Plan quality

Introduction

It is the process of Identifying quality standards and/or requirements for the project and the product, and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance

So from the definition the planning process is concerned with 2 parts

1. Targeting the standards or the requirements
   
2. Devising a plan to meet and satisfy those requirements
   

This process has 2 main outputs

1. Quality management plan which describe how the quality policy will be implemented by the PM team during the course of project
   
2. Process improvement plan which documenting the actions needed to analyze the processes to ultimately increase the customer value
   

Contract may have quality provisions that should be considered when developing QM plan

Inputs

Scope baseline

Stakeholders register

Schedule base line

Cost performance base line

Risk register

EEF (standards & regulations)

OPA (quality policy)

Standards & regulation VS policy as inputs

The project manager should consider any standards, regulations and policies that exist concerning the work of the project when writing the QM plan

If possible it is good idea to include info from all of them in the QM plan, if not at least you must reference them and say where you can find them.

Standards and regulations are part of EEF while policies are part of OPA.

It is the PM responsibility to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of and understand all of them.

Standards

Is something that approved by recognized body and that employs rules, guidelines and characteristics that should be followed.

Are not legally mandatory, but it is really a good idea to follow them.

Many organizations or industries have standards in place that are proven best practice.

Disregarding accepted standards can have significant consequences.

Regulations

Is mandatory and always imposed by governments or institutions.

Some organizations have its own regulations.

Requires strict adherence particularly in the case of government-imposed regulations, or stiff penalties and fines could result and may be even jail time if the offensive is serious enough

Policies

It is guidelines published by the executive management that describe the company quality policies that should be adopted for projects the company undertakes

If no policies it is up to PM to adopt one for the project

Tools and techniques (what are tools or techniques that we are in need for, or could help, to determine how will we achieve product and project quality)

Cost benefit analysis;

Considering the benefits versus the costs of meeting the quality requirements, note that quality benefits are customer satisfaction, high the productivity, less rework and lower costs

Cost of quality (COQ);

Includes all the costs incurred over the life of the product

Screen clipping taken: 6/15/2009, 3:45 PM

Control charts;

Used to determine whether or not a process is stable or has a predictable performance. Here we must know the following

• The upper and lower specification limit which are based on the contract requirements and represent maximum and minimum values allowed thus might be penalties associated with exceeding those limits.
  
• The upper and lower control limit which are set by the PM and/or appropriate stakeholders and represent the point at which there is need for corrective actions b4 exceeding the specifications limit. The control limit in repetitive processes is +/- 3σ, a process is considered out of control when exceeding the control limit or if 7 consecutive points above or below the mean
  
• Mean which represent the goal
  

  
  

Control charts could be used to monitor various types of output variables.

Although they are commonly used to track repetitive activities required for producing manufactured lots, the might be used to monitor

• Schedule and cost variances
  
• Volume
  
• Frequency of scope changes
  
• Management results to help determining if the managements processes are in control
  

Screen clipping taken: 6/15/2009, 4:32 PM

Benchmark

Look at the past project to determine ideas for improvement on the current project and to provide a basis to use in measurement of quality performance

Design of experiments (DOE)

Statistical method, for identifying which factors may influence specific variables of a product or process.

For example, a software application has performance, functionality, reliability and usability variables may be influenced by a lot of factors relatively, you use the DOE to determine the number and the type of tests that should be performed and their impact on the cost of quality.

Q: When to use DOE?

• Our first reason from the previous should be …. When we have a situation many variable factors, one or more of them could cause problems, and also when variable factors may be interaction to cause problem
  
• When testing a solution to ensure there is no side effect, like the automotive designers do to determine which combination of suspension and tires will produce the most desirable ride characteristic at reasonable cost
  
• When there are not time or money to try every combination of variables. This point means the DOE give you the ability to put specific variable, combination of some of them or all of them into test which gives you the advantage of time and money
  

  
  

Conclusion; DOE equips us with statistical framework for systematically changing all the important factors, rather than changing the factors one at a time.

Statistical sampling

It is all about choosing part of a population of interest for inspection. From this definition we devise that there is a substantial body of knowledge on statistical sampling thus the PM should be familiar with a variety of sampling techniques, visit this URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sampling_techniques

For sure without saying in your quality management plan you should include the size and frequency of the sample, so the cost of quality will include the cost of test and expected scrap etc…

Flowcharting

It is a graphical representation of a process showing the relationships among process steps.

There are many styles but all styles share the following

All of them show the process activities

Where the decision points are

The order of processing

So the process flowcharting helps the project team

Anticipating where the quality problems might occur. So the awareness of potential problems can result in the development of test procedures or approaches for dealing with them

Proprietary quality management methodologies

There are a lot of these methodologies like six sigma, lean six sigma, CMMI and etc…

Additional tools

• Brainstorming
  
• Affinity diagrams; used to organize ideas and data for review and analysis visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_diagram
  
• Force field analysis; PMBOK 4 said the following; diagrams of the forces for and against change. Let's say simply the following
  
  • We have goal to achieve
    
  • Forces = factors
    
  • We have factors driving forward toward the goal (helping forces) and we have factors blocking driving toward the goal (hindering forces)
    
  • This tools is helpful in the field of process management
    
• Nominal group technique; to allow idea to be brainstormed in small groups then to be reviewed by a larger group
  
• Matrix diagrams; which include 2, 3 or 4 groups of information and show relationships between factors, causes and objectives. That represented in rows and columns and the intersection cells could be filled with the information that describe the nature of the relationship visit http://www.asq.org/learn-about-quality/new-management-planning-tools/overview/matrix-diagram.html
  
• Prioritization matrices; provide a way for ranking diverse set of problems and/or issues by their importance (most commonly used during brainstorming). Used in process improvement to help prioritizing decisions. Visit http://www.micquality.com/six_sigma_glossary/prioritization_matrices.htm
  

Outputs

• Quality management plan;
  
  • Describe how the PM team will implement the organization's quality policy
    
  • Provides input to the overall project management plan and include
    
    • Quality control
      
    • Quality assurance
      
    • Continuous process improvement approaches for the project
      
  • Should be reviewed early in the project to ensure that the decisions are based on accurate information so we gain cost reduction, prevent schedule overrun due to rework
    

    
    

• Quality metrics;
  
  • Know as operational definition, describes in very specific terms, a project or product attributes and how QC process will measure it
    
  • Measurement is actual value
    
  • Quality matrices used in QA and QC processes
    
  • Metrics like on-time performance, budget control, defect frequency, failure rate, availability, reliability and test coverage
    
    • Example 1; you are managing a project of opening new restaurant on July next year, one of your deliverables is the procurement of flatware for 500 place settings, the operational definitions here may include
      
      • Delivery on May,15 for the all 500 or
        
      • Delivery for 250 on May,15 and the rest on May,31
        
    • Example 2; may be staying in +/- 10% of the budget to measure the cost of every deliverable
      

    
    

• Quality checklists;
  
  • stretchered tool, usually component specific, used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed
    
  • Might be simple or complex based of project requirements and practices
    
  • Many organizations have it own checklists to ensure consistency of preformed tasks
    
  • There are a lot of domains or application areas have its own checklist which imposed on them by professional associations or commercial service providers
    
  • Used in quality control process
    

    
    

• Process improvement plan;
  
  • The steps for analyzing processes to identify activities which enhance their value, areas to consider
    
    • Process boundaries; the purpose of the process, its start and end, inputs, outputs, required data, owner and its stakeholders
      
    • Process configuration; how and when it interacts with other processes
      
    • Process metrics; to allow efficient analysis for the process
      
    • Targets for improved performance; to guide the improvement activities
      

    
    

• Project documents updates;
  
  • Stakeholders register
    
  • Responsibility assignment matrix