For this week’s blog post we will go into the realm of project quality management. Project quality management, as defined by Kathy Schwalbe, “is the process to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken (Schwalbe 330).” Producing a high-quality product is an essential part of the project process. It should be looked at on the same level as the project’s scope, time, and cost. Project quality management works in 3 main processes: Planning quality management, managing quality, and Controlling quality. In this post, we will be looking at these processes focusing primarily on the planning aspect of project quality while also briefly reviewing managing and controlling quality
Agile Quality Management
Before we get into our main topic I would like to look at quality management under the agile approach. Much like the waterfall approach the agile approach is beneficial in its own areas. Agile quality management, just like like any other aspect of the agile approach, is flexible and adaptable. When teams use this approach they tend to be more in contact with the user which allows for constant feedback and the development team being able to make quality changes more frequently. Agile quality management gives the power to the team instead of the leader which can allow for more diversity which in turn can lead to better quality
Project quality management flow diagram displaying what goes into this process and what comes out
Planning Quality Management
Planning managers nowadays have access to immense information regarding quality. That being said the first step to guaranteeing good quality management is planning. Project quality management includes “identifying which quality requirements and standards are relevant to the project and how to satisfy them (Schwalbe 330).” When planning what your goal of your quality management should be, that goal should be communicated to stakeholders in the project. After you and your team decide on the quality goal, you all should create measures to make sure the level of standard is worked out. When deciding on the quality goals of a project a few questions that would be beneficial to as are:
· How will the customers be satisfied?
· What is the level of quality that the stakeholders are expecting?
· How to determine if the quality measures will lead to project success?
These types of questions help to delegate task to certain team members and initiate the quality plan.
This image is an example of how the quality management process continuously cycles through metrics in order to produce the best product quality
Examples of quality standards for IT Projects and Services:
· Allowing for system growth: IOS and Android Updates
· Planning a reasonable response time for a system: The startup of a new gaming system
· Ensuring that the system produces consistent and accurate information: A weather tracking app
· How long it should take to get a replay from a help desk
· How long it should take to ship a replacement part for a hardware item under warranty
Quality Affecting Scope Aspects
When going through the project quality management process it is important for you to try to stay within the scope of the project. While it can be difficult to do this due to changes in technology and customers having difficulty knowing what they truly want in a project, there are several aspects of IT projects that can affect its quality. These aspects consist of: Functionality, features, system outputs, performance, reliability, and maintainability. When looking at the quality of these aspects a few questions that you might want to ask yourself are:
· Functionality: how well does your system perform any given functions?
-Make sure to acknowledge what features are a must within your project and which ones are optional
· Features: Does your system have any special characteristics? If so, what are they?
-Just like with the functionality of a project system make sure to acknowledge whether a feature is necessary or just optional
· System outputs: What are the outputs that the user is seeing? Can these outputs be read easily? Are these outputs formatted in a beneficial way to the user?
-Make sure to outline what your system output screens and reports should look like
· Performance: What level of data should your system be able to handle? What type of equipment must the system run on? What is the response time for different aspects of the system?
-Being one of the bigger aspects to focus on in this group, performance can also bring along more issue within the project. Addressing some potential performance issues while developing the project could lead to few problems at the launch of your system
· Reliability: how well does you system work under normal conditions?
-Having a reliable system is crucial for most if not all businesses. Performing user test to see how well your system functions can help to produce a more reliable system
· Maintainability: How easy is it for your team to keep the system running at its peak performance consistently?
-Much like reliability having a system that is easily maintainable is very important. This can reduce the workload of many people by them not having to deal with any major maintenance issues
Using these few aspects in your quality control planning will help you to produce a more well received product by your users. As with any system or product it’s impossible to have everything running at a 100% flawless rate but with a strong quality management plan producing a strong reliable product is very achievable.
This image is a overview of what goes along with each process of project quality management
Managing Quality
After planning out how you’ll manage the quality of your product, it’s time to put that plan into effect by managing the products quality. Managing quality “involves translating the quality management plan into executable quality activities (Schwalbe 331).” Your job during this process is to evaluate if the projects quality goals are being achieved. If they aren’t being achieved, you and your team need to study what could be the issue and decide on what actions to take to correct the issue. When you’re in this phase, think about quality assurance, are we satisfying the relevant quality standards for the project?
Controlling quality
Finally, after the planning and managing processes of quality management, we come to controlling quality which “involves monitoring specific project results to ensure that they are complete, correct, and meet customer expectations (Schwalbe 331).” Controlling quality also known as quality control monitors results to check if those results are meeting the desired levels. If not, then you should take action to see what could be changed to meet those results. With quality control the improvement of the quality is one of the main goals however the main processes the come out of this focus on acceptance decisions, rework, and process adjustment.
Conclusion
The 3-step cycle of project quality management if a pivotal piece within a products development. You should strive to make the highest quality product possible for your users while acknowledging that it will never be 100%. With that being said in this process managing and controlling quality are very important during project development and after its deployment but neither of those process go along smoothly with planning out how the quality of the project in executed. Having a plan thought out and documented can help to reduce the potential issues that may come up as well as get as close as possible to producing a perfect product
Works Cited
Schwalbe, Kathy. Information Technology Project Management. Boston, MA: Course Technology, 2019. Print.
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