What is Project Quality Management?
Quality is the measure by which a project is good or bad. The better the quality, the better the project. Quality management refers to maintaining standard quality. Quality management is the field of project management and refers to the maintenance of quality during the project life cycle.
"Planning, scoping, implementing and monitoring quality in all phases of a project, from concept to delivery of work. Quality management involves assembling and managing a team to achieve qualitative objectives within effective cost and time frames to produce A quality product or service. It requires the selection of specification parameters and the systems and procedures needed to ensure that quality is carried out correctly at all stages."
Just as project management is not a single step or a phase, quality management is a process, an iterative cycle of measuring quality, making changes for improvement, monitoring the process, making changes again, etc. This process continues until the desired quality is achieved.
points to remember
The focus of quality management is to ensure that projects meet or exceed stakeholder expectations. Satisfying needs comes first in keeping stakeholders happy; for this, understanding their desires is crucial.
If the project runs into any difficulties or the stakeholders don't approve of anything, you'll have to go back into the process and start over. To avoid all these hassles, you can clearly understand the needs of your stakeholders and ensure that every step of your project meets all the quality standards specified by your client.
Once you get it right, we believe your project will be a success.
Second, prevention is better than cure. This concept is not lost in project management. In fact, it complies with the principles of quality management. Are you willing to start over at the right time in the process with the right revision? We guessed, no.
Improving process quality while the process is in progress is more feasible for everyone. Not only will it save your team the stress of starting over, it can also help reduce additional costs. That's the right way to do things.
So if you want to get tons of praise instead of backlash for poor performance, quality management is the way to go.
Finally, remember that quality management is not a one-off. Even if you've done a project a thousand times, you're likely to discover something new while doing it a thousand and one times in quality management.
Quality management is an ongoing process. Whether you're making a small change or taking a giant leap, it acts like a North Star to guide you, ensuring that every step you take brings you one step closer to your goals.
Quality Management provides options that can help you improve your processes. You can make your project as perfect as you want. All you need to do is constantly measure your performance, identify gaps and holes in your weaknesses, upgrade and update processes, measure performance, and repeat.
The more you know, the more you grow!
Project Quality Management - How Does It Work?
Contrary to what you may believe, quality management is not an end-of-process phase. Quite the contrary, it is a process in itself. A process that embeds and moves in sync with the project lifecycle. As a process, quality management is divided into three main phases:
- planning
- ensure
- control
If you are new to quality management, you can read the following sections and learn how to implement project quality management in your organization. The process is simple and easy. Let's see how it works.
1. Quality Planning
Projects always start with setting goals. The same goes for quality management.
First, identify and define your goals. How to judge whether the project quality is good or not? What KPIs do you use to measure stakeholder satisfaction with the project? etc.
The answers to these questions can help you determine the quality standards you want to achieve in your project. Once you figure that out, you can start working towards those goals or meeting that standard.
Before you actually start developing goals, make sure your team or organization's goals are clear. The plan will not work until or unless you communicate these goals to your team members. Once this is clear to everyone, you can start delegating tasks to resources and kickstart planning.
These goals will serve as guiding lights for your project, helping you make sure everything goes according to plan.
2. Quality Assurance
The next stage in implementing quality management is quality assurance. This is not one of those steps that usually takes the last spot on the organization list. As a step in quality management, quality assurance is how you ensure that stakeholders are satisfied with the way your project is progressing.
Through quality assurance, you gain the trust of your stakeholders. It is the seal of guarantee that your project meets all requirements along the way. The quality standards set during the planning phase guide the process.
With associated KPIs and other metrics, you can measure whether your project is meeting those standards. If your project meets all the criteria and the stakeholders are happy with how things are going, then your project is ready to go.
However, if it is lacking in some way, then steps should be taken to ensure that it is not in vain. Once you get the green light from this stage, you can move on to the next stage which is quality control.
3. Quality control
Quality control is the final stage of the process. It's important to distinguish this step from the previous one because people often confuse the two. Thinking about the difference this way, if quality assurance is the action, then quality control is the reaction.
Quality assurance assessment process to identify issues, if any. Quality control, on the other hand, works after issues have been placed. It proposes corrective actions to close gaps and improve quality.
Quality control includes identifying problems, analyzing problems, and solving problems. Through quality control, it is possible to diagnose whether the project meets the pre-set requirements. This phase also includes identifying potential risks, mitigating those risks, and eliminating any factors that could negatively impact the project.
With quality control, you can also ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. You can ensure the quality of your projects through peer review and testing. If any discrepancies are found, you can take immediate corrective action to ensure the end result is not affected.
This phase is a two-step process:
- Identify reasons for poor quality and take necessary actions to improve project quality
- Ensure project deliverables meet the quality standards set by stakeholders during the planning phase
While quality control is usually done at the end, you can also do this in the middle of the process as it allows you to rule out issues before they become intractable. Remember, the early bird gets the worm.
How to define quality?
back to the start!
Defining quality is at the heart of quality management, however, it can be a little tricky to determine what is good quality and what is bad quality. How do you define quality? What criteria does a process need to meet to be considered high quality?
Here are a few questions, the answers to which will help you gauge the quality of your project:
- Does it meet pre-set standards?
- Does it meet all the requirements put forward by stakeholders?
- Will it produce favorable results?
- How close is it to the ideal?
- Is it within acceptance criteria?
- Will it yield good results if repeated over time?