Project Quality Management

Welcome new project managers to another stage in agile project management. The new stage that you will be learning here is project quality management and it might be harder to measure what is quality in a project. You might think of beautiful designs or numerous usable functions that would make the project a success but I think we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. Remember the purpose of project management is to meet or surpass the expectations of stakeholders for a project and that could come in many different ways, and this is where quality is determined. Quality can be defined at this is the surplus of productive hours to create a product or deliverable that will leave your investors stunned.

Project quality management is vague or uncertain compared to the other project management processes because there really is no defined measure other than satisfying the needs of the project. Then the question becomes what defines quality in a project? As a project manager the quality in a project should be based on the customer expectations and requirements and not solely based on the written requirements. The leading cause for projects failing regarding quality is the project team focuses on the written requirements and not really meet other requirements that stakeholders need or require.

CheckList Graphic courtesy of Adobe

Concepts to know in Project Quality Management

To get a better understanding of what project quality management is, we will go over some concepts that is important when you come across this stage in your project management phase. Although, it may seem obvious, you need to take the time to discover what is quality to your customer.

  1. Quality Planning: In the beginning of project management, you would have learned what your project is about and what needs is the purpose for the project, now this planning stage is for you to plan how you can bring the project into fruition and which quality standards you want to set for this project.1

  2. Quality Assurance: This is the part where you build up a system that will help you in approaching problems or concerns that could arise using guidelines, processes, or instructions. This will help bring your services to standards and help make sure that the quality you are bringing to your product is assured.

  3. Quality Control: When monitoring your project you have to make sure that the process and products are in line with the defining values from the beginning of the project. You can’t forget the reason why you have the project, it is for the customer and to ensure the customer expectations are met, you have to make sure that your product is going to meet predefined values or goals.

These are the main concepts that you have to concern yourself with project quality management and it is important to understand so you can produce a project with high quality or consistent high quality for your stakeholders. The following concepts are some specific concepts that are helpful to above listed concepts in planning, assuring, and controlling your project quality.

  1. Quality Standards: When you look at an apple iphone or ipad, you already have an idea of what it is going to look like and how it is going to be presented at a apple store. The quality standards of a project is dependant on such standards with documentations, requirements, and other guidelines that meets either the businesses or governmental basic standards of a product.2

  2. Quality Management: There are tools and techniques that could help you manage how the project will be run by people with their respective roles, responsibilities, and it is similar to quality control except you are overseeing the whole entire project.2

  3. Quality Metrics: Metric is a standard measurement that you use for your project from a quantifiable standpoint or something that you can measure such as time, money, number of attempts, lines of code, etc..2

With these concepts in mind, you will bring a lot of benefits to your success as a project manager and contribute to the moment when your customers or stakeholders are flabbergasted by the high quality products you bring to the table. This can be your downfall if you are only paying attention to the finish line so during this process do not let yourself focus on bringing in a project that exceeds their budget. Once again, the point of the project is for your customer.

Customer Concepts

Customer Focus Graphic courtesy of the Brooks Group

Hopefully you understand at this point that this phase in your project management is heavily reliant on your customer because quality is defined not by your team. Of course, we will help you get the quality of information that you need by introducing some customer centered concepts.

  1. Customer Focus: This is the part where you sit down with your customer and have a lengthy or straight to the point conversation where you discover what the customer wants the product for, how it is going to be used, the requirements or expectations they have from your team. This is a continuous thing that you will need to do throughout your project.3

  2. Continuous Improvement: The fundamental idea behind Agile is continuous improvement and feedback from the customer. When it comes to project quality management, you want to slowly or steadily increase the quality of your project over time and throughout the process of your project.3

Cost Efficient Concepts

Quality can be costly, especially when you are trying to exceed your customers expectations. Cost can range widely from the expected budget if not tracked when it comes to the quality of the product but we can decrease that range to more acceptable terms with the following concepts.3

  1. Prevention over Inspection: This might be a new concept that you might not be used too, but for this side of project management, by creating procedures will help you prevent the issue from appearing versus inspecting for issues after everything is done.3

  2. Cost of Quality: This is the cost for delivering the project and the cost when you are unable to meet the quality standards or expectations of the customer for the project.3

Conclusion

In conclusion, the project quality management is the processes that ensures your project meets customers needs and expectations. It is a plus when it exceeds customers expectations and is just as great when it meets your stakeholders expectations. The concepts that we discussed will help you determine how you can continue producing high quality products when you always go back to your customer and ensure that you meet their expectations. This will decrease the failure of a project and ensure you are on the right track in satisfying your customer.

Resources

  1. “Project Quality Management”forecast ↩

  2. “Information Technology Project Management”SCHWALBE) ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. “chatGPT”openAI ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5