Quality Management

Question 1

Quality Management Components

Answer 1

Quality Management is an overarching term for all of the processes and Practices that are used to Monitor, Control and report on Quality issues within a Project.

1. Quality Planning
2. Quality Assurance
3. Quality Control
4. Continual Improvement

Question 2

1. Quality Planning

Answer 2

The quality planning component involves the process of preparing a quality management plan that identifies which quality standards, processes and metrics that are relevant to the project and determines how to satisfy them.
• Role & Responsibilities - Who is responsible for what.
• Product Specification - The plan is agreed with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that their expectations of quality are correctly identified and will be satisfied.
• Processes - The processes described in the plan should conform to the organisations’ processes, culture and values.
• Quality Assurance - What Assurance techniques will be used, and what will done if something goes wrong.
• Quality Control - Detail the quality control techniques will be used.
• The Quality Management plan is a component of the Project Management Plan and produced during the definition phase.

Question 3

2. Quality Assurance

Answer 3

• Quality Assurance is focussed on assessing that the processes and procedures agreed to in the Quality Management Plan/System are being followed.
• Quality Assurance is not a check listing exercise though sometimes it can be misconstrued as ‘additional’ work rather than ‘core’ work. Many notable business failures can be attributable to quality assurance mistakes. These include everything from recent car manufacturing recalls in USA; mislabelled meat in the UK; to the global financial crisis. In every incident, there were procedures in place, which were not adhered to or not optimised to deliver what they were intended to, which caused large repercussions.

Question 4

3. Quality Control

Answer 4

The term ‘Quality Control’ refers to a myriad of techniques that may be used to actually bring about the quality required by the product’s specifications. The methods to be used will be identified and recorded during the project planning stage.

• Quality Control is the process of monitoring specific project results to determine and confirm that they comply with relevant quality standards and met stakeholder expectations.
• Quality Control activities determine whether acceptance criteria have or have not been met, i.e. the deliverable is performing to spec or not, and identify ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance.
• For this component to be effective, specifications must be under strict configuration control.
• Quality Control is done during the Development and handover phases.
• Quality Control consists of:
- Inspection - Checking and Auditing deliverables
- Testing - Exercising the deliverables
- Measurement - Set a measure, record, assess impact and take action
• Quality Control, with its three constituents, produce data.

Question 5

4. Continual Improvement Process

Answer 5

1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act

Question 6

Benefits of Quality Management

Answer 6

• Higher productivity
• Increased Reputation
• Reduction of defects and waste
• Reduced costs and better cost management
• Higher profitability
• Increased customer loyalty
• Enhanced shareholder & stakeholder value
• Improved processes
• Increased staff capability (continual)
• Competitive advantage
• Safety
• Improved morale

Question 7

Goals of Quality Programs

Answer 7

1. Fitness for use
2. Fitness for purpose
3. Customer Satisfaction
4. Conformance to the requirements

Question 8

Definition of Quality

Answer 8

Quality is an objective assessment of a product’s fitness for purpose