8.

Quality

- Project Quality Management includes the processes and activities of the performing organization
that determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the
needs for which it was Undertaken.

- Project Quality Management works to ensure that the project requirements, including product
requirements, are met and validated.

- Quality is the responsibility of each and everyone in the organization

- Quality comes at a cost

- Optimal quality is reached at the point where the incremental revenue from improvement equals
the incremental cost to secure it

Let's look into three important processes in the project quality management.

First process is quality planning and the key feature of the process is as follows:

- Determine a plan for quality

- A major task is preparation of the quality management plan
- Belongs to planning process group

Project Plan Quality Management is the process 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 plan quality management process is that it provides guidance and direction on
how quality will be managed and validated throughout the project.

Quality planning should be performed in parallel with the other planning processes.

Example: A proposed changes in the deliverables to meet identified quality standards may require
cost or schedule adjustments along with risk analysis.

Second one is quality assurance and the key features are:

- Determine if the project is complying with the organizational as well as project policies and
procedures.
- A major task is conducting regular process audits. Results of the audit are corrective and
preventive actions.
- Belongs to execute process group

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 operational
definitions are used.

- The key benefit of this perform quality assurance process is that it facilitates the improvement of
quality processes.

- Quality assurance seeks to build confidence that a future output or an unfinished output, also
known as work in progress, will be completed in a manner that meets the specified requirements and
expectations.

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- Quality assurance work will fall under the conformance work category in the cost of quality
framework.

Quality audit is the important part of this process.

Third process is quality control and the key features are:

- Measure specific project results against standards

- A major activity is to inspect and verify the project’s product, defect repair, and measuring
whether the quality indicators are improving.
- Belongs to monitor and control process group

Communication
the sender has the responsibility to ensure the receiver correctly understand the message

if part of the project is procured, more formal written communication will be expected

Plan Communications Management

- identify the needs for stakeholder communication
- the who, what, when (frequency), why, where and how of communications needs and the
persons responsible
- time and budget for the resources, escalation path, flow charts, constraints, guideline and
templates
- (Shannon-Weaver model) Sender-Receiver Model: The sender to ensure info is clear, complete
and the recipient correct understands. The recipient to ensure complete message is received (to
acknowledge) and provide feedback/response.
- Effective Listening: feedback, active listening and paralingual (voice expression, nonverbal
elements)
- meetings should facilitate problem solving
- efficient communication: only the required messages
- effective communication: right timing, right format, right medium

Manage Communications
- create, collect, distribute, store, retrieve and dispose project information according to the
Communication Management Plan
- ensures good communications, noises managed, stakeholders may feedback on how to improve
- Performance Reporting: status, progress, variance, trend, earned value reports and forecasts,
summary of changes, risks and issues
- Feedback from stakeholders are to be stored in OPA

Project Risk Management

- change requests that result in corrective or preventive actions do not usually affect project
baselines

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- Prior to baseline, the PM plan can be adjusted without a CR, consulting the change control board,
or addressing a scope creep issue
- Workarounds are determined during which risk management process? Control Risks
- Configuration management plan is The set of procedures developed to control changes
- The specification limits are the voice of the customer. The control limits are the voice of the
process.
- Positive correlation. Positive correlation means that as one variable increases, the other variable
increases
- Curvilinear correlation. A curvilinear correlation starts and ends around the same level, and the
points in between are either higher or lower than the end points.
- Cost of quality is the time and money that you spend to prevent, find, or repair defects
- Communications Management Plan contains the HOW of communications while the Stakeholders
Management Plan contains the WHY of communications
- both plan (plan only)Same content difference between them in communication management
plan confidential information and escalation process and another important point stakeholders
management plan is very sensitive to distribute to any one because stakeholders classification is
included
- Request for Proposal (RFP): Asks for how the work will be accomplished. It is always used with CR
contracts
- Invitation for bidding (IFB): Asks for how much it costs to do a specific work. It is always used with
FP contracts
- Request for Quotation (RFQ): It asks the price of an item, hour, meter, …etc. It is always used with
T&M contracts
- Pareto chart divides your defects into categories, and shows you the percentage of the total
defects each of those categories represents. It’s really useful when you have a limited budget for
Plan Quality Management and want to spend it where it’s most effective.
- Control Quality is where you inspect deliverables for defects, while Quality Assurance is where
you audit the project to make sure the quality activities were performed properly.
- marginal analysis: where the benefits from improving quality equal the costs to achieve that
quality. In this case, if the costs to make improvements does not translate into something the
customer will pay for, then it may not be beneficial to make the improvement
- By definition, the SIPOC diagram is a type of flowchart
- force field analysis addresses pros and cons and awaited format

- The performance measurement baseline (PMB) is an approved scope-schedule-cost plan for the
project work (to use in earned value management), it includes contingency reserve but excludes
management reserves

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- Cost baseline (specific time-phased budget), schedule baseline (-> knows when to spend money),
scope baseline (includes scope statement, WBS, WBS dictionary).
- Configuration management (works with change control management plan), document all change
versions of project deliverables and completed project components
- Configuration Management System (contains the updated deliverable/project specifications and
processes) and Change Control System (contains formal documents for tracking changes)
- Corrective and preventive actions usually don’t affect the baseline, only affect the performance
against the baseline
- variance analysis is NOT a forecast method

Close Project or Phase

 ensure all procurements are closed (in the Close
Procurements Process) before formal closure of the
project/phase
 create the project closure documents
 formal sign off by designated stakeholders/customer
 obtain formal approval to close out the project/phase
(administrative closure)
 obtain approval and deliver the deliverables (maybe with
training)
 finish and archive documentations, lessons learnt and
update to organizational process asset
 if the contract comes with a warranty, make sure that
changes during the project are evaluated against the origin
clauses, ensure alignment of the warranty and changes
 to close a project as neatly and permanently possible
 for multi-phase projects, this process will be performed once
for every phase end and once for the whole project (5 times
for project with 4 phases)
 litigation can be further pursued after the closure

- Validate Scope : need to perform even in case of early termination/cancellation of the project to
save any usable deliverables for other projects