7. Quality Management Flashcards
What is the process of quality management?
Plan Quality Management
Manage Quality
Control Quality
What are the key outputs of the Plan Quality Management process?
Quality management plan
Quality metrics
Updates to project management plan and project documents
What are the key outputs of the Manage Quality Process?
Test and evaluation documents
Quality reports
Change requests
Updates to project management plan and project documents
What are the key outputs of the Control Quality process?
Quality control measurements
Validated changes
Work performance information
Updates to project management plan and project documents
Change requests
Verified deliverables
What is definition of quality?
The degree to which the project fulfills requirements
How does quality differ from grade?
Whereas quality is the degree to which a project (or deliverable) fulfills requirements, grade refers to a general category or classification of a deliverable or resource that indicates common function, but varying technical specifications
What does gold plating mean?
Adding extra items and services to customer deliverables that do not necessarily contribute added value or quality
Why is “prevention over inspection” important?
Because the cost of avoiding or preventing mistakes is much less than the cost of correcting them
What does continuous improvement involve?
Continuous improvement involves continuosly looking for ways to improve the quality of work, processes, and results
How much inventory is maintained in a just in time (JIT) environment?
How does this affect attention to quality?
Little inventory is maintained
It forces attention to quality as well as schedule
Who has responsibility for quality on a project?
Although team members must inspect their own work, the project manager has the ultimate responsibility for quality
What are some tools and techniques that are used in the Plan Quality Management process?
Interviews
Brainstorming and benchmarking
Decision-making
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost of quality (COQ)
Logical data models
Matrix diagrams
Mind mapping
Flowcharts
Test and inspection planning
Meetings
Define benchmarking.
Define cost-benefit analysis.
Benchmarking: Comparing your project to other projects or organizations to establish quality metrics, acceptable variance ranges, and measure quality
Cost-benefit analysis: Comparing the costs of an effort to the benefits of that effort
What are the impacts of poor quality?
Increased costs
Decreased profits
Low morale
Low customer satisfaction
Increased risk
Rework
What does the cost of quality (COQ) do?
Ensures the project is not spending too much to achieve a particular level of quality
What are examples of costs of conformance and costs of nonconformance?
Costs of conformance:
• Quality training
• Studies
• Measuring quality of interim deliverables
• Surveys
• Efforts to ensure everyone knows the processes to use to complete their work
Costs of nonconformance: • Rework • Scrap • Inventory costs • Warranty costs • Lost business
What are costs of nonconformance associated with?
Which should be greater, the costs of conformance or nonconformance?
Costs of nonconfromance are associated with poor quality
the costs of conformance should be less than the costs of nonconformance
What is marginal analysis?
An analysis focused on finding the point at which the benefits or revenue to be received from improving quality equals the incremental cost to achieve that quality
What is a logical data model?
It contains a description of the quality needs of the project and is used to understand the requirements, clarify business rules, and define processes
What does a flowchart show?
How a process or system flows from beginning to end, how the elements interrelate, alternative paths the process can take, and how the process translates inputs into outputs
What is the purpose of test and inspection planning?
For the team to determine how it will confirm that the required level of quality has been achieved in the completion of project deliverables, and how the deliverable will be evaluated for performance and reliability
What are quality metrics?
Specific measures of quality that the project manager uses to determine how the project is performing
What are some of the tools and techniques used in the Manage Quality process?
Checklists Cause-and-effect diagrams Histograms Scatter diagrams Document analysis Alternatives analysis Process analysis Root cause analysis Multicriteria decision analysis Flowcharts Affinity diagrams Audits Design for X Problem-solving
What is design of experiments?
A technique that allows you to systematically change the important factors in a process and see which combinations have an optimal impace on the project deliverables
What is the purpose of failure analysis?
It analyzes failed components of deliverables, or failed processes to determine what led to that failure
What does mutual exclusivity mean?
Two events are said to be mutually exclusive if they cannot both occur in a single trial (for example, flipping a coin once cannot result in both a head and a tail)
In what form is probability usually expressed?
As a decimal or a fraction
What is a normal distribution curve?
A bell-shaped frequency distribution curve used to measure variation
This is the most common probability density distribution chart
What is statistical independence?
The probability of event “B” occurring does not depend on event “A” occurring (for example, the probability of getting a five on the next roll)
What does sigma signify in a process?
What’s another name for sigma?
It is a measure of how far you are from the mean (not the median)
Standard deviation
Name some Control Quality tools and techniques.
Checklists and checksheets Statistical sampling Statistical sampling Questionnaires and surveys Performance reviews Root cause analysis Inspection Control charts Cause-and-effect diagrams Histograms Scatter diagrams Meetings
What is a quality checklist?
A list of items to inspect, a list of steps to perform, or a picture of an item to be inspected, with space to note any defects found
How does a checksheet differ from a quality checklist?
Although a checksheet is a type of checklist, it’s primary purpose is to keep track of data
In Control Quality, checklists are used to determine that all required features and functions are included, and that they meet acceptance criteria
What is statistical sampling?
Inspecting by testing only part of a population (a statistically valid sample)
What is a control chart?
What are control limits?
Control charts are used in Control Quality to help determine if the results of a process are within acceptable limits
Control limits are the acceptable range of variation on a control chart
What are the specification limits on a control chart?
What is a mean on a control charts?
Specification: The customer’s expectations or contractual requirements for performance and quality on the project
Mean: The average, the middle of the range of acceptable variation
How do we define a process as statistically out of control?
What does out of control mean?
A data point falls outside the upper or lower control limit
There are nonrandom data points; these may be within the upper and lower control limits
What is the rule of seven?
What does it signify?
It refers to a group or series of nonrandom data points that total seven on one side of the mean
The rule of seven tells you that, although none of these points are outside of the control limits, they are not random and the process is out of control
What is an assignable cause/special cause variation?
An assignable cause or special cause variation signifies that a process is out of control
If there is an assignable cause or special cause variation, it means a data point, or a series of data points, requires investigation to determine the cause of the variation
What is a cause-and-effect diagram?
A graphical tool that helps determine the possible root causes of a problem
It is also called a fishbone, Ishikawa, or why-why diagram
What is Pareto chart?
A histogram that arranges the results from most frequent to least frequent to help identify which root causes are resulting in the most problems
What does a scatter diagram show?
The relationship between two variables and the quality of the results
