Chapter 7:
Project Quality Management
adopted from PMI’s PMBOK 2000 and
Textbook : Information Technology Project Management
(author : Dr. Kathy Schwalbe)
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Contents
• Importance of Project Quality Management
• Project Quality Management Processes
– Quality planning, Quality assurance, Quality control
• Quality Model: Malcolm Baldridge National
Quality Award (MBNQA), CMM and ISO 9000
• Software test
• Methods to improve IT Project Quality
– leadership
– cost of quality
– organizational and workplace factors
– maturity models
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Quality of Information
Technology Projects
• Many people joke about the poor quality of IT
products (MS window’s joke!!)
• People seem to accept systems being down
occasionally or needing to reboot their PCs
• But quality is very important in many IT projects
• Software quality is the key development in
modern IT industry. MicroSoft has spend 25% of
the R&D in software reliability.
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What Is Project Quality
Management?
• 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
• Project quality management includes those
processes required to ensure that the project
satisfies the needs for which it was undertaken.
• There are 3 processes in Project quality
Management:
– Quality planning
– Quality assurance
– Quality control
planning phase
executing phase
control phase
• Compare to Juran’s quality trilogy: Quality plan,
Control control and Quality improvement
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Modern Quality Management
• Modern quality management
– requires customer satisfaction
– prefers prevention to inspection
– recognizes management responsibility for
quality
• Noteworthy quality experts include
Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa,
Taguchi, and Feigenbaum
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Quality Experts
• Deming was famous for his work in rebuilding Japan and
his 14 points
• Juran wrote the Quality Control Handbook and 10 steps to
quality improvement
• Crosby wrote Quality is Free and suggested that
organizations strive for zero defects
• Ishikawa developed the concept of quality circles and
using fishbone diagrams
• Taguchi developed methods for optimizing the process of
engineering experimentation
• Feigenbaum developed the concept of total quality control
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Quality Planning
• 11th of 21 of planning phase process
• It is important to design in quality and communicate
important factors that directly contribute to meeting the
customer’s requirements
– know what customer want is the key in quality
– but it is quite difficult to get this information
– Design of experiments helps identify which variable have the
most influence on the overall outcome of a process
• Many scope aspects of IT projects affect quality like
functionality, features, system outputs, performance,
reliability, and maintainability
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Inputs to Quality Planning
• Quality policy
– Defined by the ISO as the “overall intentions and
direction of an organization with regard to quality as
formally expressed by top management.”
– The performing organization’s quality policy can
serve as the policy for the project.
• Scope statement
– provides a documented basis for making future project
decisions and for confirming or developing common
understanding of project scope among stakeholders.
– The scope statement describes major product
deliverables and objectives that define the project.
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Inputs to Quality Planning (2)
• Project description
– documents the characteristics of the product or service
that the project was undertaken to create. It details
various technical issues or concerns that may impact
Quality Planning.
• Standards and regulations
– Inputs from authorities outside the performing
organization may impact Quality Planning.
• Other process outputs
– Outputs from the other PM knowledge areas may
impact Quality Planning.
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Tools & techniques
• Benefit/cost analysis
– involves estimating tangible and intangible benefits and costs of
meeting quality requirements and then using financial measures
to assess the relative desirability of the identified alternatives.
• Benchmarking
– compares actual or planned project practices to other projects to
generate ideas for improvement and to provide a standard against
which to measure performance.
• Flowcharting
– involves creating any diagram detailing how elements of a
system relate to one another. Flowcharting techniques
commonly used in quality management includes: a) causeand
effect diagrams; b) process flow charts.
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Tools & techniques (2)
• Design of experiments
– An analytical technique that helps identify with
variables have the most influence on the overall
outcome and helps determine an optimal solution from
a relatively limited number of cases.
• Cost of quality
– The financial cost incurred to ensure quality. These
are associated preventing, detecting, and correcting
defects.
– Cost of quality includes (known as PAF cost)
• preventive costs
• appraisal costs
• failure costs (internal and external)
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Outputs from Quality Planning
•
Quality management plan
– Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the PM team implements
the quality policy. For the project, it covers a) quality control; b) quality
assurance; c) quality improvement.
•
Operational definitions
– Also called metrics. They describe the specifics of what something is
(such as work procedure or operation) and how the Quality Control
process measures it.
– For example, convert a general objective of “increase success rate” to
“increase success rate by 15% in 2 months” to make it specific.
•
Checklists
– verify required steps have been performed or followed.
•
Inputs to other processes
– provides the feedback loops to other processes to determine if Quality
Planning can identify a need for further activity in anther knowledge
area.
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Quality Assurance
• 2nd of 7 of executing phase process
• Quality assurance includes all the activities
related to satisfying the relevant quality standards
for a project
• Another goal of quality assurance is continuous
quality improvement
– Benchmarking can be used to generate ideas for
quality improvements
– Quality audits help identify lessons learned that can
improve performance on current or future projects
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Inputs to Quality Assurance
• Quality management plan
– Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the PM
team implements the quality policy.
– For the project, it covers a) quality control; b) quality
assurance; c) quality improvement.
• Results of quality control measurements
– records of quality testing and measurements,
presented in a format useful for comparison and
analysis
• Operational definitions (also called metrics)
– describe an element and how the element is measured
by the Quality Control process.
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Tools & techniques
• Quality planning tools and techniques
– includes benefit/cost analysis, benchmarking, flow
charting, and Design of Experiments.
• Quality audits
– A structured review of other QM activities to identify
the lessons learned that can improve the performance
of this project and other projects in the organization.
– Such audits are an independent review of quality
management activities to a performance standard.
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Outputs from Quality Assurance
• Quality improvements
– Actions that increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of the project and provide added
benefits to stakeholders.
– Implementing them usually involves preparing
change requests or taking corrective action in
accord with procedures for overall change
control.
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Quality Control
• 6th of 8 controlling phase process
• determine the correctiveness of the work results
•
– involves monitoring specific project results to determine if they
comply with relevant quality standards
identify ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance
• The main outputs of quality control process are
– acceptance decisions
– rework
– process adjustments
• Some tools and techniques include
–
–
–
–
pareto analysis
statistical sampling
quality control charts
testing
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Inputs to Quality Control
• Work results
– The results of activities performed to accomplish the project.
• Quality management plan
– Part of the project plan. QMP describes how the PM team
implements the quality policy. For the project, it covers a) quality
control; b) quality assurance; c) quality improvement.
• Operational definitions
– describe an element and how the element is measured by the
Quality Control process.
• Checklists
– used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed.
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Tools & techniques
• Inspection
– activities such as measuring, examining, and testing undertaken
to determine if results conform to requirements. It is also
reference to reviews, product reviews, audits, and walkthrough.
• Control charts
– graphically display the results of a process. It helps to verify the
process is statistically in control
• Pareto diagrams
– histograms, ordered by frequency of occurrence, that show how
many results were generated by type or category of identified
cause. The ranking of categories can be used to guide corrective
action.
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Tools & techniques (2)
• Statistical sampling
– chose part of a population of interest for inspection. Appropriate
sampling can often reduce the cost of quality control.
• Flowcharting
– A graphical method of analysis that helps determine how and
where quality problems occur. It can help to develop approaches
to resolving the problems.
• Trend analysis
– use mathematical techniques to forecast future outcomes based
on historical results.
– technical performance can be monitor to determine how many
defects or errors have identified and corrected, it is also possible
to monitor cost & schedule performance.
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Outputs to to Quality Control
• Rework
– any action taken to bring a defective or NC
item into compliance with required
• Acceptance decisions
– the results of inspecting items delivered.
• Completed checklists
– These documents are part of the project.
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Outputs to to Quality Control (2)
• Quality improvements
– outputs form the related process of quality assurance (QA). They
represent actions intended to increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of the project.
– They provide added benefits to stakeholders. Implementing
quality improvements require preparation of change requires or
taking corrective actions.
– Any improvements are managed according to procedures for
Overall Change Control.
• Process adjustments
– Immediate corrective or preventive action as a result of Quality
Control measurements.
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Testing in software
• Many IT professionals think of testing as a
stage that comes near the end of IT product
development
• Testing should be done during almost
every phase of the IT product development
life cycle
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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
• User acceptance testing is an independent test
performed by the end user prior to accepting the
delivered system
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