TOPIC 2PROJECT QUALITY PLANNING
Project Quality Planning
This is the process of identifying which quality products are relevant to the project and how to satisfy them.
Quality planning is to focus on taking all of the information available to at the beginning of the project and figuring out how it will measure quality and prevent defects
Importance of quality planning
1. Sets the Standards
Quality planning determines the scope of what‟s going to be measured, what metrics will determine whether the project is successful, and how those will be satisfied, from beginning to end.
Quality assurance systems should be defined and implemented, whether that consists of audits, product testing, peer review or other measures. In addition, stakeholder expectations should be documented to ensure there are no surprises later. Without this, a project can be derailed if there are different interpretations of how and what determines acceptable
2. SMART Quality Planning Process
Except for very short-term projects, quality plans should include benchmarks. These points of reference identify the progress of a project against expectations generated from previous projects, industry standards or other measurements, and measure progress periodically from the initial development stages to the final product.
3. Delegates Responsibility
Quality assurance in project management should detail not only what the benchmarks are, but who‟s responsible for meeting them and which stakeholder has the authority to confirm standards are being met. This accountability helps mitigate the risks that a project won‟t satisfy the client, finish on budget or stick to the schedule. A quality checklist that stays with the project manager can be used to serve as a reference. This helps lessen the risk of unwelcome surprises later on in the project.
Quality management plan
The quality management plan “is a component of the project management plan that describes how applicable policies, procedures, and guidelines will be implemented to achieve the quality objectives. It describes the activities and resources necessary for the project management team to achieve the quality
objectives set for the project.
The plan may include but not be limited to:
1. Approach to quality management
The deliverables (i.e., the unique and verifiable products, services, or results) and processes that will be reviewed
How the quality requirements will be defined for the deliverables and the processes.
2. Roles and responsibilities
When and how you will manage quality (i.e., make sure the standards and processes are present)
When and how you will control quality (i.e., how the team will evaluate the deliverables)
How defects will be prevented and corrected
3. Definitions
The Quality Management Plan is an integral part of any project management plan. The purpose of the Quality Management Plan is to describe how quality will be managed throughout the lifecycle of the project. It also includes the processes and procedures for ensuring quality planning, assurance, and control are all conducted. All stakeholders should be familiar with how quality will be
planned, assured, and controlled.
The purpose of this plan is to:
Ensure quality is planned
Define how quality will be managed
Define quality assurance activities
Define quality control activities
Define acceptable quality standards
Work Performance Information
According to the PMBOK Guide, the Work Performance Information is “the performance data collected from various controlling processes, analyzed in context and integrated based on relationships across areas; e.g., the status of
deliverables, forecasted estimates to complete, etc.”
Here, analyze the Work Performance Data. Then compare the planned performance with actual performance.
Work Performance Information includes, but is not limited to:
1. Scope
You will review the project‟s progress: e.g., the status of deliverables, whether the deliverable is accepted, how the project scope is performing against the scope baseline, etc.
2. Time
You will compare the planned schedule with the actual schedule. You can see the planned duration for an activity, and the time taken by the activity to be completed, etc.
3. Cost
You can see the planned cost for a task and compare it with the actual cost of this activity; i.e., planned cost versus actual cost spent. You will also review other parameters such as cost variance and cost performance.
4. Quality
You will analyze the planned technical performance versus actual technical performance: how many defects, how much tolerance and threshold was allowed, how much it is, and how much rework is required.
5. Risk
You will compare how many identified risks have occurred, the efficiency of the risk response plan, how much of the contingency money has been spent, and the balance of the contingency or management reserve, etc.
6. Procurement
Here, you will review the seller‟s performance.
Project Scope Statement
In order to have the project scope statement properly outlined, it must address these seven things:
1. Justification
No project starts without a need already existing, so use that as your justification.
Start your project scope statement by explaining the need for your project, and how the end result will solve that need.
Examples of needs can include:
A competitor has come out with a new product that currently has no market competition
Customer feedback has been asking for a new tool to include in your
product
An opportunity for vertical integration/recurring revenue has introduced itself
2. Scope description
It might sound easy enough, but this is one of the more important steps. From a high-level, list out what is within the scope of your project, and what is out of scope. This will help establish boundaries for the project to exist. It also manages
your stakeholders‟ expectations/input, and gives your team members some creative limitations to work within.
3. Business objectives
Outline your business objectives by defining the targets your business hopes to achieve with this project. This can include product launch goal dates, a new business model to generate a higher rate of recurring revenue, higher customer satisfaction, increase first-time buyers and others.
4. Project Deliverables
List out the deliverables your team members need to produce in order to meet business objectives. This can include the product itself, instruction and installation manuals, marketing materials, press releases, advertising campaigns and more.
5. Project Exclusions
While it‟s imperative that you define the boundaries around what the project includes from the outset, it‟s also extremely important that you list out what this project does not include. For example:
Application updates that are planned for a later project and are intentionally not included on this project
Restricted or rescheduled customer access to certain support
lines/product features
6. Constraints
Project constraints are what make managing projects such a puzzle to solve.
The top three constraints to managing any project are typically time, money and scope. They are interconnected, meaning that if you pull one lever on „scope‟, another lever on „money‟ or „time‟ will also move.
But there are additional project constraints that can crop up at any time, including risk, resources, organization, method, customers and more. List all the constraints you foresee in your project, so you can try to have solutions in place ready to launch when needed.
7. Assumptions
Project assumptions typically revolve around the very things that end up being constraints, including time, money and scope. It‟s important to list these out as this will not only tell key stakeholders what the primary resource needs are to make the project go, but it will also give a quick insight as to where your biggest risk factors lie.
Quality planning involves identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them. It should be performed in parallel with other project planning processes.
Quality planning inputs
1. Product description
The product description documents the characteristics of the product or service that the project was undertaken to create. The product descriptions will generally have less detail in early phases and more detail in later ones. This is also called progressive elaboration.
The product description should:
Document the relationship between the product/service and the business need.
Be detailed enough to support later project planning.
Where a buyer provides a product description for a project it is also called the statement of work.
2. Project charter
A project charter is a document that formally recognizes the existence of the project. It should include:
The business need
The product description
It provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
3. Constraints
These are factors that will limit the project management team options, for example, a pre-defined budget or the provisions of a contract.
4. Assumptions
Factors that, for planning purposes, will be considered to be true, real or certain. Tools and techniques for planning
Several different tools and techniques are available for planning and controlling the quality of a project. The extent to which these tools are used is determined by the project complexity and the quality management program in use by the
client. The following represents the quality planning tools available to the project manager.
1. Cost-benefit analysis is looking at how much your quality activities will cost versus how much you will gain from doing them. The costs are easy to measure; the effort and resources it takes to do them are just like any other task on your schedule. Since quality activities don‟t actually produce a product, it is sometimes harder for people to measure the benefit. The main benefits are less reworking, higher productivity and efficiency, and more satisfaction from both the team and the customer.
2. Benchmarking means using the results of quality planning on other projects to set goals for your own. You might find that the last project in your company had 20% fewer defects than the one before it. You should want to learn from a project like that and put in practice any of the ideas they used to make such a great improvement. Benchmarks can give you some reference points for judging your own project before you even start the work.
3. Design of experiments is the list of all the kinds of tests you are going to run on your product. It might list all the kinds of test procedures you‟ll do, the approaches you‟ll take, and even the tests themselves. (In the software world, this is called test planning.)
4. Cost of quality is what you get when you add up the cost of all the prevention and inspection activities you are going to do on your project. It includes any time spent writing standards, reviewing documents, meeting to analyze the root causes of defects, reworking to fix the defects once they‟re found by the team: in other words, absolutely everything you do to ensure quality on the project.
5. Control charts can be used to define acceptable limits. If some of the functions of a project are repetitive, statistical process controls can be used to identify trends and keep the processes within control limits. Part of the planning for controlling the quality of repetitive processes is to determine what the control limits are and how the process will be sampled.
6. Cause-and-effect diagrams can help in discovering problems. When control charts indicate an assignable cause for a variation, it is not always easy to identify the cause of a problem. Discussions that are intended to discover the cause can be facilitated using a cause-and-effect or fishbone diagram where participants are encouraged to identify possible causes of a defect Outputs of quality planning
Quality management plan The quality management plan should describe how the project management team will implement its quality policy and describe the quality system.
Definition of quality system: “the organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources needed to implement quality management”
Operational definitions (metrics)
This describes what something is and how it is measured by the quality process.
For example, it is not enough to say that meeting the planned schedule dates is a measure of management quality; the project management team must also indicate whether every activity must start on time or only finish on time, whether individual activities will be measured or only certain deliverables, and if so, which ones.
Checklists
A checklist is a structured tool, usually industry or activity specific, used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed.
Inputs to other processes
Other areas requiring quality planning activity.
Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF
Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF) is any or all environmental factors either internal or external to the Project that can influence the Project‟s success.
EEF includes culture, weather conditions, government regulations, political situation, market conditions, etc., which are usually out of one‟s control.
Project quality approaches
The Quality Management Approach specifies the methods the project will use to ensure quality in its end product. This includes specifying the quality standards the project will aim for, measurements to determine whether or not that standard has been achieved, and quality audits to find areas for process improvement.
PRINCE2 is an acronym for Projects IN Controlled Environments. It‟s a processbased method for managing a project
It emphasizes on dividing the project into manageable and controllable stages, with flexibility.
The Quality management approach contains the following items:
1. Introduction
The Introduction states the purpose, objectives and scope, and it identifies who is responsible for the document.
2. Quality management process or procedure
This section outlines the processes and procedures the project will use to ensure the high quality of the end product. These should include:
i. The approach to quality assurance and planning
The quality standards the project must meet, metrics to be employed and measurement techniques.
ii. Tools and Techniques
Any quality management systems to be used on the project, and how they will be used. These include software, procedures, or any proprietary methods.
iii. Records
how and where the quality records will be kept, and who will be responsible for them. These records include the quality register,
quality control measurements, and quality audits, among others.
iv. Reporting
this section describes what the reporting requirements will be, that is, who will be submitting quality reports, to whom, how often, and what the reports will contain.
v. Timing of quality management activities. The timing of the quality control, analysis, and reporting functions.
3. Roles and Responsibilities
This defines who is responsible for quality control measurements, quality audits, data analysis and reporting.
4. Derivation
The Quality Management Approach is derived from 7 sources:
5. Project board.
The project board provides direction regarding quality control strategies, and minimum quality boundaries of the project.
6. Project brief
The project brief contains two items that are used to develop the quality management approach:
