Friday, October 23, 2009

Chapter 8: Project Quality Management

Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. There are three processes for project quality management such as quality planning, quality assurance and quality control.

Quality planning includes identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and how to satisfy those standards. The main outputs of this process are a quality management plan, quality metrics, quality checklists, a process improvement plan, a quality baseline, and updates to the project management plan.

Quality assurance involves periodically evaluating overall project performance to ensure that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards. The main outputs of this process are requested changes, recommended corrective actions, and updates to organization process assets and the project management plan.

Quality control involves monitoring specific project results to ensure that they comply with the relevant quality standards while identifying ways to improve overall quality. The main outputs of this process include quality control measurement, validated and recommended defect repair, recommended corrective and preventive actions, requested changes, validated deliverables, and updates to the quality baseline, organization process assets, and the project management plan.

There are several tools for quality control like cause-and-effect diagrams (fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams) to trace complaints about quality problems back to the responsible production operations. Control Chart – a graphic display of data that illustrate the results of a process over time. Run chart displays the history and pattern of variation of a process over time. Scatter diagram helps to show if there is a relationship between two variables. Histogram - a bar graph of a distribution of variables. Pareto Chart - a histogram that can help you identify and prioritize problem areas. Flowcharts are graphic displays of the logic and flow of process that help to analyze how problems occur and how processes can be improved.

The technique for quality control like statistical sampling that involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection. Six Sigma is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing. Testing needs to be done during almost every phase of the systems development life cycle, not just before the organization ships or hands over a product to the customer.

There is modern quality management that requires customer satisfaction, prefers prevention to inspection, and recognizes management responsibility for quality. The major contributions made by Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, Feigenbaum, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and ISO standards.

There are the ways to improve information technology project quality such as through leadership, the cost of quality, organizational influences, workplace factors, and quality, expectations and cultural differences in quality, and maturity models.

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