Quality Management Flashcards
Quality management
Creating and following policies and procedures to ensure that a project meets the defund needs it was intended to meet from the customers perspective
Gold plating
Giving the customer extras (more functionality extra scope performance); not a recommended practice
Prevention over inspection
Quality must be planned in not inspected in
Marginal analysis
Looking for the point where the benefits or revenue to be received from improving quality equals the incremental cost to achieve that quality
Continuous improvement
Continuously looking for small improvements in quality
Includes how we handle project management in an organization
Just in time
Companies have suppliers deliver raw materials just when they are needed therefore decreasing inventory to close to zero
Therefore a company must achieve a high level of quality in their practices otherwise there will not be enough materials to meet production requirements
Total quality management
Encourages companies and employees to find ways to continuously improve the quality of their products and their business practices at every level of the organization
Responsibility for quality
Entire organization has responsibilities for quality
The PM has responsibility for the quality of the product of the reject but each team member must inspect their work
Senior management has ultimate responsibility for quality in the organization as a whole
Impact of poor quality
Increased costs Decreased profits Low morale Low customer satisfaction Increased risk Rework Schedule delays
Increases in quality
Increased productivity Higher morale Increased customer ear satisfaction Increased cost and schedule effectiveness Decreased cost risk
Plan quality management
Defining quality for the project, the product, and project management, and planning how it will be achieved
Looking forward in time
Identify all relevant organizational or industry practices standards and requirements for quality of the project and plan how to meet those quality standards
An output of this process is then quality management plan
Perform quality assurance
Ensure the project team is following the organizational policies standards and processes as planned to produce the projects deliverables / customer requirements
Perform continuous improvement
Find good practices and share with the organization
Looking back in time
PM can evaluate if whether processes need to be improved or modified
Control quality
Examines the actual deliverables produced on the project and to ensure the deliverables are correct and meet the planned level of quality and to find the source of problems and recommend ways to address them
Looking back in time at project results
Identify the need for quality improvements corrective action, defect repair and preventive action
Cost benefit analysis
Weights the benefits versus the cost of quality efforts to determine the appropriate quality level and requirements for the project
Cost of quality (COQ)
Looking at the cost of quality to make sure the project is not spending too much to achieve a particular level of quality
Involves looking at what the costs conformance and nonconformance to quality will be on the project and creating a balance
The cost of conformance should be lower than the cost of nonconformance
Conformance (preventative & appraisal costs) -quality training, surveys studies
Nonconformance (internal & external failure costs) - rework scrap inventory cost lost business warranty costs
Quality
The degree to which the project fulfills requirements
Quality tools
Cause and effect diagram Flowchart Check sheet Pareto diagram Histogram Control chart Scatter diagram
Cause and effect diagram (fish bone)
Used to look backwards as to what may have contributed to quality problems
Plan how the work of quality should be performed to produce deliverables that meet requirements
Graphic with organized series of lines displaying issues that may have led to a problem
Look at the causes of a problem or to identify the best way to plan and clarify the definition of quality
Helps stimulate thinking and generate discussion
Used to explore the factors that will result in a desired outcome
Flowchart (process map)
How a process or system flows from beginning to end and how the elements interrelate alternative paths the process can take and how the process translates inputs and outputs
Graphical representation of a process
Check sheet (tally sheet)
Checklist that can be used to keep track of data such as quality problems uncovered during inspections
Ex how often a particular defect occurs
Pareto diagram
Type of bar chart that arranges the results from most frequent to least frequent to help identify which root causes are resulting in the most problems
Helps focus attention on the most critical problems
Priorities potential causes of the problems
Separate the critical few from the uncritical many
Histogram
Displays data in the form of bars or columns and helps to identify which problems are worth dealing with and presents data in no particular order or without reference to time
Control charts
These are setup in plan quality management as part of the effort to define quality on the project. They are used in control quality to help determine if the results of a process are within acceptable limits
Upper and lower control limits
Shown as two dashed lines on a control chart and are the limits of acceptable range of variation of a processes of measurements results
Control limits I deviate what is tables versus unstable
Mean
Indicated by a line in the middle of the control chart and shows the middle of the range of acceptable variation
Specification limits
The customers expectations or contractual requirements for performance and quality on the project; they are inputs from the customers and must be less strict than the control limits set by the organization; they are outside the upper and lower control limits
Out of control
A data point falls outside of the upper or lower control limit
There are no random data points; these may be within the upper and lower control limits
Lack of consistency and predictability in the process or its results
Rule of seven
Is a ground rule and refers to a group or series of non-random data points that total seven on one side of the mean and tells you that although none of these point are outside of the control limits they are not random and the process is out of control
Assignable causes / special cause variation
Signifies that a process is out of control falls outside of the control limits and requires investigation to determine the cause of the variation
Scatter diagram (correlation chart)
Used to determine the relationship of independent variables such as paint quality, dryer fan speed, and door weight to the dependent variables of drying time
A regression line or trend line is calculated to show the correlation of variables
Benchmarking
Involves looking at other projects to get ideas for improvement on performance on the current project and to provide a basis to use in measuring quality performance
3 or 6 sigma
Standard deviation and indicates how much variance from the mean has been established as permissible in a process
The level of quality a company has decided to try and achieve is usually 3 or 6 sigma
6 sigma - 1 out of 1 million doors will have a problem (99.9%)
3 sigma - 2,700 will have a problem (99.73%)
1 sigma - 68.27%
Quality management plan
Determine what quality is and to put a plan in place to manage quality
Quality metrics
The number of items that fail inspection
The variance related to resource utilization
The number of bugs found in software that is being developed
The number of changes
Quality checklist
The list of items to inspect a list of steps to be performed
Process improvement plan
Plan for analysis and improvement of processes and helps save time by analyzing processes to find ways to increase efficiency and prevent problems
Quality project management plan and project document updates
You may go back and Change information about the roles assigned on the project the stakeholders who are significant to the quality management effort
Quality audits
Audit to understand that you are complying with company policies standardized practices procedures and to determine whether the policies practices and procedures are being used effective and efficient
Process analysis
The lessons learned on the first few installations are used to improve the process on the remaining ones. Usually this happens naturally but if not formal process analysis should be planned at certain points in the project
Affinity diagrams
Can help you organize and group results of a root cause analysis
Example in control quality you may have determined the cause of variance product defects or deliverables not meeting requirements you can then use this information in quality assurance to determine whether a change to policies procedures in the quality plan would address the root cause
Tree diagram
Help you organize data, map out relationships decompose processes to find a solution to a problem
Process decision program charts
Let you decompose a goal into the steps required to achieve it. Each step is the reviewed for potential risk
Interrelationship digraphs
Allows you to see and analyze the relationship among numerous different issues
Matrix diagrams
A visual representation of the relationship between two or more sets of items
Prioritization matrices
Useful for decision analysis about process improvements and quality management plan components that may need to change
Control quality
The process of ensuring a certain level of quality in a deliverable whether it be a product service or result
Mutual exclusivity
Two events are said to be manually exclusive if they cannot both occur in a single trial
Example flipping a coin once cannot result in both a head and a tail
Probability
The likelihood that something will occur; decimal fraction on a scale of 1 - 10
Normal distribution
Shape of a bell curve and used to measure variations
Statistical independence
The probability of one event occurring does not affect the probability of another event occurring
Example the probability of rolling a six on a die is statistically independent from the probability of getting a five on the next roll
Standard deviation (sigma )
A measure of range and it denotes what would be considered a statistically stable process or output
PMIS related to quality
The pm should recommend improvements to the performing organizations standards, policies and processes
The pm should determine metrics to be used to measure quality
Quality should be considered whenever there is change to the project constraints
The pm should have a plan in place for continually improving processes
The pm must make sure authorized approaches and processes are followed
Some quality activities may be done by a quality assurance or control department
The pm should spend time trying to improve quality
Quality should be checked before a work package or activity is coMPLETE
The United Nations convention contracts for international sale of goods
Governs international sales transactions
ISO 9000
International organization for standardization and helps ensure that organizations have quality procedures and that they follow them.
Occupational safety and health administration
Sets standards for the safety of American workers
Inspection
Examining a work product to make sure it meets standards
Statistical sampling
The sample size and frequency is done during plan quality management and the actual test is taken during control quality
Check 3 out 12 doors
Design of experiments
Uses experimentation to determine statically what variables will improve quality
Identifying factors that influence particular variables of a product or process
Tools and techniques used in perform quality audits
Quality audits Process analysis Affinity diagram Tree diagram Process decision program chart Interrelationship diagrams Matrix diagram Prioritization matrices Project schedule network diagrams or activity network diagrams
