Top 6 Basic Quality Concepts you should know for the PMP

Quality is an important concept in project management and permeates all phases of the project life cycle. Quality should be in mind from beginning to end of every project, and is just as important as budget, schedule, or scope. Whether you find that you need to:

• Create a plan to manage quality in the planning phase.

• Are performing quality checks in the execution phase.

• Need to reevaluate quality standards in the monitoring & controlling phase.

 

You will find that, as important as schedule, budget or scope is in judging the success of a project, quality is usually just as important. Read this article to learn the basic concepts of quality project management and how it relates to project success.

1. What is quality? Why does it matter?

 

Quality is a measure of how good or bad something is. In project management, it's the degree to which all deliverables required for the project plan meet customer requirements. Quality in business is the degree to which all deliverables required for a project meet customer requirements.

Who determines if a deliverable meets quality standards?

Project managers are always on the lookout for quality. For them, they say that quality is in the eye of the customer. Quality is important to project managers because the customer or end user has to sign off on a deliverable and agree that it meets specifications.

 Quality is what people think of when they are deciding if something meets their needs or isn't very good.

Quality is an important part of a project's success. It is the project manager's responsibility to ensure that quality is assessed and monitored, and communicated with stakeholders. The customer signs off at the end, but it is the project manager who is responsible for maintaining quality standards during the project.

Key takeaway: The customer signs off on quality, but the project manager is responsible for enforcing quality standards on the project.

 

2. Quality vs Grade

 

Quality and grade are two words that are often confused for each other. Quality is the process of being checked for compliance to a certain standard, whereas grade is usually assigned to products that have the same functional use but different grades. It's easiest to imagine this in the context of physical products like construction supplies..

 

Construction Project Example:

 A newly approved construction project to renovate a building involves installing new hard wood floors. There are different grades of wood available for you to buy, varying in cost based on several factors that are important to wood buying experts.

How durable is the wood against elements?

• How thick is the wood?

• Is the wood of any significant rarity?

Et cetera - you get the idea! The different types of wood available are assigned grades. This is a quick way to categorize the degree of excellence that should meet quality standards.

 

Customers often have specifications they want us to meet before they order their wood. If we do not meet those standards, then the customer will reject the wood. The project manager needs to be sure to buy wood that meets these specifications, or else our project could be completely rejected.

Key takeaway: High grade does not imply high quality. This is why we must manage quality over simply picking a grade of good that should work.

 

The next three concepts are related to certain processes in the project management lifecycle.

 

3. Plan Quality Management Process

 

To make sure that quality is managed properly, you need a Quality Management Plan. You should first create a plan for quality during the planning phase of your project (formally called "plan quality management").

In this phase, quality standards are agreed upon and metrics are defined to determine how well the project deliverable meets outlined specifications. Planning quality will result in the following outputs in addition to the quality management plan:

 

• Quality metrics for all project deliverables

• Quality checklists for Quality Control (QC) activities

• Process improvement plan

 

4. Manage Quality Process

 

Quality must be managed on a project from the start. Once the Quality Management Plan has been established, the project manager will make sure that every thing produced is of high quality.

Throughout the project lifecycle, your project team will perform various activities specified during planning to ensure that deliverables meet standards. We will go through this in more detail when we talk about Quality Control (QC), #6 below.

 

5. Monitoring & Controlling Quality Process

 

The goal of project monitoring and controlling is to keep the project on track, and it does not belong in any one stage of the project lifecycle. It is done throughout the different stages of the project, from initiating to closing.

It is the project manager's duty to monitor and control quality. Quality assurance practices are in place to ensure that the final product is satisfactory for specifications. If variances or deviations are found, the project manager investigates to see if the process needs to be modified.

They will perform integrated change control if a change to the quality control processes is necessary. Let's go through the difference between quality assurance and quality control to get a better understanding of these two processes.

Key takeaways: Planning quality management, managing quality, and monitoring and controlling quality all cover separate phases of the project management lifecycle.

 

6. Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control

 

Quality Assurance is related to the process that checks to see if the product meets our standards. Quality Control is related to the process that makes changes, or corrects problems.

Quality Assurance

 

QA focuses on modifying processes throughout the project life cycle to avoid defects at the end. QA is done as an activity that helps to ensure that your deliverables are being produced properly and is part of the monitoring and controlling phase. Note that quality assurance involves challenging assumptions and current processes in place, or changing the methodology for measuring quality into a new one. If you are modifying the process used to measure quality standards, you are performing Quality Assurance.

Quality Control

 

Quality Control (or QC) means to ensure that a deliverable meets a quality requirements set forth in the project plan. This happens during the execution phase and is part of the manage quality process. As part of the manage quality process above, your project has defined quality standards that it must meet in order to deliver a project on time. QC involves all responsible team members on the project are evaluating how well the project conforms to specifications. Some techniques used to perform quality control may include:

 

• Peer reviews: another team member reviews someone else's work

• User testing: either a team member acting as a user or an end user themselves evaluates the deliverable to provide feedback

• Functional & Safety testing: the project team ensures that the deliverable meets all safety & security requirements, and that it meets required functionality

• Checklists

• Cause and Effect Diagrams (also called Fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams): to map out root causes that could lead to deliverable failure

• Pareto charts: to track accumulated defects found in a deliverable and determine whether or not they are at acceptable levels

• Histograms: to track frequency of defects found in a deliverable and determine whether or not they are at acceptable levels

 

Remember that controlling quality occurs when deliverables are already complete and is part of the execution phase. Through already established methods, your project team assesses end deliverables to ensure they meet standards and root out defects.

 

Key takeaway: Quality Assurance is connected to the Monitoring & Controlling Quality process. Quality Control is connected to the Manage Quality process.

 

Quality concepts on the PMP exam may seem confusing at first. The separation of quality concepts into separate phases of the project management lifecycle may not be intuitive if you are not familiar with performing quality management activities on your past projects. However, the distinctions are important, and will begin to make sense with enough practice. They differentiate between establishing quality processes for your project and making sure that you satisfy requirements for customers and stakeholders. Proper quality management cannot be done in a silo, as is the case with the vast majority of project management activities. In order to deliver a successful project and ensure that quality is managed properly, you must also have proper communications, stakeholder management, cost management, and schedule management plans in place.

 

In order to solidify your understanding, work through examples of quality management versus quality control. Read sample scenarios and activities, and then determine which phase of the project lifecycle you are in - this will help you know whether you are managing or controlling quality. If you can nail these concepts, you will be prepared to answer most quality related questions on the PMP exam.