Charpter 6

CHAPTER 6
Quality Management
One of the goals of project management is to meet the expectations
of the stakeholders of the project. Managing the quality of the project
is the function that will allow this to happen. Quality management
will include all the work that is necessary to ensure that each of the
objectives of the project is met. In the latest edition of the Guide to the
ProjectManagement Body of Knowledge, PMI emphasizes that the purpose of
the project is to meet the requirements of the stakeholders. In the past, the
project goal was to meet or exceed the customer’s expectations.
We have discussed methods of controlling the project costs and schedule
in the cost and time management chapters. These controls cover only
two of the sides of the triple constrainttriangle. Quality management controls
the third side of the triangle, scope, as well as provides guidance for and
assurance to meeting the other two constraints of cost and schedule. It is
important to recognize that in modern project management, it is important
to meet the stakeholders’ expectations.
It is also important that the expectations of the stakeholders are not
exceeded. The customercontracts for certain deliverables, and delivering
something that was not asked for can be a waste of time and money. In some
cases delivering more than is asked for can make matters worse.
Quality should not be confused with grade. Quality that is low is always
going to be a problem, while a low grade is not necessarily a bad condition.
A product may be developed and marketed to appeal to thosewho want an
inexpensive product that will have a limited useful life and functionality.
This product may also have a lower cost. Stakeholders should get what they
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pay for. The quality of the item means that it is indeed what it was intended
to be.
The Guide to the PMBOK defines three areas of quality management:quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control. It is important that
a distinction be made between them.
The quality planning function is the process that determines which
quality standards should be used to accomplish the goal of ensuring that the
scope of the project fulfills the stakeholders’ expectations.
The quality assurance function is a process that monitors the overallability of the project to meet the expectations of the stakeholders. The purpose
of the quality assurance function is to provide the confidence that the
project will have the proper controls to be able to meet the standards that
are expected by the stakeholders. The quality assurance function assures that
the quality of the project will be sufficient.
The quality control function is the processthat is used to measure the
specific items that must be monitored to determine that the project will
meet the stakeholders’ expectations.
The philosophy of modern quality management is that mistakes should
be prevented rather than detected. It is much better to create an environment
that prevents mistakes from happening rather than to spend much time and
effort trying to detect problems thatmay have already occurred. ‘‘You can’t
inspect quality into a product’’ is the phrase used to state this idea.
Quality Planning
The quality planning process must accomplish several things if the project is
to be successful. There must be an overall quality policy, or company guidelines,
regarding projects of this type. Generally, this is the common policy
that will be used by all projectsthat the company will accomplish. Each
project and each interrelated project must modify the guidelines and gain
approval on changes that will be required for a particular project.
The result of the quality planning process is the quality plan. This plan
describes how the quality of the project will be assured and the functions
that will be carried out by the project team to accomplish this....