The Project Quality Management Plan

A quality management plan, which is an output of the project quality planning process, is a document that describes how a quality policy will be implemented. Quality improvement, quality control, and quality assurance are addressed in quality management plans. These plans usually are created by project management teams and project managers and are integrated into the overall project plan.

A quality plan acts as a road map to meeting customers' needs by breaking down the project objectives into lower-level activities. This process should identify specific quality actions.

Quality management plans are drawn up for specific products, individual projects, or highly complicated tasks. A new plan should be developed or changed to reflect the different activities of each project.

In contract situations, a quality plan is sometimes used by the supplier to show the customer how the project will meet quality requirements. In many cases, it's helpful to have the customer's input into the quality management plan.

Quality management plans take on different forms. They can be formal, informal, detailed, or general, depending on the needs of each particular project.

Quality plans ensure the proper documentation for a project is complete. They prove that quality goals are being met. An effective quality plan can also:

• identify all internal or external customers
• respond to the ever-changing needs of customers
• bring in the suppliers early in the project
• cause the process to be designed in a way that produces features that meet customer requirements.

Quality management plans and other aspects of quality planning require attention to detail. When defining quality, the term can mean different things to different people. Attention to detail helps ensure everyone's requirements for quality are met.

Outputs of Project Quality Planning

The project quality planning process results in a number of outputs, in the form of actual documents or documented items. Operational definitions, checklists, and inputs to other processes are three important outputs of the quality planning process. Details about these three outputs are provided below.

1. Operational definition
An operational definition, also called a metric in some application areas, is a description of what something is and how it is measured by the quality control process. Operational definitions are quality planning outputs project management teams can use to indicate the specifics about the quality of their projects.

For example, an operational definition that describes meeting schedule deadlines must also include details such as start and finish times for every activity.

2. Checklists
Quality planning, and any other activity involving steps to a process, use checklists. Checklists are structured tools for confirming that all steps to a process have been performed. They can be specific to particular activities and industries. Checklists are not always complicated. They can be as simple as a brief list phrased, "Do this!"

Checklists are important for quality planning because they help you verify a project's quality. You can use information from quality planning inputs, as well as quality planning tools and techniques, to develop the checklists for a project.

Some organizations have standardized checklists that ensure frequently performed activities are carried out with consistency. Alternatively, sometimes checklists are purchased from commercial service providers or professional associations.

3. Inputs to other processes
Sometimes the process of quality planning detects a need for activity in another project management area. These quality planning outputs are usually not anticipated at the onset of a project. These unanticipated outputs are called inputs to other processes.

In summary, inputs to quality planning, as well as quality planning tools and techniques, result in a number of outputs. These quality planning outputs help management teams stay focused on the quality details of a project.

Quality Planning Techniques: Design of Experiments

How do you determine the way a material, product, or process affects your project? You can use a quality planning technique called design of experiments. This analytical technique can help you uncover which variables have the most influence on an outcome, and verify the capability of materials, products, and processes.

Most organizations want to improve their products and services. Designing experiments that verify these improvements is worth the time and effort put into them, since they are helpful in solving chronic quality problems. Properly designed experiments can help you:

• eliminate re-work
• achieve higher productivity
• improve customer satisfaction
• prevent problems
• reduce extra inspections.

Design of experiments is more efficient and less disruptive than a trial method experiment. It also requires extra thought and planning, as a mistake during any part of the experiment can invalidate the entire analysis.

The objective of a designed experiment is to study specific outcomes by analyzing the impact of several variables at one time. Testing more variables at one time makes this process more efficient.

Whether you are searching for the root cause of a quality problem or you want to improve quality results, design of experiments is a beneficial technique for quality planning. In addition to the benefits listed above, it provides the following two important benefits.

• Smaller sample sizes. This technique requires smaller sample sizes to receive the same accuracy of results.
• Interaction between variables. It determines interactions between process variables. Certain combinations of variables can have a greater impact on the outcome than any one variable on its own.

Design of experiments is a technique that is most often applied to the product of a project. For example, pharmaceutical companies often perform designed experiments to test the composition of their drugs. If studying the XYZ drug, a designed experiment would have a matrix of experiments that tests X, Y, and Z in different amounts at the same time. The experiment would examine X1Y1Z1, X2Y1Z2, X1Y2Z3, and other such combinations. This experiment tests multiple variables at the same time.

In summary, design of experiments verifies how a material, product, or process is affecting your project. This quality planning technique is usually applied to projects that produce a product.

Project Quality Planning Tools: Benchmarking

Did you know that project management can be similar to detective work? The benchmarking process (BMP) is like an investigation. It involves searching through available clues, finding leads, and then following up on those leads to understand the processes of world-class companies.

The BMP compares the performance of one company against another that is best-in-its-class. This is an effective tool and technique for quality planning.

Why should you perform a BMP? There are two main reasons for benchmarking—setting goals and process development. The BMP also will help you to know yourself, understand your competition, and define and integrate the best processes into your organization.

The benefits of benchmarking far outweigh the costs or effort involved. Benchmarking will:

• improve customer satisfaction
• define the best processes
• improve already-existing processes
• promote a desire to improve and change
• identify your competitive position
• improve the relationship between benchmarking partners.

The BMP provides information about where a company stands when compared to standards. These standards are set by customers, companies, certification organizations, and industry associations. The BMP will indicate the areas of strength within a company and uncover opportunities for improvement.

There are four common types of benchmarking assessments: internal, competitive, world-class operations, and activity-type benchmarking. Details are provided below.

• Internal benchmarking. This type of benchmarking usually takes place first. It involves examining your own organization and determining the best practices observed. It's easy to carry out, and matters of security and confidentiality do not exist.
• Competitive benchmarking. This is also called reverse engineering. It involves studying a competitor's services, products, and processes. The easiest way to do this type of benchmarking is to buy the competitor's product or service and then analyze it.
• World-class operations benchmarking. This benchmarking type takes the BMP past a specific type of organization to one that is different. It's a useful technique for discovering innovative processes not currently used by an organization.
• Activity-type benchmarking. This type of benchmarking examines specific process steps or activities that go beyond specific industries. It includes activities such as recruiting, invoicing, and engineering change control.

The benchmarking process is a useful tool and technique for quality planning. It's natural that companies want to immediately visit a top-notch organization as their first BMP activity. Although doing this is a part of the BMP, it's not the only activity that should be performed. There are six separate stages for every BMP.

• Process design (planning). Select one quality process to study at a time. Form a team of people involved in the process you wish to study. Determine the measurements you will use.
• Internal data collection. Know your own practices and performance. This can be done using such techniques as system and process flowcharts, or cause-and-effect diagrams.
• External data collection. Select a competitor in the same or different industry as your company. Select one that is best-in-its-class for the process you are studying.
• Data analysis. Compare the information gathered with the information from your own company.
• Process upgrading. Based on information you have learned from your competitor, identify which ideas can be adopted for your own process and decide how they can be implemented.
• Periodic reassessment. Monitor the effectiveness of the new ideas and re-benchmark them at specific intervals of time.

Effective benchmarking requires choosing the specific benchmarking type and completing the appropriate steps. This process is not just about uncovering the secrets of your competition—it includes learning about yourself.

Project Quality Planning Tools: Flowcharting

Just as road maps are useful tools for reaching your destinations, flowcharts are the road maps used to reach project quality. A flowchart graphically represents a process and its activities in almost the same way a map represents an area.

Flowcharting is an effective quality planning tool you can use to describe an existing process or a proposed new process. You can use flowcharts when charting work on an object, when charting workers' tasks, when charting an operation or inspection process, and even when brainstorming.

For quality planning, flowcharting can help you identify problems in a process. Flowcharting will also:

• result in disciplined thinking
• facilitate communication about problems
• illustrate how different elements fit together.

Some flowcharts are recorded in a narrative form, like an essay. For example, first you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, and so forth. However, this method can be vague and hard to follow. Using charts and diagrams to map a process can allow information to be more clearly and easily understood.

There are 12 standard flowcharting symbols that indicate what is done to a product from one step to another. Everyone using this method on a project must understand the meaning of each symbol. Process information is placed inside or beside the symbols. Various symbols indicate an operation or an activity, movement or transportation, decision points, inspection, paper documents, and delay.

Symbols also indicate storage, annotation, direction of flow, transmissions, connectors, and boundaries, which are the beginning or end of a process. It's important to understand these symbols and how they add to the flowcharting process.

Flowcharts do not have to be drawn by specialists. They are researched and drawn by quality improvement teams. However, some training is usually necessary to draw an accurate flowchart.

Drawing a flowchart is drawing a picture of a process. With some training and practice, process flowcharts can be somewhat straightforward to create. To create a flowchart, follow the steps outlined below. Keep in mind, however, that drawing your first process flowchart is not easy. If necessary, quality improvement teams can call on an expert in their field to contribute to the process.

• Step 1: Define the process steps. As a team, brainstorm to talk through the steps in the process. For an already existing process, examine the process in action. Suggestion: Write the steps on sticky notes.
• Step 2: Sort the steps in order. Identify what is done at each step. Suggestion: Use the sticky notes from Step 1 and sort them in the proper order.
• Step 3: Place the steps in the appropriate symbol. Use the standard symbols to sketch the flowchart. Suggestion: Make a rough copy at first. Then rework the graph to fix errors.
• Step 4: Evaluate the steps. Check for completeness, efficiency, and problems. Review the actual process and then make any necessary revisions to the flowchart.

For every quality effect or problem in a project, a cause must be identified. Cause-and-effect diagrams, also called Ishikawa diagrams or fish-bone diagrams, focus on the causes of problems instead of the problems themselves. Cause-and-effect diagrams are often used in brainstorming sessions because they act as visual displays for breaking large problems into manageable parts. Follow these steps to construct a cause-and-effect diagram.

• Step 1: Identify the problem or effect. Place a concise statement of the problem or effect in a box at the end of a horizontal line.
• Step 2: Identify the causes. Identify the causes of a problem or effect in a brainstorming session by focusing on one cause at a time. Discussions usually will focus on methods, materials, people, information, machines, and environment. Identify any subcauses.
• Step 3: Build the diagram. To build the diagram, organize the causes and subcauses into the diagram layout. Each branch represents cause-types such as materials, machines, and people. The subcauses connect to these branches.
• Step 4: Analyze the diagram. Identify potential solutions weighing the cost-effectiveness and achievability of each solution.

Drawing a flowchart or diagram involves creating a picture of a process or effect. Both act as visual displays that assist with problem-solving. Once you and your project team become accustomed to using these tools for quality planning, they'll become an automatic part of your processes.

Quality Planning Benefit/Cost Analysis

Since it costs money to implement project quality planning in your organization, it's important to understand the benefits of quality planning, so you can justify these costs if necessary. In addition, knowing the benefits of meeting quality requirements makes tasks more meaningful and successful. The four main benefits of meeting quality requirements on your projects are:

• less rework
• higher productivity
• lower costs
• better customer satisfaction.

Weighing benefits against costs can help with the major decision-making issues of a project. A benefit/cost analysis involves estimating the costs and benefits of meeting quality requirements, and then assessing the available project options. The benefits, of course, should outweigh the costs. The general procedure for analyzing benefits and costs is explained below.

• Analyze the plan, decision, or process by examining its activities and events.
• Calculate or estimate the benefits and costs related to each element.
• Compare the sum of the benefits and costs.

Subtracting the costs from the benefits should always produce a positive number. A negative number indicates the benefits are not worth the expense.

Benefit/cost analysis is a useful tool for project quality planning. It's a simple procedure you can use to determine if the benefits of quality planning outweigh the costs.

Categorizing Project Quality Planning Costs

It's a fact—projects cost money. However, even though planning for quality costs money, it's well worth the expense. People will remember poor quality much longer than a timely delivery or cheap price. In today's market, mistakes regarding the quality of a product or service can be expensive for everyone.

To meet quality requirements, projects must incur some primary planning costs. These costs can be divided into four main categories—prevention costs, appraisal costs, failure costs, and intangible costs.

Creating quality products and services requires an understanding of all of these costs. When project managers understand quality costs, it's easier for them to make decisions about such things as investing in a process, designing revisions, or changing procedures. The total quality cost of a project is considered to be the sum of the four main categories discussed below.

• Prevention costs. Prevention costs occur from activities that prevent poor quality in products and services. Such costs help ensure the customer's requirements are met.
• Appraisal costs. Appraisal costs are linked with measuring, evaluating, or auditing products and services. This can include material reviews, incoming inspections, work-in-process inspections, and final inspections or testing.
• Internal and external failure costs. Internal failure costs are associated with not meeting customer requirements prior to when the product or service is provided. External failure costs occur when the nonconforming product reaches the customer.
• Intangible costs. Intangible costs of poor quality are hidden costs that involve the company's image. They can be three or four times greater than tangible costs. Missing a deadline or other quality problems can be intangible costs of quality.

Identifying and utilizing the four primary costs in effective quality planning will help ensure that your product is a success. Recognizing that prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal and external failure costs, and intangible costs are valuable tools and techniques to the quality planning process will result in greater satisfaction for all stakeholders.

Standards, Regulations, and Project Quality Planning

Rules are everywhere. People are bombarded by rules in the form of standards and regulations. Do you know the difference between the two?

Quality planning requires you to be familiar with the standards and regulations that affect your project. For many projects, these are well known and your planning will reflect them. The difference between standards and regulations is explained below.

• Standards. Although standards are approved by a recognized body, compliance with them is not mandatory. They are documents of rules, guidelines, or characteristics for projects, and will shape a project's product.
• Regulations. These documents outline the products, processes, or service characteristics of a project. Compliance to regulations is mandatory.

Standards and regulations are inputs to quality planning that can have a great effect on projects. As a project manager or member of a project team, you need to be certain your quality system is "up to code."

As with most things in life, rules are not always clear cut. There's a definite "gray area" between standards and regulations. A standard will sometimes begin as a guideline and then become a regulation. This happens when a standard becomes well-known and is widely used.

Another example of the "gray area" between standards and regulations is when each one is authorized at different levels. For example, the government requires pilots to have a national-level license for flying. At a company level, however, a pilot may be required to have a national-level pilot's license, 1,000 hours of flying time, 600 hours multi-engine flight experience, and 150 hours of night flying time.

Standards can help companies meet their quality goals. The International Organization for Standardization is an establishment that helps companies accomplish this with the ISO 9000 series. Companies that use the ISO 9000 standards follow documented procedures for the work they perform. It does not guarantee organizations will always produce good products. Instead, the ISO 9000 standards act as a tool for helping organizations meet quality goals and confirm they have a set of quality standards in place.

In summary, standards and regulations are important inputs to quality planning. Following them helps ensure that a project product is of good quality and meets stakeholder requirements.

Project Product Descriptions and Scope Statements

The product description document, which is an important input to project quality planning, does just what you would expect—it describes the product. Specifically, it describes the product characteristics a project will create. It contains technical information as well as other issues that affect quality planning.

At the beginning of a project, the product description document will be vague. However, as the project evolves and the product characteristics become more complicated, more details will be added to the product description. Some points to keep in mind about the product description documents are listed below.

• When a supplier does work under contract for a client, the initial product description is provided by the client.
• The product description needs enough detail to support project planning in later stages.
• The product description should state the relationship between the product or service and the business need, opportunity, or problem that initiated the project.

Throughout the project, the product description document will be modified to add the details that were unknown when the project first began. This process assists with the development of the quality outputs.

Parts of the product description may be included in the scope statement, which is another important input to quality planning. Scope statements include information on project deliverables and objectives. Specifically, a scope statement is a description of what the stakeholders want. Details about the scope statement are provided below.

• The scope statement is a written source for making decisions later on in the project.
• The scope statement confirms that the stakeholders all have the same expectations of the project.
• The scope statement is a written source for making decisions later on in the project.
• The scope statement confirms that the stakeholders all have the same expectations of the project.

Just like the product description, the scope statement may need to be revised as the project changes. A scope statement should refer to, or include a description of, the project justification, project product, project deliverables, and project objectives. These four elements of the scope statement are described below.

• Project justification. The project justification can be taken directly from the product description document. It states the business need that initiated the project.
• Project product. This is the actual product description. This portion of the scope statement can be taken from the product description document.
• Project deliverables. The project is considered complete when all the products that make up the project are delivered. If you discover that something has been excluded, you should immediately add it to the scope statement.
• Project objectives. These are the criteria that mark the success of a project. Project objectives detail costs, schedules, and quality measures.

A clear product description and scope statement confirm that everyone involved in a project has the same expectations. You have to know what your customers really want. Your project's success depends on it.

Developing a Project Quality Policy

A quality policy, which is an important input to project quality planning, is a collection of documents that are usually created by quality experts and supported by top management. These documents state the overall quality intentions and direction of an organization.

Not all projects require new quality policies. If a quality policy already exists, it can be adopted for a new project. If a quality policy does not exist or if the project is a joint venture, the management team will be required to develop a new quality policy for the project.

A quality policy must indicate the level of quality the organization considers acceptable and must be applied at all levels of a project. Communicating this information is a vital step for quality planning. Project management teams need to distribute quality policy information in a timely manner to everyone involved with the project. As a project manager, you can communicate quality policies in the following ways.

• Use written communication, in the form of formal reports, informal memos, and conversations, to send out clear and complete information to those working on the project and to outside parties.
• You can share information with your team members using information retrieval systems such as manual filing systems, project management software, and electronic text databases.
• You can forward information electronically using fax, electronic mail, voice mail, video conferencing, and a company intranet or the Internet.

Quality policies state a company's quality goals. These policies help a company create a sound reputation for good quality. Key goals should include continuous improvement of the product or service, customer satisfaction, and effective delivery of the service. In addition, quality policies should:

• promote consistency throughout the project
• include quality objectives
• describe how organizations view quality
• detail guidelines for all important quality matters
• state principles of what will take place during the project, rather than how it will take place
• state requirements for updating the policy
• be understood, implemented, and maintained at all levels of an organization.

Quality objectives are important elements of a quality policy. Some typical quality objectives are:

• clearly defined statement of customer needs
• specific statements about deadlines
• commitment to avoid harmful effects on the environment and society
• reviews to identify opportunities for quality improvements
• commitment to quality throughout the organization.

Quality policies are essential inputs to quality planning. Top-level managers implement quality policies throughout the duration of projects. It can be challenging for managers to stay focused on quality and avoid getting sidetracked by other matters. Ultimately, the best way for a project manager to show support for quality is to "walk the walk."