows you to
  determine whether a process is in control or out
  of control
• The seven run rule states that if seven data
  points in a row are all below the mean, above the
  mean, or increasing or decreasing, then the
  process needs to be examined for non-random
  problems

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Sample Quality Control Chart
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Statistical process control (SPC)

• SPC provides easy to use graphical tools for
  visualizing process performance
• Underlying premise all characteristics of
  process and products display variation when
  measured over time.
• Total variation common variation assignable
  cause variation

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SPC Process stability versus capability

• A stable process is a predictable in control
  process where the causes for all variations are
  attributed to common (natural) causes.
• A capable process is a process capable of
  satisfying the requirements of the customer.

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SPC Stable and capable process
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An SPC example Stable but NOT capable process
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A case study Scenario 1
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A case study Scenario 2
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Tools and techniques

• Inspection and Testing

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Inspection and testing - Defined

• Inspection Analyzes and checks system
  representations such as requirement documents,
  design diagrams, and program source code
• Testing Involves executing an implementation of
  the software with test data and examining the
  outputs and its operational behavior

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Inspection effectiveness

• Inspections find 60-90 of defects in a program
• Inspections have been found to produce net
  schedule savings of 10 30
• In one study, each hour spent on inspection
  avoided on average 33 hours of maintenance
• Code reading detected about twice as many defects
  per hour of effort as testing

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Testing effectiveness

• Unit testing finds anywhere from 10 to 50 of
  defects in a program
• System testing finds from 20 to 60 of defects
• Together, their defect detection rate is lt 60

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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
• Stress testing test the system for emergent
  properties such as performance and reliability
• User acceptance testing is an independent test
  performed by the end user prior to accepting the
  delivered system

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Testing Tasks in the Software Development Life
Cycle
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Tools and techniques

• Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram

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Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram

• The Cause and Effect diagram also known as the
  "fishbone" or "Ishikawa" diagram after its
  creator Kaoru Ishikawa is used to systematically
  list all the different causes that can be
  attributed to a specific problem (or effect).
• It helps identify, sort, and display possible
  causes of a specific problem or quality
  characteristic
• It can help identify the reasons why a process
  goes out of control.

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Sample Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram
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Basic layout of cause-and-effect diagrams
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Steps for creating cause-effect diagram

• Identify and clearly define the outcome or EFFECT
  to be analyzed
• Draw the SPINE and create the EFFECT box

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Steps for creating cause-effect diagram (cont.)

• Identify the main CAUSES contributing to the
  effect being studied. These are the labels for
  the major branches of your diagram and become
  categories under which to list the many causes
  related to those categories. Examples of
  categories
• 3Ms and P - methods, materials, machinery, and
  people
• 4Ps - policies, procedures, people, and plant
• Environment - a potentially significant fifth
  category

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Steps for creating cause-effect diagram (cont.)

• For each major branch, identify other specific
  factors which may be the CAUSES of the EFFECT

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Steps for creating cause-effect diagram (cont.)

• Identify increasingly more detailed levels of
  causes and continue organizing them under related
  causes or categories. You can do this by asking a
  series of why questions.
• Analyze the diagram

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Using Software to Assist in Project Quality
Management

• Spreadsheet and charting software helps create
  Pareto diagrams, Fishbone diagrams, etc.
• Statistical software packages help perform
  statistical analysis
• Specialized software products help manage Six
  Sigma projects or create quality control charts
• Project management software helps create Gantt
  charts and other tools to help plan and track
  work related to quality management