What is Project Quality Management?

Project quality management is a process that ensures that all the activities related to the project are efficient and effective for the project objectives and project performance. Quality management in project management includes creating and following policies and procedures to ensure that a project meets the defined needs it was intended to meet from the customer’s perspective.

Quality Management in Project Management:

Project Quality Management is a multifaceted discipline within project management that is focused on fulfilling quality requirements and attaining customer satisfaction. Quality management in project management encompasses a set of planned and systematic activities implemented within the project’s quality system to ensure that the project will meet or exceed stakeholder expectations. These activities cover quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control.

“Project Quality Management integrates the organization’s quality management system into the project environment, utilizing established policies and procedures. It rigorously applies these standards to meet and confirm the project’s specified requirements, including those of the product. Additionally, it underpins the enduring effort to enhance processes, which the performing organization undertakes to pursue perpetual improvement.”

What is Project Quality Management!

What is Project Quality?

Project Quality is defined as the degree to which a project’s outputs and outcomes meet the expectations and requirements of its stakeholders. It is inherently about meeting the agreed-upon standards and specifications that have been delineated at the inception of the project. The ultimate aim of project quality is to deliver a project that performs as intended and creates value, without causing excess cost or delay due to rework.

Key Benefits of Project Quality Management:

Understanding the benefits of project quality management is akin to realizing the return on investment of a project’s commitment to excellence. It elevates the overall project and offers a multitude of advantages that include improved project outcomes, higher customer satisfaction levels, and an unassailable reputation for delivering projects that stand the test of time.

1. Improved Project Outcomes

Effective quality management leads to tangible improvements in a project’s outcomes. By preventing defects at the onset, quality management ensures that the project’s deliverables are reliable and achieve their intended purpose. This translates to less rework, lower costs, and shorter schedules, ultimately delivering value to all involved.

2. Increased Customer Satisfaction

The litmus test for any project’s success is customer satisfaction, and quality management plays a paramount role in achieving this satisfaction. Meeting or exceeding customer expectations solidifies their trust and fosters an ongoing relationship that can be leveraged for future endeavors.

3. Enhanced Reputation

Project management is a public-facing profession, and a project’s reputation often precedes it. An emphasis on quality creates a reputation for dependability and excellence. Such a reputation can lead to new opportunities and sustain an organization’s competitive edge in the marketplace.

project quality management

Grade VS. Quality – Definitions and Differences:

1. QUALITY:

During project initiation, quality is conformance to the requirements. It includes the product and the customer’s requirements. According to the PMP, quality management in project management is defined as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills the requirements.”

2. GRADE:

Many people get confused with quality and grade, and assume that they are similar; however, they are not the same. There is a big difference between Quality and Grade. A product can be a high-grade (high-end) or a low-grade (low-end). It is perfectly acceptable for a product to be a low grade as long as it fulfills its stated requirements.

Accuracy and Precision in Quality Management:

The project management team should determine the appropriate levels of accuracy and precision for use in the quality management plan.

1. ACCURACY:

Accuracy is an assessment of correctness. Accuracy means the measured values are very close to the true value. If somebody says that measurements are accurate, then you should know that those measurements are very near the target or true value. Scatter doesn’t have any significant role here. The scatter of accurate measurements may, or may not be dense.

2. PRECISION:

Precision is a measure of exactness. In project quality management, it means the values of repeated measurements are clustered and have little scatter. Precision doesn’t mean that the measurements are close to the target value – it means that the measurements are close to one another. They may or may not be near the target value. Precision is about how the measured values are close to one another. If the scatter is lesser, measurements are said to have high precision.

project quality

What are the Elements of Project Quality Management?

There are three project quality management techniques, and they are performed in the following 3 steps:

1. Plan Quality Management:

Plan quality is the project quality management technique of identifying quality requirements and/or standards for the project and its deliverables and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance with relevant quality requirements. The key benefit of this project quality management process is that it provides guidance and direction on how quality will be managed and validated throughout the project, and it is one of the key roles and responsibilities of a project manager.

2. Perform Quality Assurance:

Perform Quality Assurance is the process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements to ensure that appropriate quality standards and project definitions are used. The key benefit of this process is that it facilitates the improvement of project quality management processes.

3. Control Quality in Project Management:

Control Quality is the process of monitoring and recording results of executing quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes. The key benefits of this process of quality management include:

  1. Identifying the causes of poor process or product quality and recommending and/or taking action to eliminate them; and
  2. Validating that project deliverables and work meet the requirements specified by key stakeholders necessary for final acceptance.
quality management in project management

7 Basic Project Quality Management Tools:

“Project quality management tools and techniques are most helpful in identifying problems with quality. Kaoru Ishikawa developed these seven tools, and they are suitable for people with little formal training in statistics. They can be used to solve the vast majority of quality-related issues.”

Project Quality Management Tools!

1. Cause-and-Effect diagrams:

Cause and Effect diagram is also known as fishbone diagrams or as Ishikawa diagrams. This project quality management tool helps you explore the causes that might be producing the problem. You need to know the real cause of the problem before you start thinking about any possible solution. The fishbone diagram gives you a comprehensive list of possible causes to identify the root cause of the problem. This diagram uses a brainstorming technique to collect the causes and come up with a kind of mind map that shows you all identified causes graphically.

2. Flow Charts:

A flowchart graphically depicts the relationships between and among steps. They typically show activities, decision points, and the flow or order of steps in a process. Flowcharts may prove useful in understanding and estimating the cost of quality in a process. This is obtained by using the workflow branching logic and associated relative frequencies to estimate the expected monetary value for the conformance and non-conformance work required to deliver the expected conforming output.

3. Check Sheets:

Check Sheets are also known as Tally Sheets and may be used as a checklist when gathering data. Checksheets are used to organize facts in a manner that will facilitate the effective collection of useful data about a potential quality problem. In project quality management, they are especially useful for gathering attribute data while performing inspections to identify defects. For example, data about the frequencies or consequences of defects collected in check sheets are often displayed using Pareto diagrams.

4. Control Charts:

Control charts are a fundamental project quality management tool that aids in monitoring process stability over time. They graphically represent the variances within a process, utilizing the mean as the center line and the upper and lower control limits as thresholds for acceptable variation. These control limits, set based on standard deviation, help to distinguish between normal process fluctuations and those requiring corrective action. If the process data shows that 99.73% of the sample falls within these control limits, the process is deemed to be in control, aligning with the project’s quality objectives.

5. Pareto Chart:

Pareto charts are used to identify and prioritize problems to be solved. They are histograms aided by the 80/20 rule introduced by Vilfredo Pareto. The 80/20 rule as it applies to quality says that a small number of causes (20 percent) create the majority of the problems (80 percent). His theory is that you get the most benefit if you spend the majority of your time fixing the most important problems. Pareto charts are displayed as histograms that rank-order the most important factors—such as delays, costs, and defects, for example—by their frequency over time.

6. Histograms:

A histogram is a special form of bar chart and is used to describe the central tendency, dispersion, and shape of a statistical distribution. A histogram is a bar graph that shows frequency data. Histograms provide the easiest way to evaluate the distribution of data. Histograms can be used to determine the distribution of errors.

7. Scatter diagrams:

Scatter diagrams in project quality management use two variables, one is called an independent variable (input), and the other is called a dependent variable (output). Scatter diagrams display the relationship between these two elements as points on a graph. This relationship is typically analyzed to prove or disprove cause-and-effect relationships. As an example, maybe your scatter diagram plots the ability of your employees to perform a certain task.

  • The length of time (in months) they have performed this task is plotted as the independent variable on the X-axis.
  • The accuracy they achieve in performing this task is expressed as a score (the dependent variable) plotted on the Y-axis.

The scatter diagram can then help you determine whether cause-and-effect (in this case, increased experience over time versus accuracy) can be proved.

Leveraging Forecast for Superior Project Quality Control:

Forecast is an innovative project quality management tool that can significantly enhance the management of your project’s quality. Whether you have a project management PhD, a diploma of project management, or you’re a certified project manager, forecast offers advanced AI-driven capabilities to assist in planning, executing, and analyzing all aspects of project quality. It streamlines processes and provides insightful analytics, ensuring that quality objectives are not only set with precision but are also achieved effectively. By leveraging forecasts, project managers can facilitate continuous improvement and maintain control over project quality with greater ease and accuracy, ultimately leading to successful project delivery that aligns with the highest standards.